October 31, 2008
My youngest grandson’s name is Felix. We call him “Beeks.” The reason? Granddaughter Karis Grace couldn’t say “Felix” when she was small. It came out “Beeks.” Beeks has a favorite word: “why?” Why granddaddy? Why is your hair white? Why is the hair growing out of your ears, granddaddy? I want to say, Beeks, see the above answer! Come to think of it, his daddy asked that “why” question constantly. It must run in the family.
I have approached the Bible with the same insatiable desire to know. Why God? Why is it this way? God has answered my questions by giving me some amazing glimpses into His plan.
There is no greater glimpse into God’s unseen world than the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Adam’s sin and fall did not catch God by surprise. He was not caught off guard sitting in heaven wringing His holy hands wondering what to do next. God had already determined that He was going to come into this world and pay the sin debt of death that fallen man owed Him. God already had a Lamb prepared. Peter said that God ordained Christ before the foundation of the world. It was His plan all along to place on display His magnificent grace.
The wages of sin is death! Since God determined to pay that debt, He seemingly had a problem. God as God could not die because God is eternal life. This meant that God was to go through the most amazing transformation in all of human history. The eternal God took upon Himself a body (Hebrews 10:5). He came into the world conceived by the Holy Spirit within the womb of the Virgin Mary. Therefore, He was untouched by Adam’s sin. He knew no sin! He was not a sinner by birth nor did He ever commit a single act of sin. He came into the world of sinners as a freeborn man. Yet He came for one purpose – that purpose was to die.
Where did He die? He died on a cross! Why the cross? This becomes clear when we read this strange passage from the Old Testament. “If a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance” (Deuteronomy 21:22-23).
Paul went back to this very place to explain the death of Christ. He told the Galatians that God never meant for us to keep the law in order to receive the righteousness that we need (Galatians 2:21; 3:21). Quite the contrary! The law has a spiritual purpose. It is used by the Holy Spirit to reveal that that we all have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. By whose standard have we sinned? By God’s standard revealed in His Ten Commands. We have not kept them perfectly. The law reveals that we have received a curse by having been born in Adam – the curse of spiritual death. Paul then quoted a part of the passage used above to show that when Jesus Christ died on the cross He took that very curse in His body. Paul said, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” Jesus Christ hung on a tree, and by hanging on that tree He was cursed for us!
How did He bear our curse? He died the death that we died in Adam the first. How did we die in Adam? We died spiritually! We became separated from God. Catch this amazing glimpse! Jesus spoke several words as He hung on the cross but none more powerful than these. He screamed, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). The reason is mind boggling! We begin to plumb the depths of it when we realize that throughout His ministry on earth our Lord had referred to the first person of the Trinity as “Father.” This is a term of relationship!
But here He shocks us by referring to His father with the impersonal “my God.” What was happening? At this moment Jesus Christ actually became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). He took the curse of being separated from God for us (Galatians 3:13). God the Father separated Himself from God the Son. God’s eyes were too holy to look upon sin (Habakkuk 1:13). Jesus Christ died spiritually in our place! What a magnificent scene! His last words spoken from the cross have shouted to the world for centuries telling us that our sin has been paid for in full. These words are “It is finished.”
His death happened over 2000 years ago. How do we receive the amazing benefits of His death today? Next time!