I had planned to post this at Christmas but didn't feel well enough to complete it in time. I am posting today, which is actually Epiphany or Twelfth Night. It seems somewhat fitting, as the word "epiphany" means "appearance" or "manifestation," and Epiphany is a celebration of the realization of the actual identity of that little Baby born so long ago.
Need and weakness. Those are words I have come to identify with in ways I had not anticipated over the past year. No one aspires to be weak. No one likes to be in need. Facing our own inadequacy is not pleasant. But if we've lived more than a day, we have likely discovered just how prone we are to weakness and need.
This morning I awoke with a line from the well-loved carol, "O Holy Night," running through my head: "He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger…." These words of reassurance offered me comfort and also much to consider. Who is this "He" who truly knows our weakness and our need? This tiny Baby lying in a feeding trough for cattle? Could God, Himself, be made so helpless, dependent, vulnerable? He has never needed anything. How can Strength, Itself, know weakness or clothe itself with the restrictions of human flesh? And why? The One who flung the very stars into existence now in need of food, clothing, a mother's arms? Impossible, or so it seems. Songwriter, Chris Rice, beautifully captures this union of weakness and strength in his song, "Welcome to Our World":
Fragile finger sent to heal us
Tender brow prepared for thorn
Tiny heart whose blood will save us
Unto us is born
Unto us is born
This little baby would grow up to heal the sick, help the weak, care for the outcast. And He would do so walking our broken world, living homeless, tasting sickness, tears, weariness, hunger, and finally death itself. He would become our Savior on every level – in the fullest sense of the word. The One Who needed nothing became needy in order to meet our need.
One day, those gentle hands would be pierced through with nails. That kind brow would be torn with cruel thorns. That perfect heart would pour out its blood. This was His purpose. This was why He came. Yet His suffering reached greater depths than the horrors of crucifixion. Scripture tells us that He was made to be sin for us. He was separated from His Father, suffering all His holy anger against sin. Why? For us. So that we might be rescued from the worst suffering imaginable –separation from our Maker – separation from Joy, and Light, and Love Itself. His arms are stretched open to us now because they were once stretched open upon a cross. How comforting is the assurance that if we belong to Him, no sorrow can ultimately crush us, for He was crushed in our place.
This past year has taught me about weakness in ways I would not have chosen. Being weak without someone to lean on is scary. Being weak and leaning on someone who cannot identify with weakness is also scary. But we can lean on One Who is no stranger to our weakness.“For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Whatever you are facing in this New Year, He stands ready to embrace you. He poured out His very blood for you. The book of Hebrews tells us that “surely it is not angels He helps, but Abraham’s descendants.”
This great God entered our world as a little Baby and became a Man, being made like us in every way so that He could bear away the guilt of our sins, be our Substitute, and stand before God, His Father, pleading our case and forever securing a Home for us with Himself. Someone once put it this way, "Into such a world of need, into such a world as ours, God whispered His profound love. And He whispers it yet today." Today, wherever you find yourself, may you hear that whisper of love from One who not only knows the path you take but has walked it before you and now waits to walk it beside you.
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Why Did He Choose the Cross?
In order to answer this question, we must begin with Who God is and who we are. He is Holy, perfect, pure. As our Creator, He can tell us how we ought to live and does so out of love, knowing our greatest happiness and fulfillment is found in right relationship to Him. But rather than accepting it, each of us has chosen to reject His loving rule and instead be our own rulers. The Bible calls this sin. And it is responsible for all the brokenness, pain, and suffering we see in our lives and the world around us.
We are sinners who have rejected His rule. We were created to dwell with God, but sin has separated us from Him. God must judge our sin or He would not be just and holy. His judgment upon our sin is death and an eternity in Hell. In doing so, He gives us that for which we have asked – separation from Him and the right to rule our own lives. If this was where the story ended, our hopeless existence would be but misery.
He could have left us without hope, cut off with no way to return to Him, and awaiting certain judgment. Instead, He sent Jesus, His Son, to be our Substitute. Jesus perfectly submitted to His Father's rule in every area that we had rebelled and willingly went to that cross where He suffered the agony of His Father's anger against sin. He took God's justice upon Himself because none of us could have borne it. Only a perfect Man could be our substitute. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." Jesus took our sin and gave us His perfection. Dying in our place, Jesus bore the penalty for sin and completely satisfied the required payment for sin that our holy and just God requires. No one else could have done this. We could never do enough good deeds to earn it. We could never be good enough. A sinless sacrifice was required. God Himself provided that sacrifice in giving up His only Son to die in our place. "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God" (I Peter 3:18).
But He didn't stay on that cross. God raised Him to life again, demonstrating His acceptance of His Son's perfect sacrifice in our stead. Now all who turn from their sins and rely on the death of Christ in their place are given forgiveness, freedom, new life, and the promise of spending an eternity with God amidst the joys and splendors of Heaven, free of all sorrow, brokenness, and pain.
This is why He chose the cross. To rescue us from an eternity of separation from the God who made us and loves us. He knew it was the only way to bring us Home. Back to the One for Whom we were made. The One from Whom all joy and satisfaction and delight flow. Hebrews 12:2 says that He "endured the cross" "for the joy that was set before Him." He chose it even though it meant suffering of a kind no man could ever measure. He did it for you. And for me.
(If you'd like to read more about what He has done, visit Two Ways to Live.)
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