The True Dimension of Christ’s Love For Us
Jesus “tasted” death “for everyone” as He hung on the cross in the darkness. Himself the Blessed One, He was made “a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’)” (Gal. 3:13). The feeling of being forsaken by His Father was drinking a bitter cup of sorrow unsweetened by the tiniest taste of hope.
Although Jesus feared death (see Heb. 5:7), it is not right to say that He yielded to this fear. He faced the fear of eternal separation from God, and “for everyone” He felt the total unspeakable horror of its essence. Yet He conquered it totally.
With the deepest reverence, we might say that Christ figuratively went to hell, and then came back. The apostle Peter at Pentecost seems to have recognized that this was the true nature of His sacrifice: “God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him” (Acts 2:24, NIV). The King James Version renders as follows Peter’s quotation from Psalm 16:10: “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” (“Hell” [Hebrew sheol] here means an eternal grave.) When Christ “poured out his soul unto death” (Isa. 53:12), He felt that His Father had “forsaken” Him forever.
None of us can duplicate Christ’s sacrifice, for that would be impossible. He was the infinite Son of God, and we are mere creatures whose sacrifice (if we could make it) would be meaningless. We can never be co-saviors of ourselves. But we can appreciate His sacrifice for us.
This burns out of our souls our petty little self-centered motivations. Amazed and awed by the agape that led Jesus to His cross, we “pour contempt” on our selfish desires to avoid the punishment of eternal death and win Paradise because of its rewards. Suddenly an entirely new motivation grips our souls—the passion to honor and glorify the One who redeemed us at such infinite cost. It’s saying “Thank You for saving our souls!” In that gratitude, selfish motivations are transcended.
As surely as day follows night, this new motivation expels the root of fear. When faith identifies with Christ, one never again feels alone and bereft, for we have participated by faith in Christ’s death-grapple with the enemy in His awful hours on Calvary. Christ has built the bridge that spans the chasm of eternal death; now we simply cross over it “in Him.”
[From The Good News Is Better Than You Think, by Robert J. Wieland, pp. 53, 54.]
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