Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Since that September 11 of 2001 there has been a search for relief from fear--the kind Jesus says will grip humanity when "men's hearts [are] failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth" (Luke 21:26). The bottom-line root of all fear, even beneath the conscious surface, is that of being "forsaken" of God, of being lost, of "hell" itself, what the Bible calls the ultimate "curse of the law" (Gal. 3:13).
It's our universal problem. But, as the Son of God, Christ has endured and conquered that same fear, delivering us from it, "being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree." (There is a quote from Deuteronomy 21:23, where Moses said that anyone who ends up on a tree is "accursed of God.") Jesus was utterly sinless, but He "was made to be sin for us, who knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21).
His sufferings on the cross were not merely physical pain. In total reality (no mind-numbing anesthetic) the Son of God, divine yet human, felt the ultimate horror: "My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" That's why Peter said He went to hell to save us (Acts 2:31). No greater pain of soul was possible. He suffered 100 percent "the wages of sin, [which] is death," the real kind (Rom. 6:23). Faith is a heart-identity with Him ("I am crucified with Christ," Gal. 2:20); we become corporately one with Him by faith. His concerns become ours; His experience becomes ours by oneness of heart with Him. Thus we "receive the reconciliation" (Rom. 5:11).
That strange "honeymoon" of Luke 12:36, 37 perplexes us, but we read further: "The marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready" (Rev. 19:7). Sinful human beings learn to believe, to "overcome … even as [He] also overcame" (Rev. 3:21). They identify with Him as a bride identifies with her bridegroom, become "one" with Him in heart. "Love [agape] casteth out fear" (1 John 4:18). So, in all the Bad News of September 11 we found an avenue to Good News.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: September 29, 2001.
Copyright © 2012 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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