Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Did Jesus' heart ever need to be changed? You may answer, "No, He was always perfect!" And yes, He was always perfect; but look again:
On His cross when the sun was darkened, He cried out with a curdling scream, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matt. 27:46). That was a heart-cry. His great heart was crushed. As "Immanuel, God with us" He had become "us." "The Lord ... laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:6), not as a burden He carried externally but as one deep within His heart. He was "made to be sin for us, who knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21). Yes! He had a heart-problem!
As our Sin-bearer, He was experiencing the death of the damned, "tasting death [the second] for every man" (see Heb. 2:9). He was knowing first-hand the total alienation from God that the lost will feel at last. He was paying the penalty of the sins of the world. His heart was "acquainted with grief," tasting the sum total of our human despair.
But must He die that way, crushed, despairing, heart-broken? No! He must experience a change from feeling in His heart God-forsaken to rejoicing in heart-victory; He must die triumphant, shouting to the world and the vast universe with His last breath, "It is finished!" Why, and how, the victory? By faith! He has chosen to believe that the Father heard His prayer, "Forgive them [the world] for they know not what they do."
Christ will die rejoicing--He knows He has "saved the world"! "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them" (2 Cor. 5:19). Now the Father has the legal right to treat every man as though he were sinless, at-one-with Himself! Christ has "signed the emancipation papers of the human race," and He dies heart-happy. All this, so YOUR heart can be changed.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: June 2, 2002.
Copyright © 2013 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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