Thoughts for the Day

‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross               1 Peter 2:24

As we draw progressively closer to the Cross through this week, we leave behind us the ‘Did God really say?’ scriptures and the somewhat thorny topics that came with them.  We also move from the question of why Jesus came (to save us from our sins) and focus on familiar phrases that point to the ‘how’.  How did Jesus dying as a man a brutal and grisly death achieve God’s eternal purpose?  Part of the answer is in the way I have phrased the question.  It was and is a purpose pertaining to eternity.  However much these phrases may help us understand, much of the ‘how’ remains a mystery to us.  We read of the earthly dimension of a great spiritual triumph, but the spiritual detail is likely beyond our grasp.

It’s doubtful that anyone would have known more of the detail than Peter, one of Jesus’ three closest disciples and the man Jesus commissioned to lead his fledgling church.  Writing to encourage Christians suffering persecution around 30 years after Jesus’ resurrection, Peter wrote of Jesus’ suffering on the Cross, mostly quoting from the Suffering Servant song in Isaiah 53.  This declares not only that the servant bore our sins (Isaiah used the word for ‘pain’ or ‘sickness’’), but God laid all our wickedness on him along with the punishment [for it] so that we could have peace.  It implies that the agony of crucifixion was the physical parallel of a heavenly reality we hardly dare imagine.  From Abraham not having to sacrifice his son, through to the Passover in Egypt and on into the whole Levitical system, God repeatedly demonstrated the concept of ‘life for life’ pointing forward to Jesus’ sacrifice for us.  We may not know exactly how it worked but thank you God that it did!