What He Did

I was just thinking a little while ago about Jesus and it struck me for about the millionth time: He was and is the only Son of the most high God, and he actually left heaven and his glory behind to become a human being so that we could have a chance that we did not have. The one who was and is above all who are in heaven and earth; the one who MADE heaven and earth and everyone in them, actually chose to suffer immensely and even die a cruel, agonizing death FOR US, that we might be saved through him (Jn. 1:3; Eph. 3:9). WOW!! I mean it really does stagger the mind. The apostle Paul sure was right when he said that the love of God “passes knowledge” (Eph. 3:19). Jesus was in a class of his own BEFORE he came here, being the “only begotten” of the Father. He is the one whose testimony is in Proverbs 8 where he confessed the following: “When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him” (Prov. 8:29,30). So why did this only begotten and most dearly beloved of the Almighty God come here to do these things for us? The answer is in the next scripture in his testimony in Proverbs 8: “Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men” (Prov. 8:31). Long before anyone knew that God had a Son, that blessed and beloved Son was rejoicing over “the sons of men,” and taking great delight in them. Yet in all his delighting in men, he knew that there was no way for men to be with he and his Father after their lives in this world ended. Man was born in sin since the disobedience of Adam in the garden of Eden, and there was no way for man’s sins to be truly atoned for and taken away (Heb. 12:14). God had established a covenant with men but the sin offerings of that covenant could not truly take sin away from the hearts and souls of men and literally join them to himself (Gal. 3:21; Heb. 10:4). Therefore the barrier of sin that separated between men and God still stood, and there existed no way for man to be truly reconciled to God. Both God and his Son knew that there was only one who was able to cure that ill, and that there was only one way that it could be done.

The dearest and the best was the only one who was holy and good enough to go and make up that hedge between God and men. It would take him standing in the place of all men to take the ultimate penalty for sin, which is death (Rom. 6:23). Not only so, but it would take him enduring and dying without sin, in order to be the fulfillment of the lamb of the first year without spot or blemish; which was the chief sin offering under the old covenant (Lev. 9:3; etc.). And we were worth that to both of them. PRAISE GOD!! No wonder the Psalm says, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Psm. 8:4). Yeah, the love of God surely is past knowledge. The apostle Paul tried to tell it: “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6-8). Jesus also gave it to us plain and simple if we can grasp it: “For God SO LOVED the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (Jn. 3:16,17). Jesus came here to be “the lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1:29). And he did die in our place, and that without sin; after which he did come back to life after three days. He also went back to heaven to be the high priest who offered the sacrifice for the sins of all mankind (Heb. 10:12). Now all those who “come unto God by him” receive through his intercession the divine life and power that DOES take sin away from the hearts and souls of men, reconciling them truly to the Father and himself (Heb. 7:25; Heb. 9:13,14; I Cor. 6:17). Because of that divine life and power men now have the capacity to go to their graves without sin, and to be raised from the dead unto immortality at the second coming of Jesus back to this world (I Jn. 3:2,3; Mat. 5:8; Rom. 8:11; I Cor. 15:54). Yes Jesus sure went to a lot of trouble to gain us back to the Father and himself. God himself endured great pain to see his most innocent and precious Son endure all that he endured to pay that great price for us. That sure is a whole lot of love, and it’s for sure that it is beyond knowledge or comprehension. I don’t know about you, but the effect it has on me is that I just want to love him back with everything that’s in me. Amen.