Crucifixion day4

 Think about the cross. Really think about it. See Jesus on it. Hear the sounds. Feel the terror.

Now realise this. You could be doing any number of things. You could be going for a drive or taking a walk. You could be sipping a glass of iced tea or playing a round of golf or having lunch with friends.

But instead you’re sitting here contemplating an instrument of torture. The cross wasn’t just designed to kill a man, but to keep him alive as long as possible so that he could experience as much pain as possible without passing out, until finally he died an excruciating death from suffocation as his lungs collapsed from the weight of his body suspended from iron spikes.

That’s brutal.

You’re sitting here, concentrating on a cross.

You could be doing something upbeat, something that has more to do with living. Everything in our world tells you that you can save yourself by getting on with the business of living. There’s not a commercial or an ad in the world that entices you to buy something that will hasten your death. The whole point of advertising is that the products will enhance your life. Take that vacation. Get that new car. Find the best food. Stay looking young with all the wrinkle cream and hair dye available. That’s what we want, a beautiful life — as long as possible, as rich as possible, as pleasant as possible.

So why are you here, thinking about an instrument of torture, a crossbeam of suffering? Are you crazy? Are Christians all nuts? Why not get out there and enrich your life? It can’t be healthy to think about death. It’s certainly not popular.

The truth is, there comes a time in everyone’s life, a time when we become painfully aware that we cannot save ourselves by living. We are dying to live, but that desire — that hope that we can live a long, beautiful, comfortable, rich life — can never be fulfilled. It slips away. Life has a way of ebbing out of even the healthiest among us. And in the meantime, it can become so much less than what we tried to grab hold of.

All of a sudden, the life that we tried so hard to create, the life that we thought we had, is much less than what we hoped for. The truth is that what draws us to the cross of Jesus is something deep inside each of us that says, Jesus’ dying was the real currency that purchased your freedom from all this try-to-save-yourself-by-living frenzy.

Trying to save yourself by living is like trying to buy groceries with Monopoly money. You’ve got the wrong currency. It may be good when you’re playing the game, but it won’t work when you want some real food. All the little properties and accumulated achievements that enable us to own this board and win this game have nothing to do with God’s grand scheme.

If it were possible for humanity to save itself by living, we would have done it by now. We’d have collectively reached down and pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps. But it hasn’t happened. And it won’t. From Socrates to Dr. Phil, the world has taken a 5,000-year bath in human wisdom and come out just as dirty as ever.

So that’s why you’re here. You can’t save yourself by living.

That’s why God has come, to save the whole world by dying.

It doesn’t sound like a very practical application, but do it anyway. Think about the cross. Really think about it. See Jesus on it. Hear the sounds. Feel the terror. And know that you have been spared.

 

Prayer

 

Dear God, You have made it clear that none of us can save ourselves by living longer or better. If righteousness and union with You were possible through human attainment, then Christ’s death was needless. But You have revealed that, apart from Him, no one is righteous; no one attains perfection, and no one can earn salvation. All of us fall short of Your goodness and glory, and while it is true that some clearly live better lives than others, even the best of us cannot attain to the perfection that makes it possible for us to have fellowship with You. I will thank You forever that in Your compassion for us in our desperate condition, You did not spare Your own Son, but delivered Him over for us all. Now that I have trusted in Him, He gives me His righteousness and holds me in His hand by interceding for me and protecting me.

In Jesus’s name, Amen