Do You Know Him?

As Christians, we are always energized when we see others coming to Christ and surrendering their own wills over to His will for them. But as glorious of a thing as that is, it is also the main reason why more people do not come to Christ: Because they would have to surrender their own wills to someone else over them and they do not want to do that because it is too uncomfortable. That and the fact that we always seem to trust ourselves more than we trust anyone else.

For instance, when my son first got his driver’s license, the inevitable day came when he wanted to borrow the car and go to a friend’s house. Down deep, I knew I had to force myself to let him have it after a series of last minute instructions, but the truth is, I did not want to give the keys to him.

Why did I feel that way? Because I knew how I drove and I trusted that, but I did not really know how he would drive and therefore, I did not fully trust him yet. Well, that and the fact that I am his father and I have the instinct to protect my children from all things bad.

But unless we take that giant step and surrender to Jesus’ authority over us, we cannot become Christians. It all boils down to a simple matter of having the ability and willingness to trust Him. And if we do not really take the time to try and know Him, we will never be able to trust Him.

So, with that in mind, I would like to introduce you to the One I call, My Jesus.

I will begin at the Cross. We all know that just before He died, He uttered the words “It is finished.” Well, those aren’t the exact words He uttered. Factually, Jesus said, “Testelstai!” That does mean “it is completed”, but it means so much more, too. That word is only found two places in the New Testament:

In JOHN 19:28 it is translated,

“After this, when Jesus knew that all things were now “completed”, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, He said, ‘I thirst.’”

Two verses later, in verse 30, He utters the word himself: “Then when He received the sour wine Jesus said, ‘It is finished,’ and He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.”

And so, we find that Jesus was not only saying “it is over”, He was saying, “It is complete with no further obligation owed”, and “the price has been completely paid in full.”

What Jesus said was not to be construed as a cry of defeat as He hang there dying, but a glorious shout of victory of what He was accomplishing as He hang there, giving up His very life for those He had created. A love so intense and so in-depth that we, as His creation, do not even have the ability to fully understand it.

And even though we have dimmed our spiritual memory of that occurrence, it is necessary that we understand His sacrifice means just as much to us today as it did the day He made it. There has never been a diminishing of the importance or the mercy found at the Cross. And just as Jesus spoke the words “It is completed”, God the Father was saying, “It has been fully accepted.”

Now, what happens when a person pays off a long standing debt? That person gets a receipt and the receipt will have printed on it the words, “Paid in full”. We owed that debt we could not pay, so Jesus stepped in and paid that debt He did not owe . . . all for our sake so we could be reunited with God the Father.

Why did He have to do that? Wasn’t there some other way we could be united? The answer is a terrifying “No!” Back when Adam and Eve turned their backs on God, they found themselves naked in all physical and spiritual ways. God had to cover them because He loved them. So He fashioned clothing from an animal’s hide to cover their physical nakedness. But the animal’s blood covered their spiritual nakedness.

Sin requires a death to me made. God cannot look upon sin, so therefore, He cannot look upon His own because we have been immersed in and covered with sin. The only way He can cast His gaze upon us is to somehow cover us.

In the Old Testament, they had one day a year called the Day of Atonement. On that day, the priests would gather two goats and in the midst of the people, they would slay one goat. That goat’s blood would then be painted on the tips of the live goat. That live goat was called the “scapegoat”. The blood represented the sins of all Israel, and the scapegoat represented the One who carried all of our sins for us.