Himself He Could Not Save

Then I would remember the day before yesterday and do the same thing....then the day before that....and last week....and last month.... and last year. And if my conscience laid upon me the just punishment for all my sins, my heart would be crushed beneath the weight of it....I simply couldn’t bear it.

In fact, I couldn’t go very far into the yesterdays to make restitution without being crushed. So that, no matter how much I loved you, I could never take your sorrow or your punishment, having so much of my own.

So what we need to do is to find someone whose burden is light, someone whose life is not weighed down with sin, someone who "was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin." (Hebrews 4:15).

Jesus Christ, of course, is the only one who meets our needs because he had no sin of his own. And because he loves us -- because he loves you and me -- he says to us, "I will take your burden, and I will take the pain that you have caused, the sorrow, the disappointment, the disgrace, the shame. I will take them and carry them for you, and the punishment that you cannot bear, I will bear." And he gathered it all up.

Paul said, "For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him." (II Corinthians 5:21). I don’t know the specifics of how Jesus became sin for us. But I do know that because that happened, he found himself separated from God as he cried out on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46).

And that explains the mystery of Christ on the cross. "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:5-6).

And the amazing fact is that Jesus would have made that sacrifice if I was the only person in the world. That’s how much he loved me.

I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time understanding that kind of love. I have a hard time understanding why Jesus would leave heaven in the first place. In Philippians 2:6-7, we read that Jesus, "being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men." Jesus has always been God. He lived in heaven, had angels serving him, a place of prominence and power and he gave it all up to come to earth.

Rubel Shelly once told about a time when he was 16 years old. It was the practice of the Ladies’ Bible class in his congregation to fix up food baskets with grocery items at Christmastime to take to needy families in the area. Then the teen-agers would deliver them around the community.

He recalls going to one shack which was well off the beaten path. It was just a run-down little shack, but there were 3 generations of family living in it, 9 people in all. When the door was opened, a terrible smell came out -- a smell of sickness, of rotting food, of soiled bedclothes. They quickly mumbled something about being from the church of Christ and wanting to help them out, and they gave them the groceries. As soon as they got back to the car, they took a big, deep breath of fresh air, just trying to get the odor out of their lungs.