Lent 29. Jesus: Suffering

Lent offers time to explore the qualities of Jesus that make him our model as well as our Savior and Lord.

--- JESUS: SUFFERING FOR US ---


Christians are the only people who believe in a God who suffers for them. Other religions demand appeasement or duty. 
  • Rituals of appeasement: "We make sacrifices because our gods are angry with us. The spirits must be mollified by ongoing offerings." 
  • Or religious duty: "We hope our god will take us to heaven if we balance life on earth by doing enough good and avoid the bad."
Only the Christian God - through Jesus Christ his suffering servant - takes the burden of sin from the shoulders of his followers. Only this God offers peace and the assurance of salvation. He gives freedom from our past so that we enter a loving relationship with him today and spend eternity in his presence.

Such generosity (and such suffering on our behalf) is hard to grasp. The prophet Isaiah put it this way:

Who has believed our message

    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces,
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed. 
(Isaiah 53:1-5 NIV)

 SELF-ASSESSMENT: Have you accepted God's provision? Why not ask him now to take the guilt and shame of your sin? He who gave himself for us smiles on those who accept his abundance and kindness! He will not refuse those who accept God's mercy on God's terms.

(If you want to respond, need more information, or just want to have a conversation about this, I'd love to talk to you further.)

Popular posts from this blog

Lent Day 39: Sentenced for your crimes and mine

Image
When the Pharisees and other national leaders take Jesus to the Roman governor, they are looking for the worst punishment they can inflict, a cruel and painful death . Here are the details, from  John 18:28-19:16: Then the Jewish leaders took Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness they did not enter the palace, because they wanted to be able to eat the Passover.  So Pilate came out to them and asked, ‘What charges are you bringing against this man?’ ‘If he were not a criminal,’ they replied, ‘we would not have handed him over to you.’ Pilate said, ‘Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.’ ‘But we have no right to execute anyone,’ they objected.  This took place to fulfil what Jesus had said about the kind of death he was going to die. > This is hardly a trial that seeks justice. Rather, it is a conspiracy to execute someone who threatens the power base and status quo. The reli...
Read more

Lent Day 2: The startling appearance of God

Image
Yesterday, we began Lent by considering God, who is beyond our own imaginations or preconceptions. He is God in whose image we are made - but whom we cannot and dare not remake in our own image. The account of Jesus written by his beloved disciple John (the Gospel of John) is fascinating. Though the other 3 gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) tell us much about what happened, John focuses on what Jesus says about himself. John starts the gospel story with " In the beginning ," similar to the start of the Old Testament (the Jewish scriptures). And who or what was in the beginning? It is the Living Word, who exists before time. Then John says, " the Word became flesh and lived among us ." How startling that idea must have been for the followers of Jesus. They're still trying to wrap their heads about that when Jesus is crucified and raised from the dead.  We're still trying to comprehend that divine mystery today, right? So what does John the disciple say about ...
Read more

Lent Day 1: God beyond our imagination

Image
If it were up to me to save the world, coming into humanity to live among us wouldn't be my plan. I wouldn't choose to experience the uncertainty of childhood, the hormones of the teen years, or the criticism of neighbors. And I certainly wouldn't choose a horrible painful death with the world's sins tearing my heart in two. But God's ways are not our ways. He says: " The heavens are  higher   than  the earth. And my ways are  higher   than  your ways. My thoughts are  higher   than  your thoughts. " (Isaiah 55:9) This year, I am approaching Lent, the 40 days of contemplation before Easter, with an open mind and a willing heart. I want to meditate on what Jesus accomplished. On what he suffered. On the price he paid to ransom you and me from sin and death and hell. I ponder this today: When the proper time came God sent his Son, born of a human mother and born under the jurisdiction of the Law, that he might redeem those who were under the au...
Read more