Archive for April, 2014
It was not easy for our Lord to pay the price for our salvation. I was reading in the transcripts of His words to Gabrielle Bossis, in the record of His messages from the book, “He and I” , and from time to time He gave her hints of how hard it was for Him- yet He endured for love of the Father- and love for all of us that we could be saved from spiritual death.
On one entry, Jesus told Gabrielle how when He was carrying the cross (which He terms “Precious”) He kept on praying the Psalms to the Father while stumbling on the rocky road leading up to the top of Golgotha. We cannot Imagine what He went through. It was not just any sadistic execution of any typical criminal; all Hell was out to attack Him so He was getting assaulted not only by humans full of hate but demons were attacking His soul as well. All the forces of Hell were bent on keeping Him from going onto that cross– starting with satan’s initial suggestion through Peter: “Lord this will NEVER happen to you!”
What’s more, Jesus totally did not DESERVE to be executed. He was completely innocent with an innocence and purity that surpassed all mankind before or since. And being innocent, He was mocked and sneered at by arrogant people who were totally corrupt. Neverthless, you don’t see Jesus defending Himself. You don’t hear Him say, “I’m out of here- mankind – why should I suffer for YOU?”
I’ts not like He couldn’t have gotten down from the cross . Legions of angels would have immediately delivered Him if He called out for the Father’s intervention. In the Garden of Gethsemane when they came to seize Him, Peter tried to defend Jesus and cut off Malchus’s ear in the process. Jesus corrected Peter then gently restored the ear of the man who came to bind Him for trial. I suspect that Malchus never forgot that moment the remainder of his life.
Another whose memory of Jesus remained seared in his consciousness was the high priest’s guard who struck Jesus in His face after Jesus replied with total honesty to the high priest’s question at His mock trial. Seeing the high priest’s loss for words, the guard struck Jesus in the face, saying, “Is THAT how you answer the high priest?!” With eyes of love that looked right into that guard’s soul, Jesus calmly responded, “If I have spoken wrongly bear witness to the wrong; but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?” The tone of Jesus’s voice and that pure look in His eyes probably remained with that guard until his dying day.
Then, there was the guard that stood near Jesus as He was dying with His hands and feet impaled on that cross. He noticed that Jesus was not like all the other typical criminals whose executions he often oversaw. The others being executed always resisted– often spitting in the guard’s faces and cursing. Not Jesus, who offered His hands for the nails- Who was truly that Lamb led to the slaughter as Isaac , Abraham’s son centuries before. He noticed how badly Jesus was scourged, with pieces of flesh hanging off of Him, he may have wondered what possessed them to have whipped Him so extensively. He saw the blood streaming from His face and body , smearing onto the cross and dripping onto the ground. He knew this Man –whom some guards joked claimed to be the son of the Jewish God- was too weakened to barely mutter, “I thirst”. Then He heard Him cry out with a loud cry like a Lion- a cry of triumph that shook him to the core, shouting, “It is Finished!” That guard was stunned. This dying Man – so gentle like a Lamb- where did He get that strength to shout out like a Lion to His Father with such joy? He could only say with total awe, “This Man was just; surely, this Man is the Son of God!”
This video says all that I want to say – glimpses of our King in the Old and New Testament of the Holy Bible!
Jesus- King in Exile 