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A Poetical Introduction: Look at the Cross
“No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself.
I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” - Jesus Christ |
The ABC’s of God’s unfathomable condescension begins, firstly, with a look at the cross. Without contest, the deepest thinker of humanity staggers to grasp the concept of God’s momentary Humanity – by incarnation – and furthermore, His death at the hand of wicked men! Oh, my reader! Consider that woeful and wonderful scene again! God Incarnate self-surrendered His Body to die – and in what circumstance? He was man-stolen by treacherous men, who were motivated by their hatred of God within, and they beat Him and bound Him, they crowded around Him and challenged Him, and the weakened Omnipotent cried aloud: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me” (Psalm 22:1, Matt. 27:46, Mk. 15:34)?! Look HERE – “Look at the Cross” – at God’s wrath and love, sovereignty and weakness, pleasure and pain; an unfathomable condescension! The most vivid revelation of God to man was in the Person of Jesus Christ. The most comprehensive demonstration of the personal qualities of God, namely His hallowed wrath and love, was climactic and cumulative when the Man Jesus Christ was publically displayed crucified, afterward resurrected, then ascended, and finally enthroned. The Lamb was slain in innocence before the apocalypse of wrath, forerunning the Great Tribulation; Lo, He made manifest the Day of salvation. The lovingkindness of God was revealed in the Person, life, and actions of Christ, but foremost of all when He willingly laid down His life. Jesus is The Good Shepherd, and in Him is no greater love.
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John 10:14-18
14 I am the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine. 15 As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down My life for the sheep. 16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one fold, and one Shepherd. 17 Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again. 18 No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of My Father. |
“No man taketh it from Me,” the humiliated Sovereign declared! Jesus Christ has “POWER to lay it down” and “POWER to take it again,” and He became powerless before the hatred of humanity by the power of His Divinity! Immeasurable, just love and severe, holy wrath were simultaneously revealed to be in the gruesome crucifixion of so valuable a Person, to pacify a wrath so unalterable by any less of a cost. When Christ became sin, God’s anger consumed and forsook so perfect a Divine Man, and yet the Father sent Jesus to this end. The Father & The Son – they both confess an equal responsibility! Jesus Christ CHOSE to lay down His life, and simultaneously as a second witness, the Father GAVE His Son for propitiation. Of the Father it was written, “God so loved the world, that HE GAVE His only begotten Son,” and “HE hath MADE Him TO BE SIN for us, Who knew no sin” (John 3:16, 2 Corinthians 5:21). God’s just anger burns to kill sin, and so also, it burns to destroy sinful men, and when Christ BECAME SIN God killed Him, but it was through the hands and feet of human men! The Sovereign killed His own Person in the form of an Incarnated Human, in and through the hands of a sinning, God-hating humanity. Oh! That Christ would disrobe Himself from Divinity, that He would come to earth and walk amongst sinful humanity, and, lo, that He would robe Himself with the garments of our disgusting and wretched sin, lawfully becoming what God hated about men! So God led Christ to the hill, to hang Him on display, to show the world This Object of God’s wrath in dismay. Christ did there suffer – in perfect proportion – as a representation of God’s hatred for sin! The Absolute and most perfect Dignity – The Second Person of the Trinity – was SHAMED and made NAKED for an evil, undeserving, and unthankful humanity! Jesus Christ foreknew it, He did, of His own will, eternally and within time choose it! From thence we can understand a love that tasted death for every man. “I have loved you,” Jesus said (John 15:12), and “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
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This is goodness from the Good Shepherd
Dual benevolence for the world to reverence And should we ever cease from wondering at such a time in history That this unthinkable death was a victory!? “Alas and did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die. Would He devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?” It was a priceless Life – Jesus, the Christ –well able to envelop innumerable transgressions; Innumerable days of ceaseless praise will never overstate the glory of God’s atoning substitution! That He, even He, Came forth from His throne, Descended to the earth, and to His own, Incarnated as a man, with a purpose to die, Initiating a plan, that, in Him, all death would die That He, for men, became a wrath-enveloping substitution, That He was mangled and blood-red, hated on earth until He was dead! Heaven’s Potentate was encircled and overpowered, and by sinful men!? They were raging in hatred of Him with every emotion within! Apparently succeeding to rid themselves of His presence among men Until finally, at last, they thought they were free to go on in sin… |
But then God reciprocates the deed, He crucifies men in Christ that they might rise again after His lead,
And Christ, risen and alive, sends salvation into the world that hated Him, that they might then be freed!
For their needs He did bleed! They nailed Him unto His death, that He might overcome it for the rest,
His death brought forth life, overcoming hatred with love, and night with light, that of a truth it was said,
He was the dying seed which gave life to those in need.
Just wrath was pacified! God is righteous to justify the ungodly, hell-deserving sinners of the world! God is just, therefore, to justify us; because Christ became our sin, we are made alive in Him, and this is a sound declaration: “To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). “One drop of Christ’s blood is worth more than heaven and earth.” – Martin Luther
And Christ, risen and alive, sends salvation into the world that hated Him, that they might then be freed!
For their needs He did bleed! They nailed Him unto His death, that He might overcome it for the rest,
His death brought forth life, overcoming hatred with love, and night with light, that of a truth it was said,
He was the dying seed which gave life to those in need.
Just wrath was pacified! God is righteous to justify the ungodly, hell-deserving sinners of the world! God is just, therefore, to justify us; because Christ became our sin, we are made alive in Him, and this is a sound declaration: “To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). “One drop of Christ’s blood is worth more than heaven and earth.” – Martin Luther
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The Man, Christ, was so valuable a Life that salvation was borne from Emanuel’s veins!
He washed a world of sin! In Him an innumerable company is resurrected to endless days! And what is absolutely necessary for so magnificent a victory, Is that God was not carelessly outwitted to lose His Son at the hands of free-will sinners undone! The free will of man held no priestly knife in this sovereign, eternal, salvific plan! The Father was the transcending Great High Priest, and He is the author of every chapter of the plan; In His hand He held the knife to condemn all sin in One Man. Every finger may have been the finger of man, But they gripped the knife of salvation to slay the world’s sin in One Sacrificial Propitiation. The knife in hand, the final blow, was God’s judgment against sin – let all the world know! His work, His way, He sacrificed His Son for all in one day! God so loved the world, He gave His Son as a gift, Sinners did not steal God incarnate because they were swift. The future is not determined by the freewill actions of men, Even if they misbehave, do wickedly, or sin. God determined the salvation of the Adamic race in Jesus Christ, By His free will He chose, and He snuffed out the fires of eternal woes. The Lord a symphony did compose! The sound of a mystery played throughout history! The Holy Ghost unveils it, and holy men did increasingly, prophetically detail it, Its culmination is in a standing ovation, of a history of shadows to manifestation! Christ, like the Sun, ushered a dark world into illumination, The Church is the ovation, principalities and powers wonder at the segregation, The secret assembled Church in celebration, applauding the victory of the gospel dispensation, And the manifold wisdom of God determining the world in reconciliation! Yea, the principalities do know the mystery the Church does show… “But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory” (1 Cor. 2:7). “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory” (1 Tim. 3:16). Though the world is presently blind, they will see in the end of time! Don’t you know? The mystery was unfolded to the few throughout history, And few were on the Mount of Olives when He was “received up in glory.” But in the completion of time all the world will behold, The mystery sublimed that was in all the world told. Few gazed at Him after His resurrection, at His ascent, But all the world will wail at His glorious descent, And never forget, to this end also He was finally sent… “Behold, He cometh with the clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen” (Rev. 1:7). |