Happy Lords day!
The calendar we all know and love is wrong. It wasn’t Christ’s birth that separates time. It was His death. At about 3 o’clock on a friday between the sabbath and the passover, the lamb that came into the world to take away the sins of the world was killed and eaten by death. He had been turned over to be crucified by the people who were supposed to guard that promise. In the most brutal of ironies, the author of life allowed His to be taken. The God who has all power, knowledge, and is everywhere — couldn’t even watch. The Son of God had been obedient to the Father, even though it meant his death. The Paradox split time.
That fracture in time and Christ’s magnetism created a breach through which all sins, past present and future could be collected and die. Because those sins died with Christ, we can live.
Jesus didn’t just die for our sins. THE FATHER RAISED HIM TO LIFE. Having destroyed our sins, he came back to life to give us THE reason to live. The relationship He gives, gives purpose for the rest of our lives, and since we know He lives, we know He can fulfill His promise to raise us up to life after we cross the divide of death.
1 Timothy 3:16
Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:
He was manifested in the flesh,
vindicated by the Spirit,
seen by angels,
proclaimed among the nations,
believed on in the world,
taken up in glory.
Isaiah 53:2-5 (ESV)
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
