Easter

So there was this guy, perfect and undeserving of any kind of punishment for any wrong, who in my place said "I did it" and threw himself in front of the bullet for me. He never gossiped, he never lied, he never lusted, he was never selfish, greedy or hateful. He was physically tortured, for me, for you, for all of humanity.

However, as I think about the pain and suffering he endured on my behalf, somehow I strain to differentiate that agony from the agony of cancer, of child abuse, of any kind of human torture that exists today in our fallen world. What makes his physical mutilation and torture different than any other undeserving person who is tortured by crazed lunatics?

Beside the fact that he is the Son of God, nothing.

What's different is his absolute repugnance toward sin. He was sinless. Perfect. In his spotlessness he took on all of our filth. And he was made to be sin on our behalf. I can't forget the fact that he was beaten, mocked, and all those other gorey details that we hear every Good Friday...but it was our SIN that was his real torture.

I recall times when I have sinned and been convicted and felt the agony of my mistake. Or when I see someone commit a sin that is just horrendous how disgusting and putrid it is. I cannot imagine if I were perfect and had to take on that guilt and remorse as though I had actually commited the offense. But Christ, Jesus Christ, the perfect, spotless, sinless, pure, holy, blameless, unblemished Son of God, in one moment took every sin past, present and future, that was, is, and ever will be, to the grave with him. There is no physical pain, no mocking, that can ever hurt anymore more than the complete and utter agony of taking on the sum of mankind's evil. God couldn't even look at him.

How awful! How bittersweet! How beautiful! I can picture Christ absorbing all the guilt that I deserve...saying "bring it on!"....taking it to the grave with him and leaving it there dead, rising up 3 days later as the Victor! Death could not hold him because He is the Son of God, pure and blameless! Sin has no victory! And I am free because of it!