Tag: Cross
Passion Points
Here are some good Passion Week related posts for your weekend reading:
How To Handle Your Sin – Kevin DeYoung
Run to the cross. There you will find salvation for your sin sick self.
God Wants You To Know How Much He Loves You – Jon Bloom (DG)
That’s what Passion Week is for; that you might remember and more deeply know how much God has loved you — so much that he gave his only Son for you
Includes a link to a Desiring God booklet with daily readings for the coming week.
The Passion Week – Infographic – Josh Byers
This week’s infographic, The Passion Week, is a chronological timeline of the major events that happened during Jesus’ last week before he died and rose again.
Some Easter Posts – Three Passions
This is a collection of Easter posts I put together last year, including another Easter week timeline and a short video you should watch every year.
The Thief and Us – Three Passions
Another post from last year worth pondering again.
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day and coming week reflecting on our Savior’s death, burial and resurrection!
Preach the Gospel to Yourself
How can we grow up in Jesus? Part of the answer is that we need to preach the gospel to ourselves. We need to constantly remind ourselves of what God has done for us, of the many blessings of salvation that should change the way we live. In Romans 12:1 we read, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God….” These words mark a huge transition in the book. Everything before these words deals with God’s mercy in giving us a great salvation. Everything after these words deals with how we should live in response. It is because of the gospel that we should now live differently. And so we need to preach the gospel to ourselves. Let me take just two elements of the gospel to illustrate this point.
Remember the cross so you don’t want to sin. Part of the God’s mercy is that he became a man and took the judgment we deserved for our sins upon himself on the cross. Consider all that our Savior endured because of our sins. The whipping. The beatings. The mockings. The crown of thorns pressed into his head. The nails piercing his hands and feet. The agony hanging on the cross. As we consider what he endured to pay for our sin, how could we have any desire to sin? When the temptation to sin looks so alluring, place the picture of Jesus hanging on the cross next to the temptation, and the temptation will lose much of its tempting power. As we consider the cross, it motivates us to live for him. We remember the cross so we don’t want to sin.
Consider your new life that means you don’t have to sin. In Romans 6, Paul talks about the reality that we have died to sin and been raised to a new life in Christ. We are no longer slaves to sin. And so he tells us in verse 11 to “consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” He has already established that we have a new life. In verse 11 he wants us to consider this reality. To think about it. To remember it. He wants us to preach the gospel to ourselves. We have a new life. God has enabled us to say no to sin. We don’t have to sin anymore. Too often we hear people say (and we might say ourselves) after sinning, “Well, I just couldn’t help it.” But if we are true Christians, we have been given a new life. We can help it. In the face of temptation, remind yourself that you are no longer a slave to sin, and you don’t want to act like a slave anymore. You can say no. We consider our new life to remind us that we don’t have to sin.
Remember the cross so you don’t want to sin. Consider your new life that means you don’t have to sin. Preach the gospel to yourself.
Passion Points – Easter Weekend
Here are some posts on the death and resurrection of our Savior for your weekend reading:
His Death
Go To Dark Gethsemane – Kevin DeYoung
The Cross Offers A Glimpse Into The Heart Of God – Trevin Wax
May Christ’s Shed Blood Make Me… – Puritan Prayer (via Trevin Wax)
His Resurrection
The Resurrection: The Reason For Hope – D. A. Carson (via Crossway)
The Neglected Resurrection – Matthre Barrett (via The Gospel Coalition)
Easter and the Great Wedding To Come – Jason Johnson (via The Gospel Coalition)
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day celebrating the resurrection of our Savior! He Is Risen!
Consider His Compassionate Promise
In Luke 23:39-43, one of the thieves on the cross joins the soldiers and rulers in mocking Jesus. But the other thief rebukes him. He acknowledges his sin, and expresses faith in Jesus. And Jesus makes him an incredible compassionate promise: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Truly. No doubts, no questions – it is certain. And today. The moment the thief dies, he will be in Paradise with Jesus.
And when we acknowledge our sin and believe in Jesus, he makes that compassionate promise to us. We need not fear death. Yes, death is horrible – just ask Jesus. Yes, death is a result of the Fall. But on the other side of death is Paradise. That word has the idea of a garden, which brings our minds back to Eden, and forward to the new earth which is a new Eden. It speaks of a perfect place of peace and harmony and love. It speaks of a place with no more pain or sickness or death or sin. And we will one day be there with Jesus forever.
And he calls us to share this compassionate promise with others. Others need to hear it. They need to know that judgment is coming for their sins. They need to know that Jesus died to pay for their sins and take them to paradise if they will simply trust in him. How can we keep this to ourselves?
Consider His Compassionate Forgiveness
They have beaten him. Whipped him. Falsely condemned him. Now in Luke 23:32-38, they hang him on the cross. The rulers scoff at him. The soldiers mock him. And Jesus responds with…forgiveness. Forgiveness! That he would ask the Father to forgive them speaks of his own heart of forgiveness. No bitterness. No wrath. No anger. No reviling. No malice. No hate. Just kindness. Compassion. Forgiveness.
And he shows that compassionate forgiveness to us. He hung on that cross for my sin and your sin. He hung there for our rebellion, our rejection. He hung there for all the times we fail to love and serve our Creator. He hung there for all the times we become so self-absorbed and fail to love those around us. He hung on that cross so we might be forgiven of all of our sins.
And he calls us to show compassionate forgiveness to others. When someone hurts us, our tendency is lash out or run away. But Jesus calls us to forgive. To forgive as we have been forgiven. To put away all bitterness, wrath, anger, reviling, malice, and hate. To rather show kindness, compassion, forgiveness (Ephesians 4:31-32). Jesus told us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who hurt us (Luke 6:27-28). And in this most extreme situation on the cross, Jesus lives out these instructions, and calls us to follow in doing so too. What a challenge! We can’t do this on our own. We need to stay so close to Jesus. And how convicting! How easily we fail, and need to run back to the cross to find his compassionate forgiveness again.
Consider His Compassionate Care
In Luke 23:26-31, Jesus is on the road to the cross. He is bleeding from the lashes and the thorns. He is bruised from the beatings. He is exhausted from the torture and lack of sleep. Every step is utter pain. And he is too weak to carry his own cross, so the soldiers grap Simon from the crowd to do it for him.
Here then we see the depths of his compassion, as he looks not to his own great needs but to the needs of others. He stops to show compassionate care to a group of weeping women. He cares enough to warn them of the coming judgment.
And does he not show this compassionate care to us? Does he not comfort us in our weeping? Did he not warn us of coming judgment and call us to himself? And as we came, did he not forgive us, embrace us, and celebrate over us? Did he not endure the cross for us?
And he calls us to follow in his steps. He calls us to show compassionate care to others. To comfort the weeping. To warn the sinner. Even in the midst of our own suffering. In our trials, we can become so self-focused that we see only our needs. We disolve into self-pity. We expect others to minister to us. And certainly we need care in our suffering. But Jesus shows us that we can care for others even in the midst of our own suffering. What a challenge! And how convicting. How often we fail in this and must run back to the one whose compassionate care provided a way to be saved at such great expense to himself.
Someone Worth Dying For?
I heard a song on Christian radio recently called “Someone Worth Dying For.” It had some good lyrics, and even a good purpose of encouraging those who are discouraged. My purpose here is not to critique the song but rather just this idea that each of us is somebody worth dying for. Are we? Really?
Starting at creation, we find that God makes us in his image. As image-bearers we are higher than the rest of his creation. It is wrong to kill or hurt another human being. As people in God’s image, we have great worth.
Then we sinned. God’s image in us was warped. We are still valuable as God’s image-bearers, but we are also sinners, depraved, and under God’s judgment. We deserve to die.
Which brings us to the cross. Listen to Paul’s thoughts on this:
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:6-8
Does Jesus die for us because we are worth dying for? No. According to Paul we are weak, ungodly, sinners. We don’t deserve to have someone die for us; rather we deserve to die for our sins. So why does Jesus die for us? Because God loves us. We aren’t worth it, but he loves us anyway.
Think of it this way. If we are worth dying for, then God kind of owes it to us to die for us. We are worth it after all! But if God dies for us even though we are not worth it, even though we are weak, ungodly sinners, then this is real love. And this is Paul’s point. Jesus died for us because he loves us, not because we are worth it.
But let’s go further. Consider Psalm 103. In this psalm, David celebrates God’s love, and it is found in two ways, both of which are related not to our worth but to our unworthiness.
First, we see God’s love in his forgiveness of our sins (v6-13). He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve. We deserve his judgment, but we get forgiveness. This is the same thread of thought we saw in Romans 5.
Second, we see God’s love in his care for us though we are like dust (v14-19). Compared to God we are nothing. Are we worth God dying for? Even apart from our sin, we are not worth as much as God. To suggest that we are worth God dying for is to suggest that we have greater worth than God. It is essentially to make an idol of ourselves. And it is to miss the point that God loves not because we are worth it, but despite the fact that we are not worth it, that we are but dust compared to him.
To sum up, we are valuable as God’s image-bearers. But we are not worth dying for. Jesus died for us despite our sins and despite our frailty. He died because he chooses to love us. We can magnify ourselves by thinking Jesus died for us because we are worth dying for. Or we can magnify God’s love as we recognize that Jesus died despite the fact that we are not worth dying for.
Amazing love! How can it be? That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me! – Charles Wesley
Brian J. Mikul 