When they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him. . . . Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do" (Luke 23:33-34).
THEME
SALVATION
"Red never saw the bullet coming. Death was so quick that he probably never felt it. As the bullet penetrated the back of his head, Red's blood flowed out and began to blend with Wayne's. For a second the two men stood locked in an embrace of blood and death.
"Red stayed [alive] . . . just long enough to save a man's life and communicate the deepest and purest kind of love one man can have for another." Thus wrote R.C. Sproul of the March 16, 1945, rescue of point man Wayne Alderson by Red Preston during the invasion of Germany by the American Third Division.
In His death Jesus expressed a love deeper and purer than Red's. People have died for friends, relatives, and helpless strangers but rarely for enemies and evildoers. In dying for the latter, Jesus did the unexpected.
Spikes and rough-hewn T-beams hardly seemed the instruments of peace, but somehow the executioner's song became the victor's cry. As a carpenter, Jesus built with nails and wood; as a Savior, He framed a new world with the same.
One criminal understood this; the other could not comprehend how Jesus could save him by dying. God rescued Israel with His power, but crosses stood for shame and weakness. In this seeming weakness, God showed His strength--His true power to save.
On death hill outside Jerusalem, the blood of the three flowed together on the ground--if not literally, certainly symbolically. Although some reject Him, as one of the criminals did, Jesus offers to cross-link His life with ours, and that is the real point of salvation.
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NOV 25
MATTHEW 27:27-46
Then they crucified Him (Matthew 27:35).
In 1968, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., took command of the American naval forces in Vietnam. In an effort to reduce U.S. casualties, he ordered the waterways sprayed with the chemical defoliant Agent Orange. This would push back the jungle and make it harder for North Vietnamese to ambush Navy river patrol boats at pointblank range. One of those boats was commanded by 21-year-old Lt. Elmo Zumwalt III. The tragedy and irony of the story is that today he suffers from a usually fatal form of lymph cancer that both father and son believe was caused by his exposure to Agent Orange. Theirs is the heartbreaking story of a father who made a decision that unintentionally resulted in great suffering for his own son. Yet they both agree that it was the right one.
In conquering sin and death to provide salvation for us, God the Father intentionally made a decision that resulted in immeasurable agony for His only begotten Son. After deciding to save the human race through His Son, He watched Him suffer the mockery of the crowd, the lashes of the whip, the pain of the nails through His hands and feet, the inexpressible weight and humiliation of our sins, and the indescribable agony of isolation and abandonment.
Our lack of gratitude adds to God's pain. Certainly His amazing sacrifice deserves our unending thanksgiving.
--M.R.D.II
The truest measure of God's love is that He loves without measure.
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NOV 26
ACTS 2:22-39
"Jesus of Nazareth . . . you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death" (Acts 2:22-23).
The question of who killed Jesus has fired controversy that has raged through the centuries. During the Middle Ages, the unruly Crusaders sometimes killed Jews on their way to free Jerusalem from the Turks. They considered them guilty of Christ's death and referred to them as "Christ-killers." Even today feelings run deep on this issue. A few years ago a Jewish professor objected to a brief reference in OUR DAILY BREAD that the Jewish leaders of Jesus' day were partly to blame for the Savior's death.
According to Matthew's account, it appears that the Romans were responsible. The Roman governor Pilate delivered Jesus to death, even while declaring His innocence. And Roman soldiers led Him down the Via Dolorosa and publicly executed Him. Yet Peter, preaching several weeks later in Jerusalem, accused the Jews of crucifying Him (Acts 2:22-24).
People who receive Christ as their personal Savior do not argue about who killed Jesus. They know He died for every sinner (2 Co 5:15). On the cross, He paid the penalty for the sins of both Jews and Romans, as well as for ours (1 Peter 2:24). Ultimately, then, we are all responsible for His death.
Christ died for us. Our sins cost Him His life. By trusting Him, we receive forgiveness and eternal life.
--D.C.E.
Jesus took our place that we might have His peace; He took our sin that we might have His salvation.
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NOV 27
COLOSSIANS 2:1-14
He made Him . . . to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
More than four hundred years before Jesus' birth, the Greek poet Agathon said, "Even God cannot change the past." Historically speaking, he was right. What happens cannot be undone. Yet when God sent His Son to die on the cross, He provided a way to erase our sinful past.
Here is how Donald Grey Barnhouse described what Jesus did for us: "Just as a hole in the ocean floor would let sea water into the volcanic fires, creating force that could blow the world apart, so the Lord Jesus Christ by dying and rising again broke through the past and allowed eternity to pour in, shattering, turning and overturning, changing, and altering all things. He took the past of all believers and cleansed it by His blood and transformed the life in such a way that the time-rooted life gave way to life eternal."
The poet said, "I wish there were a land of beginning again." There is. "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). And the hymnwriter said, "Calvary covers it all, my past with its sin and stain; my guilt and despair Jesus took on Him there, and Calvary covers it all."
This is the wonder of the gospel. For those who have accepted Christ's offer of forgiveness, He "wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, . . . having nailed it to the cross" (Col 2:14). God has completely cleansed our sin-stained past.
--P.R.V.
Salvation can change the worst sinners into the most honored saints.
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NOV 28
ROMANS 3:9-24
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
A preacher once asked a group of young people what they must do before obtaining forgiveness. After a few moment's thought, a young man replied, "Sin." That being the case, we are all candidates for forgiveness.
Dr. Karl Menninger related an incident about a man standing on a busy corner in the Chicago Loop. Said Menninger, "As people hurried by, he would point to one and then another and intone loudly the single word, 'Guilty!' Then, without a change of expression, he would assume a stiff stance for a few minutes and do the same thing again. One to whom he pointed turned to a companion and said, 'But how did he know?' That man could have pointed to any one of us" (FINGERTIP FACTS FILE).
The Bible states clearly that "all have sinned." Everyone is guilty--by birth and by choice. All are therefore under condemnation of death, both physical (separation of the soul from the body) and spiritual (separation of the soul from God). The charge of "guilty" can be removed, however, by faith in the Lord Jesus. He died on the cross to pay the penalty our sin demanded; and because He was the perfect Son of God, God grants forgiveness on the basis of His atoning death.
Anyone who has not accepted Christ can do so today. His offer of free salvation still stands. Accepting Christ changes our verdict from "guilty" to "justified" (Ro 5:1).
--R.W.D.
There are none so good that they can save themselves--and none so bad that God cannot save them.
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NOV 29
JOHN 12:27-36
"But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name" (John 12:27-28).
The Lord Jesus Christ was born into this world to die for our sin. In His youth and during His public ministry, the specter of the cross loomed before Him. He lived in its shadow, knowing that being about His Father's business (Luke 2:49) would lead Him eventually to drink the bitter cup of divine wrath (Luke 22:42).
Holman Hunt depicted the certainty of Christ's death in a painting titled "The Shadow of Death." It shows Jesus standing beside His workbench inside a carpenter's shop in Nazareth. He has laid down His saw and is lifting His eyes to heaven. His face is distorted, apparently with pain. He stretches, raising His arms to release the tension in His muscles. The evening sun, coming in through the open door, casts His shadow on the wall behind Him in the form of a cross. The tool rack runs parallel to the shadow of His outstretched arms. He looks as if He has been crucified. A woman, no doubt Mary, kneels on the floor, her hands positioned on a chest containing the precious gifts of the wisemen. She seems shocked by the shadow of her Son as if He were on a cross.
This painting expresses the central truth that Jesus Christ came to earth to take away "the sin of the world" (John 1:29). He could do that only through bearing our sin "in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). We can rejoice because Jesus did not turn aside from living under the shadow of the cross.
--D.C.E.
The nail-pierced hands of Jesus reveal the love-filled heart of God.
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NOV 30
EPHESIANS 2:1-10
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us (Titus 3:5).
A headline in THE GRAND RAPIDS PRESS caught my attention: "Conversion to Hindu Faith Is Torturous." The article stated, "A West German businessman has completed his conversion to the Hindu faith by piercing himself through the cheeks with a one-quarter-inch thick, four-foot-long steel rod, and pulling a chariot for two miles by ropes attached to his back and chest by steel hooks. . . . Others walk through twenty-foot-long pits of fire, don shoes with soles made of nails, or hang in the air spread-eagle from hooks embedded in their backs."
What a contrast to the reality of Christianity. The teaching of salvation by grace, through faith, apart from human works, distinguishes Christianity from all other religions of the world. The conversion experience of a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is not "completed" through acts of self-torture. We may have to suffer for the cause of Christ, and good works should always prove the genuineness of our faith, but neither suffering nor serving save us. Paul wrote, "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them" (Eph 2:10). Self-inflicted torture is completely foreign to everything the Bible teaches about salvation.
We are not saved on the basis of what we can endure; rather, our hope is in what Christ has already endured for us on the cross. The Christian way is not conversion by torture--it's salvation by grace.
--R.W.D.
We are saved by God's mercy, not by our merit--by Christ's dying, not by our doing.
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DEC 01
1 TIMOTHY 1:12-17
This is a faithful saying . . . that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).
Thomas Bileny, an Englishman who died a martyr's death in 1531, described his salvation experience: "My soul was sick and I longed for peace, but nowhere could I find it. . . . But at last I heard of Jesus Christ. It was then, when first the New Testament was set forth by Erasmus, that the light came. I bought the book, being drawn by the Latin rather than by the Word of God, for at that time I knew not what 'the Word of God' meant. On my first reading I chanced upon these words, 'This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.' This one sentence through God's inward working did so light up my poor bruised spirit that the very bones within me leaped for joy and gladness. It was as if, after a long dark night, day had suddenly broke."
When people recognize the awful reality of their sin before a holy God, they may be overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness and despair. They cannot escape the fact that they are sinners, and they know they cannot save themselves. But the hope Thomas Bileny found is available to all. Jesus died for sinners, and He can replace hopelessness and despair with confidence and unbounded joy.
Pride makes it difficult to acknowledge the wickedness in our hearts. But admitting our sin is the first step to salvation. Then we must place our trust in Christ and accept His wonderful gift.
--D.C.E.
We are dead in sin, but Jesus can make us dead to sin.
