Come and Die

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“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ [who loved me and gave himself for me] lives in me.” —Galatians 2:20

As they made their way up Mount Moriah, Isaac asked his father a question that should have brought a cold chill to Abraham’s heart. “‘The fire and wood are here,’ Isaac said, ‘but where is the lamb for the burnt offering’” (Genesis 22:7). But such was Abraham's faith in God that his next words were not words of dread, but words of profound trust: “Abraham answered, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son’” (22:8).

God’s instructions to Abraham to offer his only son as a burnt offering is one of the many scarlet threads of redemption that cover the pages of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. Isaac, on his way to his death, is spared when God provides the ram caught in a nearby thicket. Blood is shed, but not Isaac’s.

Every breath that you and I take is one breath less. And any one could be our last. Like Isaac, we were on our way to our deaths. But God, rich in mercy, provided His own sacrifice, Jesus, to take our place. Blood was shed, but it wasn’t ours. It was the blood of Jesus.

Peter writes: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree...” (1 Peter 2:24). But there is more than just forgiveness of sins involved here. Oddly enough, at the cross we avoided one death to embrace another. The verse goes on: “...so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”

Jesus came to offer us life at His expense. John writes, quoting Jesus, “I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). But He also asks us to die to sin and to selfishness. Paul writes: “…count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires…but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life…” (Romans 6:11-13).

Jesus told His disciples that commitment came at a cost (Matthew 10:16-49).  “All men will hate you because of me…A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master…If the world hates you,” He warned, “…keep in mind that it hated me first” (Matthew 10:22, 24; John 15:18). He would model by His death what might be required some day of them. His call was a call to share His cross. It was a call to die: “…anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:28).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” (The Cost of Discipleship, 1937). Bonhoeffer was living in the United States at the beginning of the Second World War, but chose to return to Germany. He felt that he would have no right to help in the restoration of Christian life in Germany if he had not shared in the suffering of his own nation and her people.  Bonhoeffer not only lived what he believed but was executed in Germany in 1945, just before the end of the war, because of those beliefs. He was thirty-nine years old.

One of the many reasons Good Friday is an essential celebration is that it reminds us not only of Christ's death as our substitute, but it also reminds us that we have been spared so that we can die to sin and to self, so that we can live righteously and so that we can embrace personal sacrifice, as we walk in the way of Jesus.

What better time to renew that commitment to “die” and to live like Jesus than on the day set aside to remember what it cost Him to make living abundantly, and dying daily, possible.

Divine Gratuity

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“For you know that it is not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a Lamb without blemish or defect.” —1 Peter 1:18, 19

On the hills outside of Jerusalem shepherds guarded the lambs that would be sold to petitioners coming to the Temple to make their sacrifices for sin. They had to be careful with their charges—an injured or marked animal was useless. A perfect lamb was more valuable than the shepherd who watched it—shepherds were the lowest of the low in the society of that time. Max Lucado speculates in Six Hours One Friday that some of those shepherds might have wondered at the futility of so many dead lambs, so much shed blood—rituals that led to more dead lambs and more shed blood year after bloody year. I wonder if any of those shepherds discovered for himself, on that terrible day when Christ died on that cross, that Jesus was THE Lamb who would die once for all, shed His blood once for all, and provide forgiveness once for all time for anyone who asked? I wonder if any of them discovered that there would never have to be another lamb sacrificed for sin?

Did any of those shepherds do as we do: lift our heads to look into the face of Jesus Christ and be thankful, thankful for something we can’t adequately describe, but about which countless volumes have been written?

Romans 6:23, one of the most recognizable verses of Scripture, says: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The word gift in the original language of the text is charisma. It means a divine gratuity and that captures my attention.

We reward people for services rendered well by giving them an extra percentage, a tip, a gratuity. But they had to DO something to GET something. The better they do their jobs the more they get from a grateful public. We withhold the tip if we don’t get what we want delivered in the way we want to receive it.

But God gives us something for doing nothing—it’s a gift—no sacrifice or service necessary on our part. And it isn’t just any old something—it’s forgiveness at the cost of the lifeblood of His Son. It was given long before we ever knew what it was, long before we appreciated it, long before we asked for it. We never did anything to earn it, nor could we have earned it no matter how hard we worked, or how much time we had been allotted to work off the debt—even if we could! 
James Kennedy writes, in Cross Purposes, Discovering the Great Love of God for You: “We need to remember that apart from His protective blood shed on the cross, we have no hope. In providing that blood, it was necessary that the Lamb should die. Substitution. Propitiation. The innocent dying for the guilty. This was God's omnipotent plan—that pure innocence should die for utter depravity. So Christ came to be the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world” (page 57).