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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).
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).
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