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).

Undeniably Visible

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“‘But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.’ He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.” —John 12:32, 33

The reference cited here from John 12 is to events that took place in the wilderness as Moses guided a rebellious people in a dreadfully circuitous route to the Promised Land of Canaan. This journey, which should have taken weeks, turned into one of years. That “detour” was something that Israel had brought upon her own head. Numbers 21 describes one of the reasons it took God’s people forty years to get across the wilderness. They had gotten impatient and had begun to complain about their lot, and the Lord sent a plague of snakes to get their attention. People were bitten and began to die. It was the perfect portrait of Eden—bitten by a snake! When God’s people repented Moses was instructed to make a bronze snake and attach it to a pole. He was to tell the people that anyone who looked at the serpent would live.

Jesus used this Old Testament event to illustrate what would soon happen to Him. Like that serpent He would be raised up upon a pole and anyone who looked to Him in faith would be saved from death.

I find Jesus’ choice of words interesting. His manner of death would “draw all men” to Him. There is nothing in history that has caused more criticism, consternation, comment, and conviction, than the claim that the Son of God sacrificed Himself on a Roman cross as the only means through which sinners could be saved from a fate quite literally worse than death itself.  

I was surprised to discover that Elvis Presley is attributed with the words to this song, part of which we used to sing in Sunday School. It highlights my point:

So high you can't get over Him
So wide you can't get around Him
So low you can't get under him
You must come in at the door
(So High lyrics, Elvis Presley, 1966)

All men are drawn to the cross. Some will be repelled by it and others will be remade by it. But everyone will confront it. They must.

In his book, Six Hours One Friday, Max Lucado writes: “There is a direct correlation between the accuracy of our memory and the effectiveness of our mission. If we are not teaching people how to be saved, it is perhaps because we have forgotten the tragedy of being lost! If we're not teaching the message of forgiveness, it may be because we don’t remember what it is like to be guilty. And if we’re not preaching the cross, it could be that we’ve subconsciously decided—God forbid—somehow we don’t need it” (page 75).

If we are not preaching Christ lifted up on the cross, to what then will men be drawn?

Embracing Death

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“And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross” —Philippians 2:8

In the space of one week three people I knew well, along with the stepfather of a friend, died.  Death isn’t usually so busy during an average week in my life. It was unsettling. But though we try hard to minimize it, death is inevitable. Even our language is designed to avoid its reality. We talk about people “passing away” or “promoted to glory” or “in a better place” or “with the angels.”

In a sense, death is the final frontier (with apologies to Star Trek fans) and we are not eager to talk about it, or to cross its boundaries. In some cultures even the mention of the word is frowned on just in case it invites “the grim reaper” (yet another way to avoid calling death what it is) to come and collect another trophy.

But Jesus embraced it. As God-become-Man He identified with us right to the last excruciating breath, crossing our final frontier just as we will someday cross it, but via suffering that we can only imagine. 

One of the big discussions of our generation has revolved around physician-assisted death—the right of people in extremis to legally end their lives at their own convenience. The argument is that when the end is inevitable and the pain is too much, people need to have the opportunity to end the suffering as quickly and efficiently as possible.

When we look at the cross we find a Saviour who “suffered” the cross and refused to excuse Himself from any of its torment. The Scriptures tell us that He would not even accept drugged wine to ease His pain (Matthew 27:34). The cheap wine given to the Roman soldiers would have been laced with something bitter such as myrrh or wormwood to dull His senses.

Matthew Poole commenting on this, writes: “Certain it is, that it was an ordinary favour they showed to dying persons, to give them some intoxicating potion, to make them less sensible of their pain. It is probable it was something of this nature; but our Saviour was not afraid to die, and so had no need of such an antidote against the pain of it; he refused it.”

He felt more than we will ever be called upon to feel and, as one commentator suggested, refused comfort so that we could find that comfort.

Jesus called death what it was, embraced it, and then crushed it so that we might never have to fear it.

Paul writes, quoting two Old Testament prophets: “‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:54b-57).

Beginning and End

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“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” — Hebrews 12:2

It’s so simple—just look. Look at Jesus. He is the scarlet thread that runs through the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. He holds together every truth that we, as His followers, believe. He anchors the promises of God. In Him is wrapped up the justice of God and in Him we discover the reality of God’s mercy.

Jesus appears in Genesis 3:15 in a promise made by God to our fallen forefathers, Adam and Eve. God told them that Satan would attempt to thwart the plan that would rescue them from their own folly. But He also assured them that One descended from their own line, God’s own Son with “skin,” would not only thwart Satan’s plans but destroy them forever. 

Throughout the Old Testament the journey of Jesus to the cross is foretold, though nowhere more prominently than in Isaiah 52 and 53 where the suffering Saviour is described in brutal detail: “…pierced for our transgressions…crushed for our iniquities…a lamb to the slaughter…” (Isaiah 53:5, 7).

The New Testament shouts His Name and His purpose: “…he [God] has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins…For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:13, 19).

God’s revelation to us in Scripture ends with the promise given about a time that is coming when Jesus will return: “Look, he is coming in the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him” (Revelation 1:7).

He is the beginning and end (Revelation 22:13) of everything we are, and everything we hope for as believers.  So we must look to Him.

The cross was a shameful thing—the worst possible death, reserved for the worst possible criminals. It offered the most extreme suffering, but more to the point, it was the pinnacle of public humiliation. Even today, in a society where exposing flesh is an art form, it still is just a bit beyond the most jaded unbeliever to present the Lord as he would have been as He hung there. The Lord of life, the Creator of the universe, God Almighty, was left totally exposed before a mocking crowd.

But the writer to the Hebrews insists that Jesus rejected the thought of allowing even such humiliation to deter Him. He looked beyond the worst that man could do to Him toward the best that was awaiting Him—the joy of completing the mission only He could complete and then being reunited with His Father in glory.

No matter at what point we look at Jesus, whether it be at the beginning of history or at its end, we cannot help but see the shadow of a cross.

So it is there, to Him, we must look.

The Past Becomes the Present

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“In this way the priest will make atonement for him for the sin he has committed, and he will be forgiven” —Leviticus 4:35b

Did the religious authorities realize how “Old Testament” they were being when they insisted that Jesus be crucified? Did they notice that the actions they took that led to the Lord’s death paralleled closely the atonement ritual that their ancestors had carried out so assiduously, and that they themselves practiced. The death of the lamb, the sprinkling of the blood on the altar, was part of their own religious observance, as familiar to them as their wives’ faces.

            The trouble with familiarity is that oftentimes doing the same thing over and over again gets so routine that its true significance is lost in the science of the script and the art of the ceremony.

            Leviticus, one of those books of the Bible that most of us avoid, describes the numerous sacrifices that the ancients once offered. There were offerings for every occasion: for priests, for the community, for community leaders, for individuals. There were different animals that were part of the ritual: bulls, goats, lambs, and doves.

            In the case of an individual who committed a sin, Moses records this: “When anyone is guilty in any of these ways, he must confess in what way he has sinned and, as a penalty for the sin he has committed, he must bring to the Lord a female lamb or goat from the flock as a sin offering; and the priest will make atonement for him for his sin” (Leviticus 5:5, 6). The animal was killed. Some of its blood was sprinkled on the altar, the rest was drained out at the foot of the altar. The animal was then offered as a burnt offering to make atonement for the sin of the offender.

            The priests of Jesus’ day would not have recognized the cross-shaped altar, the cleansing flood of blood that flowed from the Lord’s body to pool at its base. Nor would they have understood that in the instant when the perfect Lamb died, atonement was provided for them. The Lamb had been sacrificed for the guilty. No, they would not have understood. They would not have confessed their guilt because they saw Jesus as guilty and themselves as the righteous. That was their fatal flaw.

            In a recent Bible study something the group was looking at triggered an “aha” moment in my head.  The Bible teacher was talking about the temple mount in Jerusalem where once these sacrifices described in the Scriptures were made. A mosque now sits on the site. It is the greatest desire of every orthodox Jew to see that mosque destroyed and the temple rebuilt where once it stood. I asked myself why God would have allowed a mosque to be built on the site of the holiest of holy places for the people of Israel, the place where once the cloud of His presence dwelt. As I thought about the question, I also wondered if God would ever allow the Jews to rebuild the temple, or if He would thwart every attempt to restore it.

            Is it possible that the mosque is there to prevent the Jews from returning to a system that doesn’t work, to keep them from sacrificing lambs in the futile attempt to do what has already been done once and for all time?

            The only completely sufficient sacrifice has been made. There is no need for another.