GOD’S WORD FOR FEBRUARY 10 ~ ~ John 14:6 ~ ~ “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

YOUR PERSONAL PROMISE FOR TODAY ~ ~ “John 10:28-29 ~ ~ “And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.   My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all;  and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand.”

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We are beginning John Piper’s book, “The Passion of Jesus Christ”, with “fifty reasons why He came to die.”  We’ll see a different reason every day until Resurrection Day.

INTRODUCTION:

The most important question of the twenty-first century is:  why did Jesus Christ suffer so much?  But we will never see this importance if we fail to go beyond human cause.  The ultimate answer to the question, “Who crucified Jesus? Is: “God did.”

It is a staggering thought.  Jesus was His Son.  And the suffering was unsurpassed.  But the whole message of the Bible leads to this conclusion.

GOD MEANT IT FOR GOOD.

The Hebrew prophet Isaiah said, “it was the will of the Lord to crush Him;  He has put Him to grief”  (Isaiah 53:10).  The Christian New Testament says, “God did not spare his own Son but gave Him up for us all”  (Romans 8:32).  “God put Christ forward …by His blood, to be received by faith”  (Romans 3;25).

But how does this divine act relate to the horribly sinful actions of the men who killed Jesus?  The answer given in the Bible is expressed in an early prayer:  “There were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus…..both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27-28).  The depth and scope of this divine sovereignty takes our breath away.  But it is also the key to our salvation.  God planned it, and by the means of wicked men, great good has come to the world.  To paraphrase a word of the Jewish Torah (Old Testament):  They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good (Genesis 50:20).

And since God meant it for good, we must move beyond the question of human cause to divine purpose.  The central issue of Jesus’ death is not the cause, but the purpose – the meaning.  Man may have his reasons for wanting Jesus out of the way.  But only God can design it for the good of the world.  In fact, God’s purposes for the world in the death of Jesus are unfathomable. 

I am scraping the surface in this little book as I introduce you to fifty of them.  My aim is to let the Bible speak.  This is where we hear the word of God.  I hope that these pointers will set you on an endless quest to know more and more of God’s great design in the death of his Son.

THE PASSION OF CHRIST AND THE PASSION OF AUSCHWITZ

It is a tragedy that the story of Christ’s passion has produced anti-Semitism against Jews.  We Christians are ashamed of many of our ancestors who did not act in the spirit of Christ.  No doubt there are traces of this plague in our own souls.  But true Christianity – which is radically different from Western culture, and may not be found in many Christian churches – renounces the advance of religion by means of violence.

“My Kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus said.  “If my Kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting.” (John 18:36).  The way of the cross is the way of suffering.  Christians are called to die, not kill, in order to show the world how they are loved by Christ.

Today this love humbly and boldly commends Christ, no matter what it costs, to all peoples as the only saving way to God.  “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”  (John 14:6). But let it be crystal-clear:  It is not Christian to humiliate or scorn or despise or persecute with prideful putdowns, or programs, or crusades, or concentration camps.  These were and are, very simply and horribly, disobedience to Jesus Christ.  Unlike any of His followers, He prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”  (Luke 23:34).

The passion of Jesus Christ is the most important event in history, and the most explosive political and personal issue of the twenty-first century.  The denial that Christ was crucified is like the denial of the Holocaust.  For some it’s simply too horrific to affirm.  For others, it’s an elaborate conspiracy to coerce religious sympathy.  But the deniers live in a historical dreamworld.  Jesus Christ suffered unspeakably and died…………….so did the Jews.

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