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< May, 2001 >
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Why Jesus Had to Die Part IIIThe day I received the telegram that my father was dying, I was preaching to five Presbyterian churches that had come together just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee. I had gone to minister to them and instead, they ended up ministering to me. I remember one big, beloved pastor who said, "Son, have you ever had anybody you loved die before?" When I answered "no," the pastor said, "Then use this. Use it so it can make you a better man of God." I didn't understand what he meant until I got back to the church I served. At the next funeral service, I found that I didn't just sympathize anymore. I empathized because I had been there. I identified; I knew. God utilized the principle so that we might know His empathy. He died because you are going to die. He was lonely because you are lonely. He was afraid because you are afraid. When you face your cross, you can never say to Him, "You just don't understand." Jesus had to die because reflection cannot stand in the face of vacuum. "For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps" (1 Peter 2:21). As Christians, we are to reflect Christ's image; if that image is nothing but a vacuum, then we can't reflect it. We are to keep a reflection of the cross of love. When a Christian says, "It isn't fair'" that Christian has not yet understood what it means to have the mind of Christ. When a Christian complains that nobody understands, that Christian has not yet understood what it means to have the mind of Christ. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of outward signs of such knowledge. It appalls me how frequently I must give myself the same reminder. If God himself lives inside me, shouldn't I wake up with that knowledge and live in constant awareness all day long? Alas, I do not. Paul says elsewhere that God "set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come" (I Cor. 1:22). After an organ transplant, doctors must use anti-rejection drugs to suppress the immune system or else the body will throw off the newly grafted member. I have come to see the Holy Spirit as something like that agent, a power living inside me that keeps me from throwing off the new identity God has implanted. My spiritual immune system needs daily reminders that God's presence belongs within me and is no foreign object. I remind myself of what I deeply know: that my worth comes from God, who has lavished love and grace upon me. In relating to an invisible God, though, without a determined effort, my thoughts of him slip away. Jesus had to die because sin cannot stand in the face of God. For the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). That is a fact. It is believed that when they thrust the spear into Christ's side, causing the blood and water to come out, it was an indication that Jesus literally died of a broken heart. In other words, there was an actual break in the heart vessel. Most physicians say that a death on a cross should not have caused this unless He was going through agony greater than the cross. On the cross, Jesus bore our lust, our hatred, our disobedience and our sin.
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