New Thoughts: (12/16/13-12/21/13)
It strikes the ears wrong to hear what Peter is saying here. We were called for the purpose of suffering? God loves it when I suffer? But, that it not his intended meaning, is it? It is not the suffering. It is the bearing up under the weight of suffering which is commended. That men are strong in the Lord, have such faith as will stand firm in the face even as such trials as these; this is pleasing in God’s sight. It seems to me that Peter’s comment about just punishment clarifies the point for us. It’s not the beating that pleases God, nor is it simply the toughness of a manly man, standing silent under his punishment. Both of these miss the point. It is the endurance of injustice. It is the suffering of evil without resorting to evil oneself.
We can go back to the book of Job, and observe the man God commends. His suffering was intense, well beyond what most of us will ever know in this life. And, his suffering, it is made clear from the outset, is wholly undeserved. He has done nothing to bring this upon himself. It has come about, as Jesus would later say of the blind man, that God might be glorified in and through it. How is He glorified in that mess? By the faith of Job. “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him” (Job 13:15). Satan was doing his worst, sure that Job’s faith was no more than idolatrous response to gifts received. God knew better. Job proved better.
But, Peter turns us to an even stronger example in Jesus, the Son God gave over to unjust treatment by His own creation. This clearly glorified God, and God demonstrated His pleasure in His Son’s demonstrated character by raising Him from the grave and elevating Him to the throne. Was God pleased by suffering? Was Jesus thrilled to pieces to see His painful death approaching? Clearly not. Do we suppose Jesus enjoyed the spectacle of that trial before Caiaphas, or the violence meted out by Pilate’s soldiers? No. God is neither masochist nor sadist. God is Holy. God requires justice, and was willing to suffer this greatest of injustices in His own body that He might justly justify us.
This might lead us to consider our own response to unjust treatment. If we feel we are being treated unfairly, what is our response? Never mind beatings. We are unlikely to deal with that. Never mind even the spankings of childhood, as if those were some terrible evil visited upon us. How do we respond to lesser evils? Say a coworker gets the credit for our work, or we are left as the scapegoat for some failed project or missed deadline. What is our reaction when the grades are given out, and ours seems lower than our efforts deserved? How do we respond should we find our house has been burgled while we were out? Do we react with equanimity? Do we bless those who mistreat us? Do we put on the compliant face, but inwardly seethe and plot our vengeance? This is the thing Peter is getting at, I think.
He’s not looking for an outward show of stalwart stoicism. He’s calling for character. A few lessons back, whether it was here or in my Judges class I’m not recalling at the moment, this point came up: The gifts of the Spirit are for accomplishing some specific work for God. The fruits of the Spirit are given for being who God intends us to be. They are character issues. They define us – or at least they are supposed to. Character defines how we respond. Character defines how we think in our secret thoughts as we respond. Character motivates. Character is the why to what we do. When Jesus talks of how the content of our heart, our inward estate, spills out of our mouths, and thereby defiles us, He is making this same point.
Outward actions are things we may control reasonably well most of the time. But, why? What motivates that control? Are we doing what we know is right for the simple reason that we know it is right? Are we doing what we suppose is expected of us? Are we trying to look good or be good? Two different things! It is a well-worn truism that if you ask your fellow believer how he is doing, he will respond, “Fine.” It matters little what may be going on in his life. He may be in one of those country-western situations: Wife is haranguing him, the car’s quit, the roof is leaking, and even his dog won’t come by to be petted anymore. But, still, ask him how he’s doing when he arrives at church, and there it is! “Fine, just fine.” Why? Well, there is this perverse thought in our minds that if we belong to Christ everything should be fine. There’s the sense that as children of God we ought not be dealing with this kind of stuff, so we’d just as soon people supposed we don’t.
Have you known those who, though coughing uncontrollably, and blowing their nose every few moments, will still, if asked, tell you they are healed? I have. It’s spouted out as some evidence of faith, but in all honesty it comes across more as evidence of insanity. If that’s what healed looks like, I don’t want any part of it, thank you very much. But, I’m wandering astray here.
The point I am pursuing is that we are all possessed of this tendency to put up false fronts. We wear our facades of what we suppose Christians in good standing are supposed to look like. Having done so, we do ourselves the most terrible disservice. Not only do we fail to impress the only One whose opinion particularly matters, but we have cut ourselves off from the very means He provides for our comfort. Where the body might have reached out to us to help, we have eliminated the possibility by declaring there is nothing here in need of help. By putting on this show, we encourage the same from our brothers and sisters. If it is made clear that nobody here confesses their vulnerability, the pressure upon others to likewise put forth this pretense of perfection is increased that much more.
But, come back to Scripture, and what do we see? If these folks up in Asia Minor have been sending their complaints and concerns to Paul, the response they are getting back is hardly the sort of thing one wants to hear in that situation. Oh, Paul! What is this God you brought us to worship going to do about what has become of my life? Just look at what’s happening to me! My old friends not only ostracize me, they call me a son of the devil and worse for abandoning the local gods. I’ve become unemployable by any but the most abhorrent taskmasters, and even though I give them my best, most earnest efforts, they beat me as some slacker. What sort of God have you introduced me to, if this is the reward I get?
So, what answer is sent their way? “Buck up.” Play the man. It’s probably not going to get any better, but that’s OK. God is pleased with you.
Really? That’s what you’ve got for me? Just deal with it, and keep a stiff upper lip? Wow. Real son of encouragement, you are.
But, Peter’s advice is nothing different than they would have heard from Paul directly. Consider his response when he was there in Lystra. His enemies, particularly amongst the Jews, hounded him just as mercilessly as he had once hounded the despised Christians. They weren’t content to chase him out of their own cities. They followed him to the next. So, we find men from Antioch and Iconium stirring up the locals to the point that they stone Paul, and drag him out to die in the dirt outside the city. But, the disciples come to him, and he gets up and does what? He goes right back into the city! Now, he doesn’t stay long before he and Barnabas head to the next city (knowing full well they’ll likely deal with the same opposition again). But, he’s there! And when he’s done over in Derbe, he comes back again! And, what message does he have for this new flock in Lystra (I come to my point)? “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Ac 14:22). And why, pray tell, does he choose these particular words for his message? “To strengthen the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith.”
Really? This is encouragement? Welcome to Christianity 101. First lesson: You want to get to heaven, you’ll face tribulations. No, it’s not one trial and then you’re in. It’s a lifetime of trials. It’s tribulations all the way. I tell you! People think this is some faith fashioned by man? Who in their right mind would make up such a thing? What salesman are you ever going to come across who, in their effort to sell you on their product, takes the course of effectively trash-talking the very product? Come to God! He’ll make sure you suffer. Come to God! You’ll lose all your friends. Come to God! He’s to die for. Repeatedly. A bit more every day.
All of that is true. All of that is to be expected. But, the reality is that, as Paul will say elsewhere, compared and contrasted to the incredible wealth of riches awaiting us in heaven? It’s nothing. Compared to the rock-solid certainty that I will be there in that day when sin is abolished, God is fully with man and man fully with God? Compared to the guaranteed, eternal-scale lifetime of fellowship with the Creator of the Universe? What’s a century of tribulations on that scale? It’s a nothing. Less than a mote of dust. Less than the smallest sub-atomic component from which that mote of dust was formed. So, yes, there’s encouragement to be had in tribulations.
Do you know what some of the greatest encouragements are? Peter points us directly towards one, which we shall get to shortly, but consider this as well: In our response to tribulations, we discover ourselves. We are granted to observe our character development. See, these things come – whatever may be motivating the perpetrators – not to punish us, but to discipline us, to train us. They help us build up our spiritual mettle. An untrained soldier sent into battle is little more than cannon-fodder. He won’t last the first few minutes, being unfamiliar and unready. But, a seasoned soldier, muscles honed, and responses made automatic by long practice and use, will not merely weather that same battle, but emerge victorious.
It’s the same in any other area of life, isn’t it? The new guy versus the seasoned vet. You can see in in sports, you can see it at work, you see it on the highway. Skills take time to build up. Skills create muscle-memory. You practice your sport until the skills no longer engage thought. They just happen. You practice your instrument, running scales and progressions and patterns until they no longer demand intense mental focus to get right. The fingers just know what to do. Character is the muscle memory of the soul. Like our skills in any other area, character doesn’t form overnight. We can’t wish it into being. We don’t arrive, having come to Christ, with this character development flash-programmed into us. It takes training. It takes practice. It takes diligence of a sort we are unlikely to give it unless effectively forced into action.
Then, too, we have this assurance from our God: He will not send us into greater trials than we can face. It’s a training program, not a death march. It’s developmental. Are greater trials coming your way? Praise God! It stands as proof of your progress to date. Now, I realize, it’s going to take an effort of will to look upon that sort of thing as good news, but that’s what we’re being driven to recognize here. Consider what Jesus had to say to His followers when He was with them. “Anyone wishing to follow Me needs to deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mt 16:24). Nobody hearing Him say this had any illusions about the message. Everybody there knew what it must mean if one was taking up his cross. He was en route to his own execution. There’s that marvelous sales-pitch again! You want to follow Me? Well, get ready for your execution and let’s go! That’s where I’m heading!
Now, most of us, praise God, are not going to face execution. Most of us, at least here in the US, are unlikely to face bodily harm for loving God and living our Christian lives. We may face hardships, indeed we should expect to face hardships. But, at least thus far, it is unlikely to be life-threatening. But, what if it is? “Take up your cross and follow Me!” Deny yourself. He who seeks to save his life will lose it. And, of course, Peter recalls Jesus’ most difficult message to His select, honors class: “The servant can expect no better than his master.” They will hate you because they hate Me. If they will kill the very Son of God, why would you suppose they would stop short of doing the same to you, who are but men?
This is where Peter is coming from as he expounds his point. Look to the Son! Consider His suffering. What it just? The man was sinless! Of course it was not just. Consider the abuse heaped upon Him. Did He complain? No! He could have burned His adversaries to ash in an instant, but He just stood there and took it. They hung Him on a cross! The Son of God! God Incarnate! Pierced through the hands, bleeding from head and back and every other part of His body, and why? He did no wrong. Even in the midst of that great torment, even feeling the agony of His own Father turned away from Him as He bore our sins – your sins, as He paid the penalty you and I owed God, yet He did not rebuke His attackers. He did not strike out. He did not denounce. He did nothing but look to God, even as God looked away. And you’re complaining?
Look: This is why you came to Him in the first place, because He willingly came to this injustice. He pursued it. And why? For love of you. So that you wouldn’t have to face what He would face. You should have. You know that. But, now you won’t, and you know that, too. God is not looking for us to all go out and be martyrs. Some of us may. And, if we do, may we do so with the confidence of heaven clear in our faces. But, that’s not the goal. The goal is glory to God. As we make our way, though, how we need to hear Jesus speak again. As the master, so the slave. As the father so the son. As the teacher so the student. Expect no better than He got. Then comes the challenge: Respond no worse.
That is the hard message of the Gospel. The good news is that God has reconciled us to Himself. The bad news is that in doing so, He has set us at enmity with the world in which we remain. The world hates Him because He exposes their sins. The world hates us because we are His, and we, too, expose their sins. The world seeks to eradicate God, as if they could do so. In the futility of that effort, they will seek to eradicate us instead. Expect no better. Respond no worse.
[12/18/13] It is not yet time to leave verse 21. Let me start the morning with this from the Amplified. “For even to this were you called [it is inseparable from your vocation].” This adds an intriguing new dimension to the point. “It is inseparable from your vocation.” This, of course, points back to the idea of vocation as calling. While we tend to elevate only ministerial vocations in this way, we do ourselves a disservice in so doing. Yes, there are professions out there which it would be impossible to describe as things God has called you to do. God does not call you to sin. Those professions which are sinful in themselves and encourage others to do likewise can hardly be proposed as vocations to which God has called you. But apart from that, yes. I am an electrical engineer by trade. It is my calling. It is every bit as much my calling as is my pastor’s being a pastor. My wife is a housewife. It is her calling. She is every bit as called as am I, as is my pastor. God appoints and anoints to the calling He has issued.
I could turn this around and point out that there are many who bear the title of pastor in one of its many forms who are not called to that office. Wolves in sheep’s clothing, although some of them, no doubt, believe themselves sheep in good standing. I am not yet inclined to suppose that every such minister without light has taken to the pulpit with evil intent. There are many, one suspects, who believe they promote the true Gospel even as they wander so far astray. Perhaps for these there is hope. But, there are many others whose intents are clearly aimed at diluting and distorting the very Gospel they claim to preach. They come to the pulpit without faith, without calling, and they seek to disabuse their parishioners of their outmoded religious sensibilities. Men who preach a Bible they don’t believe is true: How can this be supposed to be a calling God Himself has assigned? How is this vocation?
But, back to the verse: To this you were called. You were assigned a task, given a position on the staff. But, with that position comes something other than prestige. There comes responsibility, yes. But, that’s not what we’re primarily being pointed towards in this case. No, it is patient endurance. For, with this position comes enmity with the world. It must, for this position requires that you join your Master in exposing the sinfulness of sin, sin that the world still enjoys, sin that the world still supposes it hides behind a mask. Your position requires you to make God known to a people who, by and large, are doing their best to convince themselves He doesn’t exist. His existence would demand change from them, and they don’t wish to change. Therefore, they must seek to make Him non-existent.
It is odd to think about, but somehow it truly is offensive to the dying when you offer them life. Perhaps it is that they feel certain that death offers them an escape from the consequences of their errors, and life would require them to face up to those consequences. It’s true that life requires us to deal with our consequences, and Life in the new birth does not remove that requirement. But, then, neither does death. Death, properly understood, is an eternal facing of the consequences.
This is the part of the message we tend to gloss over today. I must note that during the times of great revival, no such gloss was made. That most powerful of sermons, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is almost painfully blunt in making certain the reader knows his situation apart from Christ. You, sir, are a sinner. You are, even now, under a death sentence, one you cannot hope to escape. That death you think finishes the account does no such thing. It but brings you to the point of payment due, and that payment is for an eternal fine made necessary by an eternal sin. You have sinned against eternity and eternity’s God. The penalty, as ever, is death. But, it is not death that comes in a moment after which oblivion. No, it is death that will take an eternity to endure, fully aware now of just how sinful sin is, fully aware of what could have been yours, and fully aware that what could have been can now never be.
This is the necessary backdrop for the Gospel. Until a person really grasps just how greatly he needs saving, why would we expect him to reach out for the lifeline we offer? “Good News! God is no longer mad at you,” falls flat on the ears of one who never knew God was mad at him in the first place. Why should He have been mad at me? I’m a good guy. Now, I’m just offended at God for being mad. What right has He got to be mad at me? I’ve tried my best to do right by folks. And, He’s not satisfied? Well, fine. We can just be dissatisfied with each other and be done with it. Go our separate ways, and good riddance.
Have you ever experienced somebody coming to you to pronounce that they are forgiving you for some offense you never knew had happened? Some simple statement you made one day, that they have twisted about, imagined all sorts of intentions behind, and been nursing this terrible hurt with you as the cause; and now, they’ve worked through their feelings enough, or felt shamed at the altar, and therefore come to you to pronounce that they’ve forgiven you. And you? You never knew anything was wrong in the first place. So, this is coming out of the blue. And even when they explain what it is they are forgiving you for (which in itself might lead one to wonder just how much forgiveness there has been), you know yourself wholly innocent of the charges. There was nothing in what you said to cause hurt or offense. Offense, in this case, is in the ear of the beholder.
What has happened? That one goes off at peace with themselves, feeling they have done the right thing before God and man. But, you are now left offended. Here you’ve been wrongly accused, and then pronounced not innocent, but forgiven. Forgiven for what? I did nothing! Said nothing! And now, here I am stuck with the burden of forgiving this person who just exploded their piety all over me.
This is the lite version of what Peter is getting at in this passage. “You have been called for this purpose.” “It is inseparable from your vocation.” If you are going to be My ambassador, these things are going to happen. What is critical is your response. It’s not the simple matter of persevering, of putting up with this nonsense. The worst of reprobates can put up with nonsense. No, it’s how you respond. You are not to respond in kind. You are not, going back to that forgiveness example, even to defend yourself to that person. Let them be. Let them have their feeling of having forgiven, and just forgive them. Don’t feel you need to play it their way. That would be retaliation. No, just forgive them in earnest. Consider that they are unaware of any offense, and really, what is the value of turning this offense into a tennis match? Insomuch as it lies within your power, let it end with you. This is your calling. This is why you will need to persevere, to endure.
In the face of injustice, with the eyes of many upon you, how will you respond? That is the big question. Peter is pointing us towards that question with his reminders of the last days of Jesus. Reviled, but offering no retort; suffering egregiously, yet threatening no vengeance; whipped and crucified for crimes the judge knew full well He never committed – He who could have called legions of angels to break Him free! But, He did not. He went to His death with eyes for one thing and one thing only: The glory of God. And do you think this went without notice? Oh, no! The thief on the cross next door was but one of many to see His response to evil treatment and be saved. The centurion was another. And, before many weeks had passed, there would be hundreds, thousands more who, having seen His noble death and having heard the value of it, would be calling to Him whom they had slain to forgive them even this unforgivable evil, and save them. Of course, He had already forgiven them. Even as He was dying, because His eyes were on heaven, His heart was to see them forgiven.
His response shapes our response. Or, it ought to. When the world witnesses our mistreatment, and observes that we refuse to be baited into mistreating in return; when they have done their worst, and discovered that even then, we simply will not return evil for evil; when every response to the most unjust, angry, violent assaults on body and character are met with gentle humility and blessing, can you not see how this must impact the very ones who seek our hurt? It may not be immediate. It may not be in time to shorten our sufferings. It may not be in time to save our earthly lives. But, even by our deaths it may well be that God is making Himself known to one of those who observe our passing. I cannot find the reference this morning, but the thought is summed up in this. “So then, whether I live or I die, I am His.” He is glorified. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His servant. And, this we know: That death is not in vain. That death is not apart from the will of God. It has a purpose, His purpose, and it will achieve that which He would have achieved by it. Just follow the Model, our Lord, Jesus the Christ, Who calls us to nothing He has not already done Himself.
There He is, set before us by Peter. Men heaped their abuses on Him, yet He never once spoke back in kind. In going through the Gospels, it was striking to me that those who came out to question Jesus, these Pharisees and officials intent on discrediting His ministry, they were no doubt well informed, as they thought, about the circumstances of His birth. An unwed teenage mother in a small backwater community does not go unnoticed. There is a reason we hear that note of derision and incredulity in the response of the locals when they heard Him. “Isn’t that Mary’s boy? You know, the one she had before she and Joseph married?” How is it possible to think that the likes of Him could be speaking about holiness? Who’s going to listen to Him? Why should they?
Oh, He had known abuse. One suspects He had known abuse of this sort as long as He had known Himself. It would only get worse. As the Truth spoken plainly revealed the hidden sin (or not so very hidden sin) of the Pharisees and Sadducees; as the walking Evidence of true religion demonstrated the emptiness of what passed for religion in the official church; those who ruled the official church were unlikely to respond well. Those who practiced as they practiced were unlikely to respond well. Face it: It’s a very rare sinner who wishes to be exposed for his sins. Relief may come afterwards, when sin has been dealt with. But, in the moment? No. We’d rather hide it away in the dark for later enjoyment.
All that injustice at the end was just the culmination of a lifetime. The eight lepers who, having been healed, ran off with not so much as a thank you. That, too, was an injustice after its fashion. The people who crowded about wanting more miracles – always the miracles. That had to get a bit oppressive after a while. Always wanting the show, never wanting the message. It had to wear on Him. And then, having stooped down from heaven to make Himself known to men, with His hand-picked team, to realize that after three years of intensive study, they were barely scratching the surface of His message! It might not be an injustice, but it had to be wearing. Always misunderstood, always weighted down with false expectations, always having to confront the sin around Him and correct what did not wish to be corrected. Then, before the representative of that empire that so prided itself on the rule of law, only to see the law books ignored in favor of mob justice. Oh, yes! That was most assuredly unjust, and the chief priests calling for His life, and the governor giving it all knew it. Yet, He never once spoke back, but “kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously” (verse 23).
Here, the Douay-Rheims finishes up with, “him that judged him unjustly.” I don’t know why. I can find no textual basis for such a translation. Clearly, to arrive at that ending, we must also shift from ‘entrusting Himself’ to ‘delivered himself’, which they do. He delivered Himself to injustice? Well, yes, I suppose we could describe it that way. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross. It’s clear, though, that it wasn’t for joy that He walked into the arms of His captors. No, there was real agony there. Real anguish. What kept Him going? A determination to deliver Himself over to unjust punishment? No. What kept Him going was entrusting Himself to the Righteous Judge of Heaven. What kept Him going was knowing that He was accomplishing Justice in what He would go through. What kept Him going was knowing that because He would satisfy Justice, the Judge would be Just in forgiving those who could never have hoped to repay their debt to the Court.
[12/19/13] Moving into verse 24, we are brought directly before the cross of Christ. He is there in Peter’s memory, but it is not the end of dreams any more. It is the dawning of real hope. He who refused to return insult for insult, hung upon the cross not for His own crimes – for there were none. No, He hung there bearing the weight of our sins in His body.
There is much to be said about this. The first point I would make is the emphasized contrast regarding sin. He, for His own part, committed no sin (verse 22), yet He bore the weight of ours. You want to talk about injustice? Consider that! You have come to appreciate the enormity of your sins, just how terrible was the just punishment you could never hope to evade. You also, like Paul, like Peter, like any of the Apostles, and like any believer who ever was, know that even with that recognition, and even with the experience of God’s forgiveness, you haven’t ceased from sinning. You know the weight of your sins is increasing daily if not hourly. And still, He bore the load. Now, multiply that out across all the lives that have been lived from creation ‘til now. Consider how many of those lives were, at least in your estimation, far more evil than your own.
And there is Jesus, bearing the entirety of that burden, taking upon Himself the full force of just punishment, having contributed not the slightest to the criminality that brought it on. And you are distraught over some poor opinions in your neighborhood? You consider the social stigma of being a known Christian to be too much to ask? Really? If ever we think we have cause to complain to God of our treatment, here lies the instant cure.
To be fair, I don’t think Peter is writing this in rebuke. Neither do I think the recipients up there in Asia Minor have been whining and complaining. I would suspect it is far more the case that they are concerned, perhaps a bit dispirited, and who wouldn’t be? Are we doing something wrong? Is God for some reason displeased with us? What ought we be doing differently? And the answer that comes back is, no! You’re doing as you ought. Persevere! If it seems difficult, just remember your Lord and Master, what He faced and how He faced it. He asks nothing of you but what He Himself has done.
Second point we should retain: He bore those sins in His body. There has been, very nearly since the day of His death, this tendency to try and redefine Jesus. There were plenty who would deny Him His Godhood, though forced by reality to admit His humanity. There were likewise those who would deny His humanity while retaining His Godhood. These are things that have come to a head repeatedly in church history. Just Who or what is this Jesus? Is He God or is He man? If He is God, how could He have died? If He is man, how could He have been sinless? So, we come to the various councils, seeking to nail down just what orthodoxy is. As to those who would proclaim Him just a particularly good man, we can effectively eliminate them from orthodoxy immediately. It would be hard to imagine a Christian religion with no Christ-as-God at its head. Or, at least, it should be. Of course, we can look around the landscape today and find any number of self-proclaimed Christian enterprises that have thoroughly rejected Christ as God, and aren’t all that sure of Christ as man. But, I would say the point stands. We can look upon that fact and say with no doubt, that one is no Christian.
On the other side of the imbalance, it is more difficult. There arise those from time to time who propose that, though He was a man, in the moment of His crucifixion, there was a bait and switch of some sort, and it was His spirit-self, who hung there. Others would go farther and propose that it was but a figment, an image of Himself, He having gone elsewhere to wait it out. Mass hallucination! That’s the ticket. Maybe there had been some strange chemical introduced into the air for a season, and folks were just more open to suggestion.
It was Anselm, I believe, who finally formulated and articulated the orthodox position of Christ the God-man. He is both, and He is both simultaneously. In His humanity, though emptied of the prerogatives of His Godhood, He did not cease being God. In His Ascension to heaven, He did not abandon manhood. He arrived at the full destiny of manhood. Never in the entirety of His earthly career did He cease being God. Never in the entirety of His earthly career did He cease being human.
To propose any attenuation of His humanness in that culminating moment on the cross is to propose a complete devaluation of what was happening. If Christ was not fully man when He led a sinless life, He has earned no righteousness with which to pay our penalty. If Christ was no man in death, then it was not the one who was perfectly righteous who died. That death had no more value in God’s sight than any other. It was just a show trial. It was not, in that case, even justice served. Go down that road, friend, and the full penalty of your sin is still on the books, marked payment due.
It required a real Man, living a real life in real obedience to the entirety of God’s Law to satisfy the requirements of God’s Law. It took a real Man, having lived such a life, dying a real death in real separation from the God of heaven, to pay the court of heaven for our real crimes. It took, as well, a real God, a being truly eternal in essence, dying on our behalf in order to fully erase the really eternal crime of our sins. Sin against an eternal God bears an eternal punishment. That is the quick summation of hell. The penalty of sin is death. Sin is eternal; ergo death must also be eternal. No passing softly into that dark night. The penalty is paid forever. The dark night is not oblivion, but rather an eternal longing for oblivion. It needs all of Jesus the Man and all of Jesus the God dying a very real and complete death on the cross, to mark the court records paid in full. “He bore our sins in His body.” He died our death. But, hallelujah! He was raised from death!
Three days in the grave just to make sure nobody mistook the reality of His death. But, three days was enough of that nonsense. Up from the grave He arose. He wasn’t the first. He Himself had raised others from death – real, physical, bodily death. That is simply too well attested to suppose some sort of scam. Here’s the thing, though: All those others, raised from death though they were, still wound up dead and buried in the end. Not Jesus. He lives! He lives forever, and He reigns forever. For God, in raising Him from death, proclaimed to all the world that His offering of Himself had been received. For all who are the called, the elect of God, the court records have duly noted: All penalties paid. Justice has been served.
Third point: Peter is setting this down at this particular stage in this particular letter to address a particular matter: Suffering. We have been saved. Why are we suffering? And, if we are suffering, how should we comport ourselves? Ought we be raising a legal defense? Ought we pursue libel cases against those who slander us? Ought we to take up arms against those who ravage our property? We are vengeful people by nature. Those who lived in that time and culture were if anything more vengeful. Honor demands it. God, however, says otherwise, and He sets forth this Jesus and His Cross to make His point. It is a grand display saying, “Here’s how I handle it.” It’s an ultimate proclamation of, “Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord.” Don’t you take it upon yourself to dole out My justice, you who have tasted only mercy from Me. No. Vengeance is Mine. I decide. “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy.” It’s My name. Frankly, you seeking your own vengeance is a usurpation of My rights. What might we all that? Ah, yes. Sin.
Again, though, Peter is not rebuking but encouraging. Here is your example. You have asked how you ought to respond and react. Here’s the lesson plan. The slave can expect no better than the master. The slave ought do no worse.
Now, coming to the backside of verse 24, we arrive at what has become something of a controversial Scripture. “For by His wounds you were healed.” What exactly is that intended to mean? Are we being promised physical healing, a lifetime of healthiness on this earth? It would seem pretty obvious from the evidence that this is not the intent. If we were physically, bodily healed, death would already be abolished wouldn’t it? It is, after all, rather the epitome of disease. Surely we must balance this against the weight not only of the ample evidence of life and death on earth, but also – and more critically – the weight of Scripture.
We can go right on back to Job, counted by some to be the most ancient writing in all the Bible. “Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:26). “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him” (Job 13:15). We can consider Daniel and his friends before Nebuchadnezzar. “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire, and He will deliver us from you” (Dan 3:17). We can come right up to Peter’s time and listen to Paul’s thoughts on the matter. “We do not lose heart, though our outer man is decaying, for our inner man is being renewed day by day” (2Co 4:16), and that glorious conclusion he reaches: “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2Co 4:17).
Listen! This body, with all its failings and wearing out, is not fit for heaven. Back to Paul. “There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body” (1Co 15:40-44).
And yet, here is this business of being healed. It doesn’t say forgiven. It doesn’t say made righteous. It says healed. What are we supposed to do with that? Well, we can look at definitions, and we can look at context. That, however, will have to be an exercise for tomorrow.
As concerns the definition, we are presented the term iatheete. The various lexicons allow for both literal and figurative applications of the term, but its primary meaning is to heal. Most of my sources explicitly note a spiritual application of this, Thayer noting the sense of eradicating sin and error, even bringing to salvation. Of course, these lexicons are written specifically for theological pursuits, so one may suppose the authors are reading into things a bit in their definitions. If so, one trusts they are reading into the definition based on context, themselves. In other words, the implied meanings, the overtones, if you will, are discerned from usage.
Before I turn to context, though, one other aspect of this word deserves mention. The verb is presented in middle voice form. That middle voice is a thing not directly transferrable to English. It sits between the active voice and the passive. These we understand. Active verbs indicate that the subject is performing the action. We might call it the “do unto others” voice. Passive verbs indicate something acting upon the subject – the “done unto you” voice. But, a middle voiced verb suggests a bit of both. It suggests something of a cooperative effort, a thing not entirely our own doing nor entirely done to us.
Here, I need to take note of something. Strong’s specifically declares this verb to be a middle voice form of some unidentified primary verb. However, my interlinear reference says it is a passive aorist indicative. Seeing this apparent conflict of voices, and being insufficient in my own abilities to resolve it, I think I shall set aside the syntactical considerations and look to context.
Peter is clearly referring to Isaiah 53. Indeed, much of this section parallels that chapter when not quoting it directly. In particular, he is pointing us to Isaiah 53:5. “He was pierced through for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. The chastening which came for our benefit fell on Him instead, and by His scourging we are healed.” The message here is clearly to do with sin. The first couplet, with the parallelism typical of Hebrew poetry, speaks directly to sin. Pierced for our sins, crushed for our sins. Is there reason to think Isaiah has changed topics in the second couplet? That couplet also demonstrates parallelism within its thought. He was chastened for our benefit, scourged so as to heal us. Are the two couplets further in parallel one with the other? I think so.
The key factor is the discussion of chastening. Chastening doesn’t come in response to sickness. If I have a cold, nobody is going to punish me for that. Quite the opposite, I can expect a bit of coddling from my wife in such a circumstance. If you have slipped on ice and suffered a fracture or some such, it’s pretty unlikely that one of your nearest and dearest is going to come slap you about for your crimes. No, chastening comes in response to wrongful action. Apart from that wrongful action, chastening becomes nothing more than abuse.
In the second couplet, that chastening parallels the scourging, and well-being parallels being healed. I would hold that chastening further parallels the piercing and scourging of the first couplet, thereby making the healing and well-being a negative image parallel to the transgressions and iniquities of the first couplet. Put differently, the transgressions and iniquities constitute the matters which gave cause for our chastening. They are the things of which we needed healing. And note this: The chastening, even if it had not fallen upon Him, was for our well-being.
Peter’s usage of the verse here, his setting, gives the same context to that final clause. He bore our sins. He died that we might live. “The chastening for our own good fell upon Him.” Then, the closer: “For by His wounds you were healed.” Of what? The implication, unless we are very determined to read our own health issues into a text that doesn’t address them, is clear. By His wounds we were healed of the soul-disease of sin. Peter, then, echoes Isaiah’s application. What of others?
Well, James may be supposed to be alluding to the same verse when he instructs, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed” (Jas 5:16a). That is followed by the very popular declaration, “The effective prayer of the righteous man can accomplish much.” In this immediate setting, it would seem that James is likewise linking healing and sin. But, if we go a few verses back, we find him discussing how the Church should deal with suffering and sickness. When suffering, pray (Jas 5:13), and when not, praise. If you’re sick, call the elders and have them pray. Elders, anoint the sick with oil in the name of the Lord (Jas 5:14). Indeed, faithful prayer will restore the sick. The Lord will raise him up, and if there is sin involved, sin will be forgiven (Jas 5:15). Going the other direction, we find James closing the chapter with the point that if you turn back the sinner from his error back to God saves that one from death, covering a multitude of sins (Jas 5:20).
Looking at that full overview, it strikes me that James is primarily focused on the power of prayer, the effectiveness of prayer. I want to emphasize the latter, because when we associate power with prayer, it seems to get us all off-kilter. Prayer is effective because God is powerful. Prayer is effective when it accords with God’s will. Prayer is, I dare say, utterly futile when it opposes God’s will. He is not going to act against His own best judgment just because you have believed really, really hard that He will.
Now, some would argue that James is advocating a position that presupposes sickness must have sin at its root. In the ultimate sense, I suppose that argument holds some water. Had Adam not sinned, sickness and death would not have come to the world. So, yes, if you’re willing to chase things back far enough down the family tree, I suppose we can accept that sin lies at the root of sickness. Yet, we have the very clear teaching of Jesus that this connection may be tenuous in the extreme. It may not be your sin, personally, which is causing this particular issue. Neither is it the sin of your parents. I would think it safe to say that we can exclude grand-parents and even great-grandparents at this point. There is, near as I can see, but one generational curse, and that is the curse of the Fall. James, we can safely assume, is sufficiently familiar with the things Jesus taught that he is not seeking to contradict that message with his own.
He may see sickness as a consequence of the fall, and it is certainly possible that some portion of the health issues faced by us is directly attributable to our own sinful behaviors. But, notice the focus: Prayer! Prayer that can strengthen us to withstand suffering with grace, prayer which can restore the sick, prayer which can bring forgiveness of sins, prayer which can bring the sinner to repentance, prayer that can turn a soul from death back towards life.
While it is not James that we are studying, let’s look at that just a bit more closely, this matter of James 5:14-15. I’ll quote here directly from the NASB. “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.” OK. First thing I see: The prayer of faith will restore, not cure, not heal. What’s being translated as restore is sozo, which we more commonly translate as save. Well, isn’t that interesting!
Let’s substitute our standard translation of that term back into the text. “The prayer offered in faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.” We could go on to the matter of raising, which can be from so light a matter as sleep, or so heavy a matter as death. I wouldn’t wish to push the matter too hard, but I could see this as pursuing the same point James makes explicitly at chapter’s end. It’s almost as though he begins with the repentant sinner, come to the elders for restoration, and moves to the unrepentant sinner, whom the believer pursues, that they, too, might be saved, raised from death, and forgiven of their sins. Now, that’s parallelism!
Now, a somewhat more troubling verse for this view is Matthew 8:17. Matthew has relayed to us the episode of Peter’s mother being healed by the touch of Jesus. He has moved on to the next crowd-scene, an evening when they were bringing Him all sorts of demon-possessed folk. “And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were ill” (Mt 8:16). Then, he arrives at his point. All of this he has been describing, he says, occurred, “in order that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled: ‘He Himself took our infirmities, and carried away our diseases.’”
I could insist on the more spiritual application here, as well, noting that it was not the merely sick or crippled that were being brought Him on this occasion, but the demon-possessed. The healing of the ill, is almost a side-effect in this case. The demons were cast out. That’s the primary point. Well, why were they able to be in in the first place? Seems to me, there’s sin at the root here. The illness, in this case, is perhaps to be seen as the symptom of sin, or the effect of sin. Sin allowed the demons an entry. Sin, whose natural product is death, had begun to produce, leading to sickness. The same thing which drove out the demons healed the effect of sin: Forgiveness.
When Matthew points to Jesus taking our infirmities and carrying away our diseases, he does not show us a Jesus who has become sickly Himself, who has contracted all our symptoms. No. He shows us Jesus casting out demons, the embodiments of sinfulness. We cannot arrive at that conclusion as concerns Peter’s mother, but it seems a reasonable interpretation of events for that later gathering. Notice that Matthew doesn’t assert the prophetic fulfillment because of Peter’s mother, nor even of the many other physical healings he has already recounted. It is when he comes to the removing of demonic influences that he sees a fulfillment. Perhaps, with that in mind, it is correct to see that all the New Testament applications of Isaiah’s message carry the same sin-focused perspective as the original.
Closing this topic off, I offer the evidence of the reality in which we live. If I ask you whether forgiveness of sins is the universal experience of all believers, I expect I’d hear a resounding yes. If I ask you whether freedom from every sickness and disease is the universal experience of all believers, the only possible answer is no. For all that, if I asked whether there exists so much as one Christian who could lay honest claim to such a state of being, the answer would remain no. Even Enoch and Elijah, though they were taken bodily into heaven, cannot be posited as having lived their entire lives free of sickness. Even the Israelites in the desert have no such status, seeing as to a man, they died.
Well, then, why isn’t physical health the universal experience of Christians? Is God’s Promise, as expressed in this prophetic passage, not trustworthy after all? May it never be! Is Christ’s suffering insufficient in itself to bring about the fulfillment of that promise? No way! Shall we suggest that our sickness and disease is the result of our own weak faith; that our faith is just not strong enough to bring down God’s healing? In response, I would have to ask if our God is so weak and dependent that Him fulfilling His promise depends on us? For my own part, I must answer, “May it never be!” A God so weak as to depend on me is no god at all. No, faith is itself a gift of grace, as Scripture explicitly declares (Eph 2:8-9). You cannot work up faith. You cannot believe your way to perfect health. You can have faith, the faith given you by God, in the power of Christ’s atoning death to procure the forgiveness of your sins, and to save you unto eternal life. You can have faith that in that great, final, and eternal day, the body having been resurrected in a fashion suited to eternity, there will remain no sickness, no disease, no sin. In that day, corruption will have been ended. But, in this life, we will have tribulations.
Wuest brings forward another interesting aspect of this particular clause, which is that the word we have translated as ‘wounds’ in the NASB, and many other translations, is actually a singular noun. There is, then, but one wound. Wuest goes on to describe this singular wound as depicting the results of the scourging Jesus had endured leaving His back, “one mass of raw, quivering flesh with no skin remaining, trickling with blood.” That is certainly a graphic description of His condition, and probably entirely accurate. A Roman flogging was no gentle rebuke. It was far worse than the floggings common to the British Navy at the height of their power. The naval flogging, severe as it was, generally looked to its victim getting back to his duties. The Roman flogging, particularly as reserved for non-citizens, had no such concern. Consider the charges that were laid against Jesus. He was declared, however unjustly, an enemy of the state, a dangerous leader of an armed resistance movement. His actions could well lead to danger for the very ones flogging Him. More generally, a flogging was punishment, and one meant to send a strong deterrent message to would be criminals in the community. If the criminal died in the process, such is life.
But, that picture of our Lord and Savior: In that condition, He was still forced to carry the bar upon which He would soon be nailed through the heat of mid-day. Having already suffered so much, still He was forced with prods of the sword, the tip of the whip, to drag that beam as best He may down from the Pavement and out to Golgatha. Is it any wonder He collapsed? Have you any idea how much a beam such as that would weigh? It’s no light load, even for a carpenter. Feeling that pressing on the wound which was His back, it’s a wonder he made it out the gates of the court.
Yet, for all the suffering He bore in His flesh, for all the agony we feel at the merest description of that wound, it was the experience of being separated from the Father that really tore Him apart. That was the full weight of our punishment. This was merely injustice. I have to say, though, if you suppose God would inflict this much anguish upon His own Son, upon Himself after a fashion, merely so you could avoid being sick, I should say you need to rethink your position. If you think, were that the case, that in spite of the severity of His suffering, God would still require that your exercise of belief in order for that suffering to have meaning, well; I can only suggest you raise your estimation of God’s power and wisdom a bit higher.
I want to return, now, to the middle of verse 24, where Peter lays out the purpose for what Jesus did: “That we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” Here, it is noted that the more usual term for death would be thanatos or some derivative thereof. Peter, however, does not use that term. Rather, he has written (or caused to be written) apogenomenoi. The prefix apo gives a sense of direction, in this case off of, or away from. That leaves us with the root ginomai, which speaks to being itself. This is not the expression of existence that we hear when Jesus says, “I AM”. It is more the result of the reality expressed in His proclamation. Because He exists, we have being.
So, ginomai has this sense of being or becoming. With the apo prefix, the sense is reversed. It is a ceasing to be, and absenting of self. In some applications, it would read as renouncing that which is the object of apogenomenoi. Thayer offers the idea of becoming ‘utterly alienated from’. That, I think, gets to the point Peter is making. The bodily suffering of Christ on the cross was to this purpose: That we would become ‘utterly alienated from’ sin, that we would renounce sin, that from sin’s perspective, we would cease to be. Instead, we would live to righteousness, be alive to it, aware of it, drawn to it.
Here the description is more familiar to us. When we speak of something that makes the senses come alive, the clear implication is that we discover a longing to increase and extend that something. If it’s the flavoring of a meal, we want to savor it, have seconds, thirds even. If it’s the experience of some natural wonder or beauty, we stop still, drinking in the view, the feeling that the view has produced. Maybe it’s some particular adventure we’re experiencing on vacation. I think back to that week sailing Maine’s coast. There’s something in that which makes the senses come alive, and one’s great desire is that it might continue longer.
That’s the picture Peter is giving us. We have ceased to be from sin’s perspective, or in corollary, sin has ceased to be from our perspective. Instead, the taste of righteousness which we have enjoyed has brought our senses alive, and all we desire is that righteousness might increase, that we might remain amidst this experience of righteousness forever. And, the good news is that one day, we shall!
Peter will get to the significance of baptism in this regard at the end of the next chapter, but it strikes me that he already has it in mind here. Perhaps he has Paul’s teaching on baptism in view. Consider the message of Romans 6:3-4. “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” This builds to the point, “For he who has died is freed from sin” (Ro 6:7). Dead men can’t be tempted. The point of Paul is the point of Peter. Live to righteousness, for He has empowered you to do so as you have died with Him.
Peter moves on from this to the image of wandering sheep. I’ll offer my paraphrase of the combined message of these last two verses. “And this very One bore our sins in His body there on the cross! Why? So that we might be so thoroughly removed from our sins as to be dead to them, and instead alive to righteousness. How? Because by His wounds you were healed of sin’s disease. Apart from that, you were constantly straying into danger, like mindless sheep controlled only by appetites.”
The contrast is stark. He suffered as He did so that you could become as dead to sin’s pull and hunger instead after righteousness. Prior to that, the situation was reversed. You didn’t even have a moment’s attention to spare for righteousness, being entirely consumed with your pursuit of sin’s appetites. Eyes closed and led by the nose, off you went, heedless of the dangers into which you were walking, not a thought or a care in the world as you made your way deeper into the valley of the shadow of death.
Now, I am gladdened that God sees fit to describe us as thoughtless sheep rather than sullen, rebellious oxen or donkeys. I think of that voice which brought Saul to his senses. “Why do you kick against the goads” (Ac 26:14)? Why are you fighting Me? It’s a fight you cannot win. Why do you strive so hard to oppose Me? It will only be your doom. But, the more general picture of God’s sinful people is that of the sheep, thoughtlessly following wherever his nose leads, not a care in the world or a thought in the brain. We are creatures of flesh, led by fleshly desires. The result of this assessment is that God, in large part, lays the fault of our wandering on the shepherds more than the sheep. Oh, to be sure we have personal responsibility for our personal choices, but the greater condemnation and guilt falls upon those who should have inculcated that sense of personal responsibility in us, who should have set the boundaries that would allow us to pursue our desires in righteousness and safety.
Hear then the word of the Psalmist. “I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek Your servant, for I don’t forget Your commandments” (Ps 119:176). Seek me, for I am lost. I have not forgotten your laws, my mind wandered. But, the great power of this lies in the confidence. “Seek Your servant.” It is not a command, it is a request. But, it is a request uttered by a confident sheep, knowing He will seek.
Jesus drew on this imagery in His teaching, particularly in countering the failures of religious leadership in His day. “Who among you, having a hundred sheep and one of them lost, doesn’t leave the ninety-nine in safe pasture to go after the that one lost sheep, not giving up until it is found” (Lk 15:4)? This is one of those examples of the parable as weapon, I think. The conclusion was so obvious, so commonplace, that nobody would reject the idea. And, to the point, the mere fact of it being the Sabbath wasn’t likely to stop the shepherd from his searching, even if that shepherd were a Pharisee of the Pharisees.
Jesus is, in this case, calling the Pharisees on their absurd opposition to the ‘work’ of healing on the Sabbath. It can wait, they say. We ought not profane this day with such mundane pursuits. Mundane? Preservation of life is mundane? Putting an end to sin is mundane? Rolling back the works of the devil mundane? I think not! What sort of shepherds are you, that you would leave your sheep wandering into danger like that?
Well, He will explain what sort of shepherds they are. They are hirelings who could care less about the sheep. In times of danger, if it comes to the sheep or themselves, they will look to themselves every time. Christ, however, sets Himself apart from their like (Jn 10:11-14). “I am the good shepherd, ready to lay down His life for the sheep.” That was certainly more literally true than His hearers suspected. “I am the good shepherd who knows My own sheep, and all My own sheep know Me.”
That is quite obviously the image Peter evokes in closing this passage. Your past life consisted of constantly wandering, stray sheep in a dangerous landscape. But, here’s the good news! Now, you have returned to the Shepherd! The Good Shepherd, Christ Jesus Himself, who is also set before us as the Lamb of God. The Lamb of God, the sacrifice of Passover, the sole means of atonement for our sins. He Who sacrificed Himself on our behalf has been accepted by heaven’s God, and now stands as our Good Shepherd, our Advocate, our Bishop. And may I just say, He stands as our only Bishop, the High Priest of heaven for all eternity.
And, what a High Priest we have! He has not placed Himself out of reach of the things we face day to day, but come down expressly to experience the life we are required to live. He is therefore fully able to sympathize with our weaknesses (Heb 4:15). He has lived through the same sort of life we live. He has faced the same temptations we face, felt the tug of fleshly sensate life. But, He made it through life without sin, a thing we failed at not a second after arriving in this life. But, He knows! He understands! He’s been a sheep. He knows what it’s like. He’s seen the sorts of shepherds we’ve been dealing with, and His ire at them is great! They have not cared about us sheep. They have cared about themselves. But, that has changed now. We are back in the fold of the Good Shepherd, and He is personally overseeing our souls.
Dig that! God Himself watches over you now. God Himself has set Himself the task of ensuring your spiritual well-being. He has taken up the charge of seeing to it that things are done right. In your soul. This goes back to that matter of what the stripes were for. The body is all well and good, but when the body is gone, the soul remains. It is the soul needs healing. It is the soul whose healing will matter for eternity. Physical death is, thus far, the universal experience of the church of Christ. Come that final day, there will be those raised to meet Him, we are told. Yet, even these, if I hear Paul aright, must shed their earthly skins in exchanging them for bodies more suited to eternity. Even these must drop their filthy rags in favor of the wedding clothes Christ has provided.
But, here is the great (if unwelcome in thought) confidence of the Christian. Even death comes not as some great evil but as a blessing. We who know the sovereign nature of this God who cares for us, who guides us and oversees our development know that death, when it comes, comes by His determination. The outward circumstance may make it seem haphazard, a matter of merest chance. But, no. There is a God in heaven who is supreme in Power, supreme in Knowledge. He is our Provider, and His provision is as perfect as He is. His care, this Shepherd of ours, is as perfect as He is. Therefore, my peace as one under His care can also be as perfect as He is, come what may. Imagine that! In the face of death, I can be at peace, knowing that whether through death or through life, I am His. I can but pray that in both death and in life, I shall live to His glory and be true to His Word.
Thank You for loving me, Lord. Thank You for calling me back to the fold, for taking charge of my wayward life and giving it direction. Lord, I do pray that this life You have given to me is being spent according to Your will. I do pray that death, when it comes for me, will find me yet at peace in Your field; that even my death might be such as would glorify Your name, and bring others of Your sheep into the safety of Your presence. So many, Lord, wander lost, unaware of Your voice. Use me as You will, Jesus, to proclaim this Gospel You have delivered. May I, like Paul, deliver that message unchanged and make clear its ultimate importance: That You died for our sins as Scripture had long said You must (1Co 15:3). For our sins, Lord! Not for any sin of Your own (as if it were possible!) What love is this? What repayment could hope to suffice? What is there You could ask of me that would be unreasonable in light of so great a price for my liberty? I am Yours, o God. Spend me as You please.
