"The Atoning Work"

Does it ever cross you mind about the inhumane death of Jesus? I'm sure it does. But let's take this one step further. Sometimes we miss the love of God by focusing on the wrong aspect of the death of Jesus. When we speak of the crucifixion, many go into the details of the Roman crucifixion which history does talk about. Have you ever noticed not one writer of God's word dwells on the gory details of the actual dying of the Lord? That's our inclination to milk it for all the emotional value we can get from it. It looks like Pilate was wondering if Jesus had already died and so quickly (Mark 15:44). The two thieves were still alive!

In all this, what are we to gain? It wasn't about the amount of pain and suffering that needs to grab our attention. It was the amount of love! The power of the death of Jesus was not in His physical pain that He had to endure but the complete, holy devotion to God in doing His will. It was the will of God that was the motivation behind the whole scene and everything leading up to that point. It is not about they physical death but the atoning death we need to keep our attention upon.

We as humans will die physically, sometimes rather gruesome. What does that mean? The only thing that will matter upon our death will be the atoning sacrifice of Jesus! What makes us go for the physical and not the spiritual atonement? Because we live in a world of horrible, violent death!! People are brutally slain and the callousness of the killers make us wonder how people can be so cruel. We try to grip the emotion of things and are made emotional at what we see and so we apply that to the death of our Lord. It can make our faith a little superficial, pursue trivial things all in the name of God.

There is more than Jesus physical death involved here. That's why the Scriptures deal so little with His actual dying. Heaven beats on the body of Jesus (just read Isaiah 53) but what was accomplished wasn't the physical, it was eternal. If we could only see the atonement for us and the love in that atonement, our lives would take a different shape, our faith would be built to a greater reality and our service would not fall in line with what everyone else does but a real, saving service on behalf of the lost!