We are getting into the Christmas season, a time when many of us give and receive many gifts. I suppose gift giving is mostly thought of as being part of the secular side of the holiday, and it is, but, if pondered in the proper context, it could also perhaps help us to relate to the spiritual side as well. It could perhaps help us to better understand the true meaning of Christmas. To that end, in this 5 part series on Christmas gifts, I would like to look at the answers to five questions that pertain to gifts.
What do we think about when someone gives us a gift? I think, for most of us, consciously or unconsciously, there are 5 basic questions or considerations in our mind.
What is it?
Do we need or want it?
How much did it cost?
Was it given voluntarily?
What are we going to do with it?
What in the world do these questions have to do with Jesus? In the context in which we usually think of Christmas gift giving and receiving, of worldly gifts and worldly circumstances, these questions have nothing to do with Jesus. However, if we look at these same questions, from a different prospective, then they have everything to do with Him. So, I would like to look at each of these 5 basic questions, first from a secular prospective, and then as they relate to our relationship with God.
In part 1, I looked at the first question in the list, “What is it?” and I pondered God’s gift to us. You can find that here: The Gift Series, Part 1
In part 2, I looked at the second question, “Do we need or want it”, and I pondered just how much we need God’s gift of grace. You can find that here: The Gift Series, Part 2
Now, let’s move on to question 3.
Question 3: How much did it cost?
OK, let’s say you’re that 15 year old girl (see part 2) and you just love clothes and accessories. That’s your thing. That’s what you really get into. This gift is from your wealthy aunt. You open up this gift and it’s a purse. Does it matter to you what brand that purse is? Why does brand matter to us? It can matter for a lot of reasons but, in this context, one reason that it matters is that it tells us something about how much the item cost. What if it’s Expensive Brand ABC? You’re going to be ready to jump over the Christmas tree too. Just be careful not to land on the guy with the drill (see part 2). What if it’s Cheap Brand XYZ? Now, there’s nothing wrong with Cheap Brand XYZ. If you get a purse from us, it’s going to be Cheap Brand XYZ because we can’t afford Expensive Brand ABC. Remember, though, this is from your wealthy aunt. If you get a purse from her that’s Cheap Brand XYZ, what does that say to you? She had a lot to spend but she spent very little. What might that say or, at least, what might you perceive that it says?
Let’s look at the spiritual side of this. How much did God’s gift cost, the gift of His grace to us?
This series of articles is about Christmas but let’s talk for a while about Easter.
On Easter Sunday, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, our Lord and Savior. On that Sunday, He not only defeated physical death but also spiritual death and the sin which leads to that death. The victory that He bought and paid for by the shedding of His own blood is freely available to anyone, a gift from Him to anyone who will confess Him and truly submit to Him as Lord. This is the most precious gift that anyone can ever receive. It is also by far the most expensive. I think that the price which He paid is something we don’t reflect on enough. I want to ask you to think about it with me now and, as you reflect on the incomprehensibly high price that He paid, also reflect on what this says about just how much He loves you and just how much He wants you to love others.
There can be no better example of the love that Jesus has for us than what He endured for us on the first Good Friday. This occurred two millennia ago and yet it remains and will forever remain the greatest example of love. Think about all that He endured on that Friday. I mean really think about it.
We say that “Christ died for our sins”. I think we say that and hear that so much that many of us become numb to the full meaning of it. Yes, He died but He didn’t just die. He suffered, horribly. Crucifixion is the most horrific form of execution ever devised. This is to say nothing of the scourging, which He endured before the crucifixion and which, in itself, killed many men. It is unfathomably terrible what they did to Him, for our sake.
Here are some of the details of what He went through.
First, the scourging. He was stripped almost naked. His hands were tied to a post, above his head. He was whipped, repeatedly, across his shoulders, back, and legs, with a whip which branched out into several strips, each of which had two lead balls at the end. As the beating progressed, the skin was broken open and the subcutaneous tissue was as well. Muscle tissue was exposed and, in some cases, even some of the vertebra. Think about that. They beat him until you could see his back bone in some places. The beating would not have been stopped until he was very near death. Actually, the scourging did kill many men.
Then, the trip to Calvary. The type of cross used by the Romans consisted of a vertical beam, usually fixed in place at the site of execution, and a separate horizontal beam, carried by the prisoner from the prison to the place of execution. This horizontal beam wade, on average, about 100 pounds and was tied across the shoulders of the prisoner. We know, from the Gospel of John, that Jesus carried the cross part of the way Himself and we know, from the other three Gospels, that He was unable to carry it the whole way Himself and Simon of Cyrene then carried it for Him. Tradition holds that, while carrying the cross, Jesus fell at least once and possibly multiple times. This fact is not mentioned in Scripture but it would seem very likely. After the scourging, He would have been very weak and near death. In that circumstance, could you carry a long piece of wood, weighing 100 pounds, tied across your shoulders, on probably uneven ground, without falling? I doubt Jesus could either. Without being able to catch himself, He most likely literally fell on His face,, sustaining many severe injuries to his entire body.
When they got to the site of the crucifixion, Jesus hands were nailed to the horizontal beam. Some people say that these nails were actually placed through His wrists. They say that the nails going through Jesus hands would not have supported His weight and that, in the original languages of the Bible, that hand and wrist were sometimes interchangeable. I don’t think it really matters much if it was his hands or wrists but I tend to think it was his hands. The prophecies that for-told Jesus crucifixion said that none of His bones would be broken. I have read some material that says that it would not be possible to drive a nail through the eight tightly packed together bones of the wrist without breaking one of them. Either way, it would have been excruciatingly painful.
Then, the horizontal beam was put in place in its slot on the vertical beam and His feet were nailed to the vertical beam. Again, there is some debate as to how this nailing was actually done and, again, I don’t think it really matters.
So, now, He is there, hanging on the cross. With all His weight being put on His arms, He can’t breathe. He has to push up with His feet in order to exhale,. This would put great pressure on the wounds in His feet and would cause His back to slide up and down against the rough timber. At this point, He has experienced and continues to experience tremendous blood loss. He eventually goes into shock, if He wasn’t already in shock when He was put on the cross. All this went on for 6 hours. He eventually died, most likely, from heart failure.
Think about all that for a while. That’s just the physical horror.
He also took God’s full wrath, the full punishment that you and I should receive for our sin. For our sin, we deserve to burn in Hell for eternity. Hell is a lake of everlasting fire. In Matthew 13:50, Jesus called Hell a furnace of fire. Think about a big roaring bonfire. Now think about jumping into the middle of it. It would be probably some of the worst pain you can imagine but it wouldn’t last for long because you would die very quickly. In Hell, you can’t die, even though you would welcome it, so you wouldn’t have the escape of physical death. You would just burn for ever. But that isn’t the worst part of Hell. The worst part about Hell is that it is the one place in the universe where God does not dwell, because God cannot be in the presence of sin. Jesus, having had our sin placed upon Him, had to take that separation from God the Father as well. While on the cross, He cried out “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). Jesus, Who had been in eternal fellowship with God The Father, from the beginning of time, for the first time, had to be completely alone, and that in the midst of all the other suffering He was enduring. Can you imagine what that must have been like? Some how, in that 6 hours on the cross, supernaturally, Jesus took the deserved eternal suffering for sin, not just for one person but for all of us.
Let’s recap what He did. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that Christ never sinned but he took our sins on himself and Romans 5:8 says that He died as punishment for those sins. He literally never did anything wrong, ever. Yet, the sins of the rest of humanity were placed upon him and He bore the punishment for those sins. Not only did he bear the horrors that any man would have borne who was executed by scourging and crucifixion, but He also somehow supernaturally took all of our eternities in Hell, compressed into those few hours. And none of it was because of anything He had done. It was because of what we did. Talk about the ultimate injustice. That’s how it seems to me anyway. But He loved and loves me and you so much that He did what was necessary to close the gap that sin had created between us. He did what we could not, He did what was necessary, regardless of how much it cost Him. That, my friends, is love, a stronger love, a more pure love than you will ever find anywhere else.
Why did He do that? Did He have to do it? This brings me to the next question in my list of questions about gifts, “Was it given voluntarily?”, and we will look at that in part 4 of this series. If you have never recognized your need for and received the most precious of all gifts, the most expensive gift in history, His gift of grace, please visit “The Most Important Thing” section of this website. Please come back for part 4 and may the peace that only He can give be with you.
