During the 2008 earthquake in China, amidst the chaos of rescue efforts, a remarkable discovery unfolded. Beneath a collapsed home, rescue workers found a woman. She lay lifeless, her body contorted, resting on her knees and elbows.
Yet, as one of the rescue workers reached under her, an astonishing discovery was made. Nestled against her chest was a tiny miracle—a three to four-month-old baby, miraculously alive. The doctor who examined the infant made an astonishing revelation: tucked within the folds of the baby's blanket was a cell phone. On that phone, a poignant message awaited—a message from a mother to her child: "My dearest child, if you are able to survive, you must remember I love you."
In our exploration of Jesus' actions on the cross—His forgiveness for those who crucified Him, His promise to the repentant thief, and His charge to John to care for His mother—we glimpse a profound truth. Through His sacrifice, Jesus speaks to the world, even to His enemies: "My dearest child, remember, I love you."
As you take these next few minutes to read this blog post, I’d invite you to visit Mr. Whittaker with me and take another journey back in time. You won’t regret it--come with me!
---
[Take a moment to imagine stepping inside the Imagination Station. Experience the disorienting rush of sight and sound as you relocate to a time long ago. To a ragged hilltop. A blooded place of torture. A dark, dark day.]
Once more, we find ourselves at the foot of the cross. The scene remains unchanged: Roman soldiers continue their revelry, gambling away their time, while the religious leaders--adorned in their ceremonial robes--reveal a dark ugliness in their mockery of Jesus. Our gaze shifts upward, fixing on Jesus—right where we left off in part one. He has just entrusted His mother to John. And then, an inexplicable event unfolds: the sun, once radiant, suddenly vanishes, plunging us into darkness.
As we stand in silence, a heart-wrenching cry tears through the blackness. It’s the quavering voice of Jesus:
“‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’” which means ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’” (Matthew 27:46, NLT)
We exchange bewildered glances, staring at each other dumbfounded disbelief. Why this desperate plea? Why would God forsake His own Son in this darkest moment? What kind of deity commit such an act crushing abandonment? As if in answer to our wondering, a thin, yet steady voice rises from somewhere in the crowd, beginning to recite the words of the fabled Hebrew prophet, Isaiah:
“But [in fact] He has borne our griefs, And He has carried our sorrows and pains; Yet we [ignorantly] assumed that He was stricken, Struck down by God and degraded and humiliated [by Him]” (Isaiah 53:4, AMP).
Suddenly, clarity begins to dawn: It wasn’t God punishing Jesus; we’d been mistaken. It’s seems, to our dismay, that we’re the one’s causing the suffering—we’re inflicting the pain. Jesus is bearing our griefs, our sorrows, and our pain.
The thin, steady voice rises again:
“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was crushed for our wickedness [our sin, our injustice, our wrongdoing]; The punishment [required] for our well-being fell on Him, And by His stripes (wounds) we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5, AMP).
The voice trails off, leaving Isaiah’s words hanging in the blackness, as if to let them sink in. And they do, with penetrating clarity. We—the crowd, humanity—are the ones wounding him. Our sin, our collective brokenness, crushes in upon him.
We exchange wide-eyed glances. Were we truly the ones inflicting the wounds? Every person in this crowd, in this vast world—our collective sin, injustice, wrongdoing, and the punishment we rightly deserve—all laid upon His shoulders? Who willingly bears such a burden for another? We stand in hushed wonder, witnesses to an unequaled act of love. What kind of love is this? Why does he even bother?
It occurs to us that he is enduring the agony of a final kind of death, the same death awaiting all who reject him. We seem to sense that this isn’t arbitrary punishment, but the natural result of rejecting the Life-giver. And yet, there’s more: his stripes become our healing, our forgiveness, our new life in him. He is undeniably the Savior of the world.
Then the clear voice is heard reciting Isaiah again,
”All of us like sheep have gone astray, we have turned, each one, to his own way; but the Lord has caused the wickedness of us all [our sin, our injustice, our wrongdoing] to fall on Him [instead of us]” (Isaiah 53:6, AMP).
So, here lies the crux of the matter: We have all opted for our own paths, living lives centered around self, and in doing so, we’ve inflicted wounds upon ourselves and others. Our chosen way—the very root of our sins, injustices, and wrongdoings—has ensnared the entire human race. As humans, we seem to find ourselves bound by a relentless law: “Me first.”
This predicament traces back to Adam and Eve’s pivotal choice—to believe the serpent’s lies. In this act, their essential natures shifted from selflessness to selfishness, a deforming of the human heart that has reverberated down the generations, with devastating effect. And now, the culmination of all of our self-centered living, rests squarely upon Jesus. It is this weight—this accumulated destructive energy, this fruit of our selfishness—that presses down upon him, snuffing out his life.
“He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth [to complain or defend Himself]; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before her shearers, so He did not open His mouth” (Isaiah 53:7, AMP).
As the lone voice concludes its recitation, we realize that the words of the ancient prophet have been unfolding before our very eyes. We sink to our knees, bowing in reverent silence; our hearts shattered by the truth washing over us: he suffers for us; he dies for us. The weight of guilt and shame press in, a relentless tide.
Yet, in that darkness, a light seems to emanate from Jesus, piercing our despair, as an overwhelming sense of grace and acceptance envelops us, defying our feelings of unworthiness. We are not condemned. Instead, hope springs up within our hearts. How? In Jesus, we have glimpsed God. The God we’d imagined to be stern and demanding, requiring strict adherence to earn a place in heaven, now appears differently. In the light of the radiant grace emanating from his kind face, those dark images seem to dissolve, giving way to the fresh, magnetic vision of a God who loves radically.
Silently, we pray, opening our hearts to his embrace. Gratitude wells up as we thank God for Jesus, who has revealed his true nature to us. On this day, we choose Jesus as our Savior. We embrace the reality that, in the light of what we’d witnessed, we are fully known and fully, unconditionally loved by God. In this astounding act of sacrifice, he is achieving our reconciliation.