Freedom Fighters

MY SAVIOR'S LOVE . . . Please don't skip over this because it appears to be JUST a hymn quoted . . .

I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene, And wonder how He could love ME, A sinner, condemned, unclean.

How marvelous! how wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
How marvelous! how wonderful
Is my Savior's love for me!

For ME it was in he garden
He prayed, "Not My will, but Thine";
He had no tears for His OWN griefs,
But sweat-drops of blood for mine.

In pity angels beheld Him,
And came from the world of light
To comfort Him in the sorrows
He bore for MY soul that night.

He took MY sins and my sorrows,
He made them HIS very own;
He bore the burden to Calvr'y
And suffered and died ALONE . . .

Alone! Alone! Hanging on the cross, listening to the cries and jeers from the crowd. And yet he cries, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And then the darkness comes. Horrible darkness. C. J.

Mahaney writes "an atmospheric confirmation of the judgment of God . . .

It's a darkness you can feel. Even the sky reflects what is happening to the Son of God. Jesus is being made to drink from the cup which He had asked to be removed. He's being made to experience the full fury of the wrath of God -- the intense, righteous hatred of God for sin, a wrath that has been stored up beginning with Adam's sin and extending to all of your sin and mine, and to all the sin to the end of world history.

The sinless One -- innocent and holy Himself -- is made the object of that vast and vile immensity of sin. This is His severe test, His cruelest and most demanding ordeal, a torment far beyond the pain of His physical suffering . . ."

And He cries from the Cross, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
"He who for all eternity has never been alone is now wholly abandoned. Such utter desolation has never existed before in all eternity, because infinite love and fellowship of the Trinity, which can never be broken.

But now the incarnate Son, must be forsaken by the Father . . . because the Father is holy, and there in the Father's sight is 'the most grotesque display of ugliness imaginable.' It's the monstrous sight of the unbounded totality of human sin resting upon the Son of Man.

Therefore that Man must be utterly removed from the presence of the holy God, utterly separated, as far as the east is from the west. Jesus doesn't FEEL forsaken; He IS forsaken. In an unfathomable mystery, at that moment, as God's wrath is poured upon Him as the substitute for our sin, Jesus is rejected by God, His Father turns away from Him. It isn't a deceptive feeling -- it's reality . . .
Why alone? He's alone so that we might never be alone. He cries out to God so that you and I will NEVER have to make a similar cry. He was cut off from His Father so that we can boldly say, "Nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.' He's forsaken so that we might be forgiven . . .

God, in abandoning His Son, is treating Jesus as a sinner so that He can treat you and me -- who ARE sinners -- as if we were righteous -- all because of JESUS!"

from LIVING THE CROSS-CENTERED LIFE by C. J. Mahaney (Multnomah
Publishers)

Powerful words for you to reflect on as many reflect of the hours before Good Friday.

Today's Scripture: Deuteronomy 32-34; Mark 15:26-47

Great Quote: Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself one way or the other at all. William Temple