The Sacrifice Is So Much More
What better way to start than with the words of Ellen G. White, in her book “Education”
“Few give thought to the suffering that sin has caused the Creator. All heaven suffered in Christ’s agony; but the suffering did not begin or end with His…humanity. The cross is a revelation to our dull senses of the pain that, from its very beginning, sin has brought to the heart of God, Every departure from the right, every deed of cruelty, every failure of humanity to reach His ideal, brings grief to Him…. As the ‘whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together’ (Roman’s 8:22), the heart of the infinite Father is pained in sympathy.” Ellen G. White, Education, pp 263, 264.
All heaven suffered in Christ’s agony, the sacrifice is so much more, the cross is a revelation to our dull sense.
Let’s analyze that sacrifice
A father gave his only son, to die for the world; to understand the significance of the death we must take into account that the one who was sacrificed is immortal. The norm was to kill a lamb, a goat, and a cattle without blemish.
There had to be a sacrifice to clear our sins, it is written “without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin” so when a human is sacrificed the stake has been raised, but a human wasn’t sacrificed, an immortal was sacrificed, God was sacrificed “and the Word was God” an immortal who created all things was sacrificed. “all things where made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made”
The sin of the world was cast upon him; Jesus became the lamb of the world, we know how much God hates sin, yet the sin of the world was cast upon Jesus, the infinite Father couldn’t look at him because of the sin.
The disgrace, the pain; Jesus was disgraced, yet he did not react, he did not prove to them because proving to them was going to compromise the plan for salvation “if you are the son of God, save yourself” Can you imagine you have the ability to prove something but keeping that ability and people keeps disgracing you.
He was stripped naked, many movies about this covered some of his nakedness but we know that he was completely stripped, beaten, the law of Moses said not to beat someone beyond 40 times “but he must not give him more than forty lashes. If he is flogged more than that, your brother will be degraded in your eyes.” Yet he was beating more, he was nailed to the cross, two big nails, one jammed at each of his hands. Why beat someone you are planning to kill?
It wasn’t a king that was beaten it was The King that was beaten, it wasn’t a god that was beaten, it was God that was beaten.
He felt it; Like you would have felt it, he felt it, he cried to his father “At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
He felt abandoned so we would not feel abandoned, he died naked so we would not die naked, he suffered so we would not suffer.
He gave us access to God that cannot be gotten through goodwill “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
All we need to do is acknowledge the sacrifice of the son before the father, and get to the father through the son.
We know that God is above time and so is Jesus, if everything happens at once to the ones that are above time, then what about the sacrifice? We don’t know, but now we know, that the cross is a revelation to our dull senses and the sacrifice is so much more.
