I'm finishing up preaching through the Gospel of Matthew next Sunday. This past week, God revealed the Gospel on a much deeper level than I've ever seen before.
On the night before his death, Jesus agonizes over the cup in the Garden of Gethsemane. He began to be "sorrowful and troubled...even to death" (Mt. 26:37-38). What is Jesus' dilemma? Why does this cup cause Him so much trouble?
The first option is that Jesus is probably afraid of the suffering He is about to endure on the cross. But that seems elementary to me. The Gospel is much more than Jesus taking a beating. The better option, I believe, is that this is a dilemma for the God-Man Jesus because He is a holy, pure, righteous, and perfect God. He is without sin. Yet, this cup is filled with the sins of the entire world. Jesus, the holy God-Man, chooses to drink every last drop of my sin and become sin itself.
2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." The holy and righteous God humbles himself so much that He becomes sin itself. This is disturbing and yet beautiful to know that He did this for us.
Take a listen, or watch the video online at www.huntingtonwesleyan.org
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1 comment:
That kinda depends on your atonement theory. :)
In Orthodoxy, where we don't really have formal atonement theories, it is not "elementary" at all that Christ is about to suffer. In fact, it is the great mystery. The one who CANNOT suffer (God) is about to suffer. The one who hung the earth upon the waters is about to hang on the cross. This is the mystery of faith.
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