During His trial here on earth, Christ suffered perhaps more
than anyone has ever suffered at the hands of men. The war was between Christ and Satan, but
Satan refused to lift one of his own hands to do the dirty work of torture and
death. Instead he used men. Inspired and insighted by Satan, men were the
willing tools of the entire night of ridicule, torture, and death that came to
the Creator God. It was not Satan who
spit on his redeemer, but men, who refused to see divinity wrapped in so lowly
and humble a package.
The hardest part I believe, was knowing that within Him is
the complete power to end it all. Christ
could have stopped everything by just letting a glimpse of His divinity show
through the human veil of His suffering.
This is how He had cleansed the temple a few times before. He allowed men to see a bit more of Him, and
they fled from the source of purity as their shame required. But during this farce of a trial, He remained
silent. Had He debated these men, He
could have obtained a pardon, for His truth, was no match for their lies. He had to remain silent in order that the
conviction might stand, and the sentence be carried out.
Men spat in His face.
And He did not try to return the insult.
Rather, some of His few words were, … “Father, forgive them for they
know not what they do”. Christians
having the Bible, and the benefit of hindsight, often like to compare what they
might have done with the Biblical record in these situations had they been
there instead. Our collective instinct
when presented with the horrors being inflicted on Him, would be to try to stop
the proceedings. Break Him out. Save Him.
We were not the only one with these thoughts. Even then countless unfallen angels, must
obey the instructions of their God, to allow this to occur. Against all their better instincts and
judgments, they must watch and do nothing to prevent the torture and death of
their Lord and King. How tested heaven
was.
So perhaps even if our salvation must allow His death to
occur, at least we would not participate in His torture, or His humiliation –
would we? One other difference between
the Jews and Romans who took part in this His night of agony and death was our
basic set of beliefs. The Jews thought
Christ to be a heretic, to be an instrument that threatened the very religion
He had created. The Jews thought that if
they did not put a stop to His heresy, the entire faith might be
destroyed. So He must die. The Romans thought Him to be merely another
Jewish extremist criminal. Their
racially based hatred in trying so long to subdue this rebellious people led
them to despise Jews in general, and particularly the criminals they were able
to actually catch.
So when they spat in His face, they were trying to humiliate
someone they believed to be a threat of one kind or another. We know who He was. We know what it took for our salvation, and
theirs. And while it was not our own
hands that took up the whip, the spear, the cross, the crown of thorns – it was
still for us that this price was paid.
So how could we ever spit in the face of this much love?
I have heard some people talk about “Cheap Grace”. The concept is that since God will forgive us
all of our misdeeds each time we ask Him, we can do whatever we want to as
Christians and simply ask for forgiveness later. This idea cheapens the value of Grace, and is
a part of one of the most insidious deceptions ever to attack the souls of
men. To an extent, because it is true. It is true that each time we ask forgiveness
from Him, He forgives us everything. The
problem with attempting to leverage this idea for a more corrupt advantage
however, is that the farther we choose to walk away from Him, the less likely
over time we are prone to return and ask forgiveness again. At some point, we just stop asking, choosing
to do the things we “enjoy” rather than seeking His will.
When I refer to this idea as “Cheap Grace” there is another
reason as well. When you sin, or embrace
evil, you make it necessary again for the enormity of the sacrifice He offered
to redeem you. It stops being Roman and
Jewish hands that drove the nails through your Savior, it becomes your hands by
proxy. As you continue to sin, again and
again, it is less and less the Roman hands who drove a spear through His side,
and more and more your hands. As He
attempts to interfere with your acts of sin, offering you a way out before you
complete them, but you stubbornly choose to complete the sin you were in the
process of committing – it is you who spits in the face of Christ.
Your spit, your hammer and nails, your twisted crown of
piercing thorns, your spear, your cross, and your tomb. The weight of your sins required all of this
from your Creator God in order that you might be spared a life of slavery to
the sins you embrace. He would have died
for only you. To save only you. And the salvation He offers, only you can
accept for yourself. He does not recoil
from the insults you hurl at Him. He
does not leave you, because you disobey and deserve the fate you run
towards. He does not resist the nails,
or the torture, He must endure to free you, because He loves you this
much. Even with your own hands as you
slay Him, He dies for your redemption.
It is not the Jews, or the Romans, who need to be blamed for
the death of your Savior. The blame is found
in the mirror of self. Each of us,
singularly are to blame, and collectively should share the burden of this. The burden is NOT the guilt, but the
understanding of what sin would lead us all to perform. Sin, if left unchecked and embraced, would lead
each of us to kill the savior sent to save us.
Sin is the anti-God. When we
embrace deviation from all that is good, we embrace slavery to all that is bad. We forsake life for death with our sins and
our actions, even the ones that seem so small, and harmless. They all lead to the same result – the death
of our God himself, at our own hands, our spit in His gentle face.
The Grace our Lord gives to us, was bought at tremendous
price. It was paid for in
self-restraint, humility, suffering, ridicule, and even death. The entirety of unfallen worlds, and beings,
remained in check following the commands of their God and ours, to not
interfere, and allow Him to die. The
enormity of this sacrifice will never be fully understood. Why my God would do this for me, is a
question I cannot answer, save to say I am His child, and He is my Father. I am the most of unworthy, I will never
deserve this, I must then learn to accept the gift He has offered. And rather than try to be worthy, I should
learn how to submit, and to serve. For
it is in service that I will find His will more closely. It is in humility I will understand His peace
so much more. And it is in obedience to
Him, that perhaps finally I can learn to stop spitting in the face of Christ …
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