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I want to remind us of the perspective that Jesus, our Savior, had concerning His own death. Because I think it helps us appreciate it a little bit more. His death was 1) Purposeful, 2) Voluntary, 3) Joyful, and 4) Glorious.

Well, first of all, His death was purposeful. He recognized that He was going to die. John 12:27 says, “What shall I say, Father, do not let this hour come upon me. But that is why I came.”

The purpose of his death was also voluntary. It was a voluntary or volitional outpouring of His love, and it showed full and true submission to God, the Father. Romans 5:8, “for God demonstrates his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” In the garden, Jesus said three times to the Father, “not My will, but Your will be done.” In John 10:17-18 Jesus said, “The Father loves me because I’m willing to give up My life in order that I may receive it back again. No one takes My life away from Me. I give it up of My own free will. I have the right to give it up and I have the right to take it back.This is what my father has commanded me to do.”

His death was purposeful. His death was voluntary. His death was also joyful. Hebrews 12:2 says, “Who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and He sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Jesus was fully aware of the pain and the suffering that He would face at the cross, but He had his eyes on the joy, and that joy was purchasing our eternal destiny.

And then finally, Jesus considered death as the path to glory. In John 12:23 He said those words, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to receive great glory.” And this is an amazing verse to me because this is shortly before the passion week. This is shortly before He would go through all of that suffering, the betrayal, the arrest, the scourging, the piercing of his hands and feet, the crown of thorns on his head, and the gathering up the sins of the world that pierced His heart. He didn’t say the time has come for the Son of Man to be tortured and tormented and suffer for the sins of the world. No, He said, “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He ignored the suffering and kept his eyes on the glory. And if we can grasp the truth of that verse, it would totally change our perspective of the sufferings in our life.

So this is His perspective of His own death. He was born to die.

Gene Cunningham - April 19, 2023

Delivered from Wrath

Without Jesus Christ, you are in grave peril! For the unbeliever,it's not just that, it's death and hell and the lake of fire forever and ever. "It's appointed unto man," the author of Hebrews says, "to die once, but after this comes the judgment." And I love what Paul tells us in Romans 5:9, he says, "Therefore, having been justified by His blood, we are delivered from the wrath of God through the blood of Christ." What do we deserve? We deserve the wrath of God. What do we have instead? We have life through Christ. We have joy and peace. Why? Because Christ bore the wrath in our place. When we look at the cross, we talk about the application of the blood, and it's a wonderful concept. But we need to go deeper. And we need to realize that when the Bible talks about "the blood of Christ" it is simply a phrase used to encompass all that He went through on the cross. On the cross, the Scripture tells us that He paid the penalty for the sins of every member of the human race. Paul tells us in Philippians Chapter two that, "He went to the cross, despising the shame." Because all of us know that when sin is exposed, it always brings shame. Christ not only bore the penalty, He bore the shame of every sin of every member of the human race in those three dark hours that He hung on the cross. And we will never know fully what that meant.

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