MONDAY
This week we are making the transition in our campaign from the qualities we need within us to be people who can be still and trust God to fight for us. We are moving now to the ways in which God fights for us. The first few weeks of this campaign, we have seen God fighting for Israel by delivering them in battle. The application of those stories may seem a little distant because in the New Testament era the people of God are no longer a nation state. The church is the people of God. So for the remainder of this campaign, we will apply this theme of God fighting for us today.
There is no clearer, more beautiful, more powerful display of God fighting for us than the cross and the resurrection. In the cross God has said, “I will die for you.” In the resurrection God has said, “I will rise for you.” Today and tomorrow we will focus on the death of Jesus for us and the rest of the week we will focus on the resurrection of Jesus for us. These are some of the foundational principles of Christianity. So many of us have heard this so many times that I fear it has lost its force. I pray that all of us who are in Christ will hear the Spirit say this to us afresh—”I will die for you.”
To grasp the weight of God dying for us, we must understand the plight of our sinfulness. If our concept of our sin is small, our concept of God’s forgiveness will be small. If our concept of our enslavement is small, our concept of God’s salvation will be small. If our concept of our punishment is small, our concept of God’s mercy will be small. Conversely, if our concept of our sin, our enslavement and our just punishment is large, our concept of God’s forgiveness, salvation, and mercy will be large.
We humans are all under the curse of death. “…for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Gen. 3:19). Paul makes our plight abundantly clear in Ephesians 2:1-3. We were dead in our trespasses and sins (v. 1). We were following the ways of Satan and his demons (v. 2). We were, therefore, by nature under the just wrath of God (v. 3). As Jesus says in John 8:34, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” Our sinful minds are hostile to God and cannot submit to God (Rom. 8:7). The due result of our sin is death (Rom. 6:23).
So sin is our great enemy. Because of our sin, we will all die. Because of our sin we are spiritually dead. We are staring down the wrath of God. We are slaves to sin and sin is a cruel master. We are following Satan and his demons.
Our situation is dire and this is a fight that we cannot fight in our own power and strength. This enemy is more powerful than us, because it is within us. Even knowing the right things to do is not enough to defeat this enemy. There is something deeply broken within us that leads us to desire sin. How can we fight this battle in our own power when the enemy is within our own nature. Into history comes Jesus, our Savior, declaring “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
To grasp the weight of Jesus dying for us, we must also know who he is. Jesus is fully God and fully human. The author of Hebrews, here, is making the case for why Jesus needed to be human. He has just talked about how Jesus was made human so he could die to save humans, not angels.
Hebrews 2:14–15 (NIV) 14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
So Jesus became human and died for humans to break the power of Satan over us. Satan’s primary power over us is in our sin and the consequence of our sin—death. We are all sinners so we had wondered how God would treat us when we die after we have violated his law. Being sinful and standing before a holy God is a fearful proposition. We no longer have to fear death because Jesus, on the cross, defeated sin, setting us free to no longer live in fear of death.
Jesus, as the second person of the Trinity, is also fully God. He has God’s life in himself. His life is not contingent upon anything or anyone. He is perfectly holy and without sin. He is not under the same curse of death that we are under. There is nothing demanding that God die for us. God is perfectly just to allow us all to die in our sins. But he doesn’t. Solely because of his love, he dies for us to ransom us from the curse of sin and death so that we can experience his life. This is the greatest act of love the world has ever seen and will ever see.
Colossians 2:9 (NIV) 9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,
Colossians 2:13–15 (NIV) 13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
In a Roman culture, after a victory in battle, the victorious generals would parade through the streets of Rome to glory in their victory. They would lead their conquered enemies to their execution to shame them publicly. This is the image Paul is invoking here.
The powers and authorities refers to evil spiritual beings. These evil spiritual beings are more than what we tend to think of as just demons today, but not less than. They are at work behind the governing powers of the world to rebel against the plans of God. They are also working to deceive individuals into believing lies, condemning them of their sins and seeking to leave them in their guilt and shame.
This text says that Jesus put them to open shame by the cross. How exactly? I think the best understanding of this is that Jesus has taken a tool of shame (the cross) and turned it on its head. The cross was not Jesus’ shame. It was his victory. It was on the cross Jesus atoned for the sins of God’s people. It is where he paid the penalty that our sin deserved. Therefore, the tools of the evil behind the governing authorities (public execution of the Romans) has been turned on its head. It also disarmed the evil spiritual beings from their ability to tempt us and pile on guilt and shame. Our sin has been placed on Jesus on the cross. He paid the penalty for all of our sin, justifying us before God. So, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 8:1) When demons tempt us with guilt and shame, we can definitively declare, “The penalty for my sin has been paid by Jesus on the cross. I am free!”
Reflection
Just pause and ask the Holy Spirit to help you hear Jesus saying, “I will die for you.”