Each year as Easter rolls around, I find myself once again in awe of our Lord and Savior and the sacrifices He made for each of us. He created us beautiful and perfect in His sight, but we chose to turn our backs on him and follow in the path of sin. He spent centuries trying to bring us back by showing His power and wrath with floods, famine, plagues and destruction of the worst of us, but never all of us. He spared any that showed Him reverence and faithfulness at all. He continued to love us and when He realized that we were a foolish lot and these things only scared us back to Him for a little while, He chose another route.
He didn’t want to destroy us, but saw that through sin we were destroying ourselves. He took pity on us. He was and is GOD! He could have destroyed us and started over. He could have reached into our hearts and minds and changed them Himself, making us follow Him. He didn’t do that! He wanted a relationship with us. He wanted us to come to Him. He wanted to save as many of us as possible. He wanted us to want Him and love Him. He didn’t want puppets, he wanted children that came to Him in love and served Him in love.
There for He gave us grace.
Long ago He had established that the wages of sin was death. This was a death that would forever separate us from Him, and condemn us to an eternity of pain and suffering. He didn’t want to lose us all to this fate.
So once again He extended a hand to us in saving grace, the hand of Christ His only son. He sent him in the flesh, human like us, and able to feel and know our every pain and temptation. But yet fully divine and perfect and totally undeserving of the suffering He endures for us.
God could have done it any other way, but instead He chose to come to earth and become all that we were, except that He was sinless, in order to save us from all that we are even to this day, which is a sinful and totally undeserving people. He bled and died, was whipped, scourged, beaten and crucified that we might have everlasting life and have it abundantly. He died and rose again, conquering the grave so that our deaths might be a doorway to eternal life with him instead of eternal damnation.
He did all this out of love and a wanting and willingness to have a relationship with us. We did nothing to deserve this outpouring of love yet he freely gave it. We still do not deserve his love, grace and forgiveness, yet we have it and he continues to give it.
How sad it is that it took such drastic measures for us to realize that He wants us to turn our back on sin and follow him.
He didn’t have to die; He chose to do it for us. He chose to take our sins upon him. He could have just as easily destroyed us. Instead, He was able to “destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days,” (Matthew 26:61) hoping that we might finally realize who He is and all we mean to Him.
When I look upon the sacred cross,
My heart is broken in my chest,
My lungs are still, my breath a loss,
My soul to Him my one bequest.
He gave Himself for me his all,
That I might live instead of die.
My tears a flood begin to fall,
His pain, my grief and so I cry.
He owes me nothing, He is my God
My sins and burdens, He freely takes.
My life He spares with just a nod,
But with shame my soul still rakes.
Upon that cross He hung for all,
A sinful undeserving lot.
It took His life for us on our knees to fall,
And find the love that sin forgot.
As I look upon that sacred cross,
And see the pain He bore for me,
So that from Him I’d not be lost,
My eyes are open, I finally see.
His hand in grace He now extends,
With faith in Him I do believe
In God whose love has shown no ends
So His service I will never leave.
On the Wings of Angels 