The Love of Christ

     We often talk about how strong the love of God is, but do we really understand what that means. It’s almost a cliché to talk about it. In fact, it’s likely that the most well known Bible verse is, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16 (NKJV). The other one that is quoted often is, “for God is love.” 1 John 4:8b (NKJV). Those verses are absolutely true, but do we really understand what they mean?

     To know what God’s love really is, we need to understand how great His anger is over our sin. Many people think of the God of the Old Testament as the angry God, but the God of the New Testament as the loving God. We need to understand that they are one and the same! The Old Testament sets the stage for God’s love to play out through our Savior Jesus Christ, by showing us how angry God is with sin.

     In fact, the full magnitude of God’s love can only be seen when contrasted against the full extent of our sin. Not as we see our sin, but as God sees it. We don’t usually see our sin as being that big of a deal, but God certainly does.

     The well known verse from John’s Gospel quoted above continues, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” John 3:17 (NKJV). If God is all love and in full control of everything, what do we need to be saved from? Are we in danger of something? Well God is in full control, so whatever this danger is, God would be in control of that too. It would appear then that if the Bible is saying there is some danger that we need to be saved from, and God is in control of it, we should probably figure out what God’s word says about it, right?

     The verse from John’s Gospel continues, “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” John 3:18, 19 (NKJV). Then John explains further down in the chapter, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” John 3:36 (NKJV). But wait a minute! The second verse quoted above, from John’s first epistle says, “for God is love.” 1 John 4:8b (NKJV) (emphasis added). If God is love, why does He have wrath? Wrath certainly doesn’t sound loving!

     The Bible teaches clearly that we are all sinners, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23 (NKJV). Jesus told us God’s standard when He said, “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:48 (NKJV). But how can we be perfect when we are also told that we have all fallen short of God’s standard? The bad news is that we can’t. The good news, however, is that Jesus can on our behalf!

     John’s first epistle continues, “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:9, 10 (NKJV). God is love, but His love is magnified when we see how His love is revealed through the atoning act of Jesus Christ, the propitiation for our sin. We have fallen short of God’s standard, and the Bible says that “God is a just judge, [a]nd God is angry with the wicked every day.” Psalm 7:11 (NKJV). Jesus, however was 100% God as He is the second member of the Trinity, and He did not fall short of that standard. He lived a perfectly righteous life, and was offered up on the altar of the cross to be our substitute, our propitiation for sin.

     The term “propitiate” is defined as to “gain or regain the favor or goodwill of.” Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary. That’s simply amazing! God’s wrath abides on us and He is angry with us every day because of our sin, yet He sent His Son into this world to regain His goodwill for us by taking God the Father’s anger upon Himself? It almost doesn’t even make sense because that kind of love is so foreign to our nature. Despite God the Father’s anger toward us, He sent God the Son into this world to be our substitute. That alone should make the verses about God’s love look far better than you have ever imagined them to be. However, when you look at the suffering Christ did on our behalf, it magnifies His love beyond comprehension.

     Know this too, there were two separate parts of Christ’s suffering. That which was visible, and that which was invisible. Eyewitness accounts to Christ’s crucifixion were recorded in Scripture so that we could read about what Jesus endured for us. What we could not see, however, was that part of the punishment that was poured out upon God the Son by God the Father to satisfy His anger toward our sin.

     Thursday night of Passover week, the night before Jesus was crucified, He took some of the disciples to the Garden at Gethsemane to pray. The Apostle Matthew recorded:

And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.” He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”

Matthew 26:37—39 (NKJV). Luke added in his Gospel, “Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Luke 22:43, 44 (NKJV).

     Do you really think your sin is not that big of a deal? Christ’s sweat contained great drops of blood because He was agonizing over the suffering He was to endure for our sin! Are you kidding me? If the One who created the entire universe in six days was in such agony that He actually was sweating blood, our sin is a big deal.

     Immediately following that prayer, Temple soldiers arrived to arrest Jesus for blasphemy, that He claimed to be God. He was brought to the Temple to be tried before the High Priest under the cover of night so that few if any of Christ’s followers would know about the trial. The Temple leaders set up a mock trial to quickly find Jesus guilty, “Now the chief priests and all the council sought testimony against Jesus to put Him to death, but found none. For many bore false witness against Him, but their testimonies did not agree.” Mark 14:55, 56 (NKJV). They mocked Him and beat Him, “Then some began to spit on Him, and to blindfold Him, and to beat Him, and to say to Him, ‘Prophesy!’ And the officers struck Him with the palms of their hands.” Mark 14:65 (NKJV). Luke added, “And many other things they blasphemously spoke against Him.” Luke 22:65 (NKJV).

     Eventually during this unsuccessful false trial filled with beating, spitting, and mocking, the Temple leaders came right out and said, “I put You under oath by the living God: Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God!” Matthew 26:63b (NKJV). Jesus answered saying, “You rightly say that I am.” Luke 22:70b (NKJV). This threw the crowd into convulsions because in addition to answering the question, using the phrase “I am” proved that Jesus claimed to be God. When Moses spoke to God through the burning bush, Moses asked God who He was so that if asked by the children of Israel Moses could say who sent Him, “And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you.”’” Exodus 3:14 (NKJV). The Jewish leaders understood that not only was Jesus claiming to be the Messiah, He was also claiming to be the God of the Jewish Scriptures.

     That was all the Temple leaders needed to convict Jesus, “Then the high priest tore his clothes, saying, ‘He has spoken blasphemy! What further need do we have of witnesses? Look, now you have heard His blasphemy! What do you think?’ They answered and said, ‘He is deserving of death.’” Matthew 26:65—66 (NKJV). However, because the Jews were under Roman occupation, they no longer had the ability to carry out a death sentence, so they brought Jesus to the Roman governor Pontius Pilot.

     It was now Friday morning when Jesus had already endured His first trial and was about to go through His second. Pontius Pilot found that Jesus had done no wrong, and sent Him to Herod, the lame duck king put in charge of that part of Israel by the Roman Empire, to decide what to do with Jesus. Despite Herod finding that Jesus did no wrong, the third trial did not go any better than the first, “Then Herod, with his men of war, treated Him with contempt and mocked Him, arrayed Him in a gorgeous robe, and sent Him back to Pilate.” Luke 23:11 (NKJV).

     Now at Christ’s fourth trial that day, Pilot wanted to release Jesus because He was innocent. Pilot asked the crowd, “What then do you want me to do with Him whom you call the King of the Jews?” Mark 15:12b (NKJV). But the crowd “shouted, saying, ‘Crucify Him, crucify Him!’” Luke 23:21b (NKJV).

     Pilot then had Jesus scourged prior to His crucifixion, which according to historical descriptions was one of the most excruciatingly painful forms of punishment ever inflicted next to the crucifixion itself. Jesus was stripped, bound, and beaten with various weapons that were fixed with shards of animal bones intended to rip the skin off of Christ’s body and shred His muscles and organs apart.

     The Gospels record that the pain to be inflicted on Jesus had only begun:

Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole garrison around Him. And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand. And they bowed the knee before Him and mocked Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Then they spat on Him, and took the reed and struck Him on the head. And when they had mocked Him, they took the robe off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him away to be crucified.

 Matthew 27:27—31 (NKJV). Consider that all of this was happening after Christ’s body was completely shredded apart from the scourging. 

     After all of this, most people would have long since died. However, the real punishment that Jesus came into this world to bear was still ahead. As weak as He was, Jesus was made to carry His cross from the place where He was scourged to where He would hang on that cross at Golgotha, which was outside of the city walls. The Roman soldiers forced an onlooker to assist Jesus because of the absolute physical exhaustion. Once they arrived, stakes were driven through our Savior’s feet and hands, nailing His bloody and shredded body to the cross. We can only imagine the utter pain that this must have caused His already severely tortured body.

     Now for the real punishment. As God the Son hung on that cross where He had to push Himself up on the stake in His feet just to breath, and after receiving what is possibly the worst beating any person throughout history has ever received, God the Father poured out wrath on His Son, the very wrath that was intended for you and me. It was the very wrath that abides on and is stored up for all who refuse to repent from sin and put their trust in Jesus alone as their atonement for sin.

     Do you remember the agony Jesus went through the night before His arrest in the garden at Gethsemane? This wrath was so great that when Jesus was contemplating this moment while praying, just the thought of this moment caused the very rare medical condition of hemathidrosis, where great drops of blood poured out of Him as sweat. This was God Himself in human form experiencing such agony.

     As God the Father punished His innocent Son, Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Matthew 27:46b (NKJV) (see Psalm 22 for the prophecy written by King David of this moment). The Bible tells us that during this time, darkness was covering the entire earth for three hours. See Luke 23:44. Then Jesus cried out again “with a loud voice, He said, ‘Father, “into Your hands I commit My spirit.”’ Having said this, He breathed His last.” Luke 23:46b (NKJV). The Apostle John added that before giving up His spirit, Jesus declared, “It is finished!” John 19:30b (NKJV).

     At that moment, the veil of the Temple was torn in two from the top down, and there was a great earthquake. See Matthew 27:51. The veil was the divider within the Temple that secluded the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple, where specially selected priests would be allowed at very significant times to meet with God and seek forgiveness of the nation’s sin. When God instructed Moses on how to construct the veil, He explained, “The veil shall be a divider for you between the holy place and the Most Holy.” Exodus 26:33b (NKJV). This was the symbol of our separation from God because of our iniquity, our sin. To add to the symbolism, it’s important to note that this was all taking place during Passover. At the very same time that Jesus was being slaughtered on the cross by His Father, the Passover lambs, the prophetic image of Christ, were being slaughtered by the priests at the Temple.

     Now the veil was torn by God, from the top down, because the work of our Savior, atoning for our sin, was finished! He had regained the favor of God toward us. The Apostle Paul explains this amazing event saying:

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

 Romans 5:6—11 (NKJV).

     The next time you consider the verses first mentioned above regarding God’s love, please remember the cross. Without it, we cannot understand God’s love. It’s in fact completely foreign to us. God Himself became a human being and died for sinful men and women who rejected and defied Him, so that we could regain God’s favor toward us. All He requires from us is to turn from our way through repentance, which is seeking forgiveness from God and forsaking our sins, and then putting our trust in Jesus alone, that He reconciled us to God the Father. God the Son suffered at the hands of His own creation and of God the Father, for you!

     Please consider these things today. God is angry with your sin and mine. However, He has provided a way for us to avoid His wrath through the atoning work of His Son, Jesus Christ. Read the Bible and see if the things I write about are true. Don’t be a casual Christian, take this seriously. If what I’m saying is true, you cannot afford to dismiss this message. If you hear His voice, do as Jesus commanded, “Repent, and believe in the gospel.” Mark 1:15b (NKJV).