This is a meditation I wrote my church and our experiential walk through the Stations of the Cross.  Stuart Townend’s song, “How Deep the Father’s Love For Us” echoed through my thoughts at every idle brain moment.  I couldn’t get away from his words.  Townend’s words are bolded; mine are italicized. May you know the deep, deep love of God during this holy week and beyond.

The soldiers brought Jesus to Golgotha, meaning “Skulll Hill.” They offered him a mild painkiller (wine mixed with myrrh), but he wouldn’t take it. And they nailed him to the cross. They divided up his clothes and threw dice to see who would get them.

Mark 15:22 – 24 (The Message)

 

How Deep The Father’s Love For Us

by Stuart Townend

How deep the Father’s love for us

How vast beyond all measure

That He would give His only Son

To make a wretch His treasure

Inconceivable!  Who swaps the perfect for the imperfect?  Who chooses me—woeful, sinful me—over perfect love and fellowship with Jesus . . . even for a moment?  God the Father!  It goes beyond all my reason and imagination that God chooses to treasure his fallen, ragged, filthy creation, but he does.  It’s a love I can’t fathom.  It’s a love to wallow in.

How great the pain of searing loss

The Father turns His face away

As wounds which mar the chosen One

Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon a cross

My guilt upon His shoulders

My guilt . . .my sins . . . Jesus bears the brunt of each part of my selfishness, my pride, my lust, my lies, my judgmental spirit, my disobedience, my gluttony, my lack of stewardship, my envy, my grumbling and complaining,  my everything that counters God is piled on Jesus’ shoulders . . . driving the nails deeper into his flesh.

Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice

Call out among the scoffers

Oh!  I would love to think I would’ve been one of the disciples who stuck close, but I doubt it. I don’t like to stand out.  Crowd-think is too easy and it sucks in each of us.  And really?  Don’t I mock God each time I choose my way over his?  Don’t I scoff when I think I know better than he does? I’m no better than those who mocked that day. 

It was my sin that held Him there

Until it was accomplished

My sin alone was enough to keep Jesus on the cross.  Even as a “good kid,” there was sin enough to keep Jesus nailed there.  Stronger than the superset of super glues, each of my sins and Jesus’ obedience and love kept him on the ultimate torture instrument to pay a price nobody else ever could.

His dying breath has bought me life

I know that it is finished

His death in exchange for my life!  My sin put to death because of Jesus, the perfect sacrifice.  No longer do I have to live forever separated from God.  The eternal consequences of my sin are finished because Jesus died for them.

I will not boast in anything

No gifts, no powr’s, no wisdom

But I will boast in Jesus Christ

His death and resurrection

Why should I gain from His reward?

I cannot give an answer

But this I know with all my heart

His wounds have paid my ransom

Jesus’ life paid in exchange for me, a dirty rotten sinner?  I will never fully understand why God would make such a choice, but I’m thankful he did.  I know there was no other way. It pains me to think that each of my sins—and there are too many to count—pounded the nails further into the cross and piled suffocating guilt on him.  The thought gives me a somber joy because I know  Jesus chose to suffer, to die, to be my ransom, so I’m free to be in relationship with God who created the universe, who spoke the world into being, who chose me.

 

This is the crucifixion.  This is Good Friday.  This is Jesus dying in my place—for my sins.

 

photo courtesy of  TACLUDA on rgbstock.com