I have been thinking about Jesus lately.
That doesn't seem to outrageous.
After all, I think about Jesus often.
This time I pondered Him.
I wondered about Him.
I once read a book written by a man who played Jesus in a movie called The Gospel According to Matthew. In the book, called in the footsteps of Christ, Bruce Marchiano writes about his experience preparing to play the role of Jesus. He began to look at humanity through Jesus' eyes.
I did some more research and came across this video of Bruce Marchiano retelling some of his experiences on set as Jesus.
He spoke about the miracles Jesus did.
Jesus spent His life healing the sick.
His everyday moments were spent making the blind see and the deaf hear!
His daily to-do list included healing the leper and raising the dead!
Yet, I have found that I read these accounts in the Bible with little more then an acknowledgement that they did indeed occur.
Can we stop for a moment?
Can we linger here over this?
This is the God man, Jesus.
The very same God who created the world, who commanded waters to rise out of dry land and who whispered the very existence of stars and moons...
now wraps our human flesh around himself and lived on this earth!
I want to stop rationalizing Christ.
I want to stop dismissing His God-ness and focusing only on His humanity.
He was indeed human, but He was first and foremost the same God of the old testament. The Same I AM who manifested in fire and smoke.
The same God who turns when the woman touches His hem of His coat and says "Who touched me? I know that power has gone out from me." (Luke 8:46)
That same power that parted the red sea for the Israelites, made the bleeding woman whole.
As I sit here and think about the reality of God coming to earth, coming to humanity, coming to walk among our brokenness and filth, I can't help but be moved.
The trinity has always been hard to understand. It's hard to wrap my mind around Jesus and the Holy Spirit as still being first and foremost God. In my limited brain it becomes easier to make God the Father, and Jesus a slightly less- more human God.
As I enter into holy week, I want to see Jesus for who He really is.
Jesus is not a pawn sent to earth for a task, in order to right the wages of humanities sin.
Jesus is God himself bending as close to earth as possible and leaning in close to tell us one thing.
I love you. I love you so much that I'm sending myself to you.
I love you so much that I myself am going to absorb all my own punishment, so that you can start again.
I'm taking your punishment on myself.
On me, God.
When Jesus spread His arms on the cross, He was literally holding back the power of God.
The Bible calls Jesus the mediator, the one who comes between.
Jesus stood between me and God.
The heavens darkened, and the very creation that Jesus himself breathed life into, shook in terror as it witnessed it's creator take on all of creations sin, failures and pain.
This week let's not focus of Jesus' humanity. Let us focus on Christ's complete God-ness.
God came, God lived, God healed and God went to the cross.
Jesus, didn't begrudgingly go to the cross.
He was never forced onto the road to Golgotha by the Father in heaven pulling the strings.
From the beginning of time God had one way to deal with sin, and that is with sacrifice.
The wages of sin is death.
Someone's blood must be shed for there to be redemption of sins.
Like in Genesis, when God met Abram (before he was named Abraham) and made a covenant with him. God Himself passed between the convenantal offerings, thus making the covenant not dependent on Abraham.
So is it with our sin.
God's decision that sin will be redeemed through the shedding of blood, is not dependent on us.
It was finished at the cross, when God took His own punishment!
What greater love could there be?
If you struggle to see Jesus as God, then know that you do not struggle alone.
Know that I am praying for you.
I pray that you will be challenged this week.
I pray that you won't be able to shake off Jesus this week.
May you would be forced to come face to face with the cross.
When you do, you will find the real Jesus.
The God-man who kneels down to earth to tell you one thing...
I love you. I love you so much.
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