What if you had so much debt that it was keeping you awake at night worrying about it? It would be bearing down on you with the weight of the world, causing extreme anxiety and threating every aspect of your health. Every one of your relationships would suffer and you wouldn’t be able to concentrate on your work. In short, picture your entire world falling apart because of excessive debt.
Now, in the midst of that struggle when things seem to be at their worst and you think there is no way you can bear the weight, imagine that someone offers to forgive all of your debts and the only thing you have to do is accept their gift and return their love by loving them and loving others.
You’ve probably figured out by now that the debt we’re talking about is not a financial obligation but the debt owed for our sinfulness. And Easter is the time when we celebrate Jesus’ final victory over sin and death on our behalf.
But, because of how difficult it is for us to even think about it, we don’t frequently spend a lot of time on the tortuous pain Jesus had to endure on our behalf. It was a gruesome death and a burden so heavy that even Jesus himself asked for it to be taken from him, which is referenced in our verse for the day from Luke 22:42:
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
It was far, far more than just the physical pain that caused Jesus to make that request. The true suffering came because Jesus literally became the physical embodiment of our sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). All of the collective sin of all time was wrapped up the human form of Jesus at that moment and when he died, so did the debt owed in relation to that sin. That’s what is meant when it is said that “Jesus died for our sins”.
The cup Jesus asked to be taken from him was “the cup of wrath” which is explained in the article linked here. The “wrath” referenced here is the unimaginably massive amount of anger that God justifiably had (past tense) in relation to all collective sin from all time.
To give you a sense of just how massive that would be, think about a time when you really lost your temper. Your blood pressure was probably sky high and you may have been so mad that you couldn’t see straight. Now multiply that intensity by all of the times in your life that you’ve lost your temper and then multiply it again by all of the people in the world who have ever lived and who ever will live. That’s already a truly unimaginable amount of wrath but it pales in comparison to God’s wrath at all of our collective sin, which is many times more than that.
But even in the face of such an enormous burden, Jesus still said “yet not my will, but Yours” and He died to take that wrath on Himself. He loves us so deeply that the pain of being separated from us was far worse than the pain He endured by drinking the cup of wrath. Blessed, blessed be the name of the Lord!
Questions:
1) Have you ever paid off a financial debt that had been burdening you for a long time? How did that make you feel?
2) Although the debt that Jesus paid on our behalf was not financial in nature, do you think the idea of paying off a debt is an effective analogy for what He did for us?
3) Even though Jesus’ love for us is incomprehensible and difficult to put into words, how would you describe it?
4) How would you compare God’s love for us with a parent’s love for their child?
5) What is one thing you might do this Easter weekend to honor the gift of eternal life we were given through Jesus’ sacrifice?
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