(My testimony)
This is Holy Week for Christians all over the world. During this time, we remember the last few days of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ on this earth, which include His crucifixion (Good Friday) and His rising from the dead the following Sunday. Today is Maundy Thursday, or the day when Jesus and His disciples celebrated the Passover–it was his Last Supper–and afterward, late that night, Jesus was betrayed.
The story of the crucifixion can be hard to bear. I remember being horrified at the descriptions of what Jesus went through, the torturous death He endured on the cross, but I was just as horrified at the levels of psychological cruelty He endured.
Jesus had the power to call a legion of angels (Matthew 26:53), and at any time He could have removed Himself from the mocking cruelty, the torture, and death. Don’t you wonder why on earth He continued to endure the suffering?
I did. But I also understood that Jesus stayed up there because He loved God the Father and had committed to doing His will, even if it wasn’t what Jesus wanted. But why did God want Him there?
“If God just wants to save us,” I thought, “and He is all powerful; then why doesn’t He just do it? Why make Jesus suffer so horribly?”
Wait, WHO was it that made Jesus suffer? Who betrayed Him? Who plotted to kill Him? Oh yes, people did. In this case, it was the Jewish religious leaders. They sentenced Him to death under the charge of blasphemy–because they refused to believe the truth of who He was. But they were also motivated by power. If Jesus truly was the Jewish Messiah, then He was a threat to their established rule!
But who exactly is Jesus? And why does it matter? He often called himself “The Son of Man,” (John:3:13) and also “The Son of God” (John 9:35-38). But when Jesus asked Peter who he thought Jesus was, Peter said, “Thou are the Christ (the Messiah), the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus blessed Peter and confirmed that He was, indeed, the Christ. (Matthew 16:15-17).
Jesus called himself “I AM,” which is the name God used to reveal himself to Abraham. (John 8:58) And though Jesus was mostly silent against the accusations brought against him at his trial, when the high priest said, “I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.” Then Jesus responded “. . .hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” (Matthew 26:63-64)
And what did the prophet Isaiah, who lived 700 years before Jesus came say? Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would first come as a baby, and then become a powerful ruler on the throne of David. He gave a list of names by which he would be known:
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this.” Isaiah 9:6-7
Jesus is “I AM.” He is “The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father.” He is the Messiah, at first for just the Jews, and now for the whole world. All of this was designed by God so the world could be saved from sin! God is not against us; He is doing all of this FOR us.
Sin is a powerful destructive force that ends only in death. From the moment Adam bit the fruit in the Garden of Eden, his body was transformed from immortal to mortal, from one who was designed to live forever to one doomed to die when he runs out like a battery. And the reason this happened began in his spirit, through unbelief.
The power of sin is impossible for us to deny. We were born into it, and we see its effects on our physical body. Decay is the result of sin, and leads to death. This is a real effect that we can see with our eyes.
Death came into the world by sin because it transformed Adam and Eve and their offspring from pure innocents who did not understand they were naked, into those familiar with evil. Adam and Eve already knew what was good, but before Adam ate, he had no knowledge of evil. And so he became infected with evil (sin), and he died. God warned both of them to stay away, but now we will all inherit death because of Adam’s decision.
This used to tick me off. How could I be held liable for something that happened thousands of years ago? And now I have to suffer the death penalty? If I’m honest, it’s infuriating. I didn’t start out choosing evil, did I?
But I can see, looking back, that my heart did tend toward evil before I met Jesus. Even as a child, I was rebellious and angry. I didn’t get along with anyone very well. I was judgmental.
It’s not that I was all bad, though. I was kindhearted toward animals, and I loved it when the good guys won. I hoped for kindness in others and would frequently smile at strangers. Most of the bad stuff was deep in my heart, things that I didn’t want to admit even to myself. I was pretty good at masking, and at living a double life. And the only reason I did that was because I knew I wasn’t good enough and I was trying to pretend I was. My behavior proved what I didn’t want to admit: I was sinful.
I think of sin as a genetic defect, passed on to us from our ancestors, and passed down by us to our hapless descendants. We have no choice about what our eye color is, or what our ears look like or many other inherited traits. Sin is like one of those genetic traits. We all have a tendency to sin. I knew this on some level, and I also knew that Jesus died to save us from our sin. I believed it, but it just wasn’t real to me.
One day, after a conversation with someone I knew in school, I suddenly understood on a different level that Jesus was real. It was like a light bulb turned on in my mind. I suddenly felt flooded with light, and I delighted in the knowledge that I was truly loved for who I was. I remember praying in my room, looking out through a dirty window at the sunshine, and then kind of floating downstairs. It seems symbolic, now that I write this down, that I was looking at the sunshine through a dirty window. I still needed some cleaning! (Still do.)
Something had definitely changed in me. I was more sensitive to what was going on around me, and more gentle in my treatment of others. You could say I “woke up.” The biggest permanent change in my life was a function of will, though. I decided not to lie anymore, because how could I be who Jesus made me to be if I was destroying myself through lies? Jesus empowered me, and once I learned how to break the habit (through self-humiliation–confessing each lie and asking for forgiveness), I have been free.
I cherished the change in my heart, and I tried to keep it alive by my own strength, but that isn’t how it works. I didn’t understand the need to pray daily, connecting to God. But I did read my Bible.
Over time, I fell away, back into more of a secular life. I was rebellious against things that were wrong with the authorities over me, and though I was right to be upset at the wrong things happening, the rebellious spirit soon moved me to rebel against good things, too. After an incident at church (having nothing to do with me) that was handled poorly, I protested by not going to church. That lapse lasted more than a decade.
The Lord helped me again, though, and sent me more trials than I could handle. I was drowning in every area of my life, financially, emotionally, and physically (I had injured my back). I had nowhere to turn, except to God. After all of the years spent avoiding Him, why did I think He would even listen to me? I don’t know, but I had no choice. He was the only one I had left. And I found that He was there waiting for me with open arms.
It was really more of a gradual change rather than one incident, but I began to admit the areas where I was weak, and I started asking God for help. I was more up front with others, and tried not to promise what I couldn’t really do.
I am far from perfect, but in the last thirty years, I have learned to lean on the Lord. He has helped me to face terrifying things and given me courage. I have learned to listen for His voice and have discovered that simple obedience brings the growth I need. And over time, I am becoming who Jesus wants me to be.
I think this is what is meant by “putting to death the old man.” It means forsaking the sinful desires and ambitions that I had, and moving toward Jesus when I stumble so he can comfort and change my heart. I can’t do it by myself. He puts the desire to do good in my heart, then gives me the power to follow through. All the glory belongs to Him.
I want different things now. The music I used to love sounds boring or offensive to me. I am developing new interests, and have new insights almost every day. I crave connection with God, and I find it in prayer, in reading the Bible and in being in nature, which is covered by his fingerprints, and life is exciting again!
We can be set free from sin through belief in Jesus. I know, because it has happened to me. I have had a long, slow heart transplant, and I am not the same as I was before.
Jesus came as a baby, lived a perfect, sinless life and died the death of a criminal–in our place–so that no claim could be laid against any one of us. Our debt, which is the death sentence, has been paid in full by Him. Because He rose from the dead, we are free to choose love and life, if we simply believe that He is who He said He is. That belief allows us to receive his love so that we can keep His commandments, and follow Him to eternal life. To make it easy for us to understand what He wants from us, He summed it up:
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart, soul and mind. . . and love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)
It’s so simple! He just wants us to be ambassadors of His love! The peaceful reign of Jesus begins right now in our hearts, and will become a material one in the future, when he returns to the earth, undisguised, in all of his glory. (1 Thessalonians 3:12-13; Matthew 26:64)
“For as by one man’s disobedience, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. . .that as sin hath reigned unto death, so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:19,21)
Did you catch that part about “grace reigns through righteousness?” Jesus doesn’t remove the consequences of our actions in this world; if he were to do that, he would deny us a free will. Our bodies are still mortal, and in this world, we will still die. We still get cancer from toxic chemicals, and we still suffer from loneliness if we betray our best friend. We are not magically perfect when we say a prayer once. We don’t even completely stop sinning. But if we remain in His love, we will sin less and less every day, and grow more deeply connected to God and learn to love like He does.
Over time, if we drink deeply from His Word, which washes our minds free from the fear and the filth we live in, then we will begin to see things the way Jesus sees them. Through the power of our risen Savior, we will become who He made us to be in the first place: His child!
Thank you for reading my testimony, and for considering these ideas. I have not studied theology, but I am studying Jesus and applying His teachings so that I can have life. I hope you get the chance to spend some time on these ideas, or maybe attend a Good Friday service tomorrow. Your whole life depends on your relationship with Jesus. There is no time to put it off; a passing glance at our poor world will convince you that we all need love right now!
(The painting used in the header is Ecce Homo (“Behold the Man”) by Antonio Ciseri.)
The Fullers Four 