Day 2832 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 2:24 NIV

You know, I'm afraid we get caught up seeing the Gospel as someone else's story. We think of it as Christ's story. We see it as a tale from the past lived out by people in a culture and place that is radically different from our own, and when we see it in that light then we struggle to find the personal connection. We fail to put ourselves in His sandals and realize that it was truly our cross that He carried up that hill to die our death.

We see the Gospel as the story of Jesus Christ, and while it is His story, it is also our story. It is the story of our salvation. It's the story of our redemption, our adoption, our renewal through rebirth brought about by our death to self and all we've been before. It's not just about some ancient person being beaten and tortured. It's the truth of what we did and still fully deserve being taken by Someone else on our behalf. It's our atonement purchased by a perfect Savior.

That’s the part I fear we tend to miss. The idea of substitutionary atonement found in the Gospel points to the reality that Christ is our substitute. He took our place. He paid for our sins. He died our death. He squared our debt. He atoned our mistakes. He purchased our eternal life as He carried our cross.

This past week, or at least a large portion of it, we've discussed the reality of our mortality and the reasons that we tangle with this instinctual fear of death. We still have it in our minds that death equates to the sudden comeuppance we know we deserve. We see death as a gateway into a courtroom in which an eternal judgment will be levied that we can in no way rebut or refuse. The bottom line is that we know we're sinners, lawbreakers, heathens, and wretches. And when laws are broken, something must be done in order to retain order.

And that something in this case is facing God's wrath. After all, He is the Author of the truth we've long denied. He's the definer of the Laws we've broken and betrayed. He's the Father of the Son we have forsaken through our years of rampant foolishness and selfish depravity spent seeking our wayward desires. He is the One we've wronged. And considering all we've done against Him, it's only right that we face the consequences.

When we take the common path of seeing the Gospel as the story of Christ while failing to understand we should have taken those steps, felt those lashes, wore those thorns, hung on that cross, and been laid in that grave, we also likely fail to see the other part of the story that we have also played. We were also the ones who beat Him. We were the ones who laughed and mocked and jeered and cheered as He hung there. We were the ones who turned our backs on His misery in order to get our part of diving up His belongings.

We're the ones who turned away, walked back into our normal lives, and thought we'd won a victory over this guy that kept talking about all the mistakes we'd apparently made yet couldn’t see.

Not only is this not just some old story about some other person, we are both sides in this story. We're the ones who meted out the punishment, and also those who deserved to be on the receiving end. We're the ones who twisted the thorns into a crown, and also the ones who should have felt its sting upon our brow. We're the ones who built the cross, and also those who should have carried it. We're the ones drove the nails, and also the ones for which He endured every blow. We're the ones who killed Christ, and also the ones who should have died in His place.

You see, He didn't deserve anything He went through. It wasn't His place, His punishment, His duty to fulfill our shortcomings and satisfy the wrath they incurred. All of that was ours. Every snap of the whip should have fallen upon our backs. Every step along that road that led to that hill should have been walked by our feet. Every moment of agony should have been felt by us. But, He did what He didn't have to do so that we could be what we couldn't become without His doing so.

This is our story. It's our salvation. It's our truth. It's our reminder of our mistakes and our forgiveness that's been given by the One who took our place and erased those mistakes and earned that forgiveness. And that's why we cannot continue failing to see that it's more than just an old story from another place at another time lived by someone no longer here.

They say the best way to understand someone else is to walk a mile in their shoes. Christ walked our mile with our cross upon His back. It's time we walk in His shoes. It's time that we see the reality of our place in the Gospel. It's time that we learn to see sin for what it is and what it caused and what it costs and what it still does in our hearts every single time we choose to give it our time and attention rather than remaining focused on what's been done for us and the One who did it.

Without a personal connection to this story, a personal realization of the fact that we should have faced what Christ endured, we can't fully understand the immense gravity of what we've been given. And if we can't understand the enormity of this gift of salvation, then we'll never understand that sin is the death that we've long feared. Like we talked about a couple of days ago, it's not the ending of life that we're afraid of. It's the beginning of eternity, knowing full well what kind of eternity we deserve because of our mistakes.

Friends, Jesus did what He did in taking our place and going through the roughest part of what should have been our suffering so that we wouldn't have to. But just because it was Him on that cross, that doesn't mean that it's only His story. It's our story. It's our debt. It's our eternity. It's our life. And it's all been given and taken care of because of a love we can't understand.

The whole point of the Gospel is that Christ died so that we might live, even though we don't deserve to. He took our sins and the punishment they owe so that we could open our eyes to the reality of who we've been and just how wrong it is. He gave us a visual reason, a graphic portrayal of what sin is, and what it does, and what it costs so that we could finally get the message that we can't pay for it and must therefore leave it behind and live for more.

We have to put ourselves in this story in order to get it. We have to understand that our faith is about putting ourselves up on that cross and dying to sin because that's the only way we can find life. As I've been saying a ton here lately, every life owes a death. Our eternal life can only be found through the death of our sinful ways. If we don't understand that we should have, and could still endure what Christ faced, we'll never find the urgent desperation to leave sin behind and strive for something far greater.

If we don't accept His gift of taking our place and dying our death, then our death is still owed. But unlike Jesus, we can't die and go on living. Our only hope is found in His willingness to take our place. We don't have to accept that gift or admit the truth it's built upon. But He can't forgive what we won't admit needs forgiving.

Friends, this Gospel we have is there to change our lives. But it can only do that job if we open our eyes and realize the weight of it all. It's not just the story of Jesus Christ. It's the story of what He did for us. It's life. It's death. It's truth. It’s hard. It's painful. It's scary. It's freeing. It's peaceful. It's ours. But only if we accept it and live our lives from here on in such a way that testifies to our being reborn through His death by the understanding that it should have always been our death and never His.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold