Day 2833 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Galatians 3:13 NIV

The message of the cross and Christ's crucifixion upon it is so easily missed/ignored, and for one very simple reason: It's hard. It hard to look at. It's hard to think about. It's hard for us to wrap our minds around that kind of graphic violence and somehow manage to equate it with love and mercy. It's hard for us to envision that it was our death that He endured. It's hard for us to comprehend the entirety of the Gospel because it just goes against everything we know, everything we think, everything we've been, and everything this world does and teaches and pushes and accepts.

We live in this very feelings-centered world. Everything is done in this attempt to make folks comfortable. Can't hurt anyone's feelings. Can't go too far trying to get a message across. Can't push our opinions too far. Can't offend anyone. Can't risk doing anything in any way that anyone may disagree with or dislike hearing and/or seeing. We've become so weak that we can't bear looking at the truth because we know it's going to hurt.

And so we don't.

Instead, we turn away. We close our eyes. We plug our ears. We harden our hearts, run away from the scene of the crime, and pretend it never happened. We think that if we can somehow justify it in our minds in a way that we had no part in it, then it likely didn't really occur. But when it comes to the Gospel, it can only do its saving work if we take it in, personalize it, listen to it, watch it, consider it, accept our place within it, and understand that, as I said yesterday or the day before, it is in fact our story.

I think it's so quickly dismissed and denied because it's everything we fear. The entire Gospel is made up of all these building blocks that are formed by our worst terrors. Sadly, in our weakened and watered-down state of reality, we feel as if we can choose to ignore or avoid anything that makes us uncomfortable. And so when we look upon the cross and see this Man hanging there in a kind of misery we can't fathom, we don't know how to handle it. We don't know how to face it. All we know is to turn our backs and run away from that place because it's the epitome of all that scares us.

It's painful. It's brutal. It's graphic. It's offensive. It's heartbreaking. It's lonely. It's cold. It's humiliating. It's dark. It's this cacophony of these feelings of utter abandonment and dismissal and rejection and retaliation and punishment and consequences and hatred and struggle and strife and fear and judgment and torture and torment and terror and every other miserable thing that defines and resides within our very worst nightmares.

I honestly believe that's why so many either flat out reject it or keep it at a very safe distance. I think it's why we hear so many more messages about all the love and kindness and healing than we do about what that love did and how kindness endured what we couldn't and from what it is that we're being healed and saved and set free. There should be a far more equal mix of the uplifting and the stern because when we only focus on one side of this Gospel we've been given, then the reasons and the cost likely fall through the cracks.

And when we fail to see or simply forget what He did, why He did it, and the fact that it should have been us in His place, then we miss out on the true reality of how hard we should be fighting against all that's fighting against us.

What I think we often fail to see, or rather choose not to see or consider or admit or realize, is that crucifixion is the most extreme form of punishment possible at the time. The Romans literally invented it in order to utterly humiliate their enemies in the most brutally torturous way possible. And that why Christ came to be crucified. He did it to help us see that we’d truly sunken to a whole new low in our depraved ways. He endured the worst that we humans could come up with.

He chose the most humiliating death possible so that we could see just how far we’d fallen, and just how far He’s willing to go to bring us back.

As much as we'd all highly prefer to look away, we have to face it. We have to hear it. And not just hear it, but we have to listen to the calling of that cross and every moment He hung there in our place. We have to take it all in if we're to truly take hold of the truth it carries. And that's the whole point. He died to help us see the truth. The truth of who we've been. The truth of what we'd done. The truth of what sin really is. The truth of what our sins cost. The truth of how far we've fallen. The truth of how we've devolved into a civilization that would do all that kind of thing to a person. The truth of how broken and lost and depraved and immoral and inconsiderate and heartless we've become.

It all just hurts because it's inescapable. That's the sheer misery in pain. We can't get out of it. We can't run away from it. Whenever something is painful and miserable and scary, we are simply forced to press on through it anyway. And that's what I'm afraid much of society is failing to understand. Sure, we can try to run away from seeing what we did to an innocent Man. We can pretend it's all just made up and silly. We can convince ourselves of a million different reasons to deny the Gospel. But our denial doesn't render it non-existent.

The bottom line is that the only truly innocent Man was killed by sinners for sinners. We're the ones who killed Him, and the ones for whom He was killed. We can focus on all the happy, positive, warm and fuzzy parts all we want to. But until we understand the role we've played in putting Him there, and the role we should have played in taking our sin’s punishment ourselves, we will never come close to understanding the true condition of our souls, let alone begin fighting to take souls back from the hands of the sins that have held them enslaved.

I think the hardest part, the worst part, is that we've become so comfortable in the dark that we're afraid to look at the light. We're afraid to see anything that may awaken our souls and stir our spirits because we know it may even force us to look in the mirror and not like what we see looking back. But if we stay comfortable and avoid anything that makes us uncomfortable, then we'll simply never move from where we are. And that's the purpose of the Gospel. To move us. To motivate us. To teach us who we've been and who we can be through His redemption.

But in order to find His freedom, we have to go through the horrifying task of realizing we need it. In order to accept His forgiveness, we have to come to terms with all the hideous things we've done that are in need of being forgiven. In order to be changed, we have to both admit we need to change and find the willingness to change. And simply put, without that horrifying image of Christ dying on the cross, we'll never find enough motivation within ourselves to make the changes necessary to accept His salvation and live new lives because of it.

It will never be easy to look at. The cross isn't just a symbol of our comfort, because it's also a symbolic reminder of the discomfort we unleashed upon the One who never deserved any of it. His pain brought us peace. His wounds bought our healing. His misery purchased our merciful renewal. We simply can't comprehend what we've been given until we acknowledge what it took to give it to us.

Friends, don't pick the easy parts. Don't confine your faith to only that which makes you feel good about yourself. Yes we're loved. We're made new. We're set free. We've been given a hope and future and a promise of something far better than all of our biggest and best dreams combined. That's all true. But we can't take our eyes off of what Christ did and felt and experienced and endured to make all of those amazing things possible.

We have to let this story do its work in us. We have to look at that which terrifies us in order to understand what brings us peace. Christ did for us what nobody else could have or would have ever done. Don't allow His story to become just about the rewards you've gained from it. Remember what those rewards and promises and kindnesses cost. Because it's only when we know the cost that we can truly understand just how priceless and undeserved His sacrifice and the salvation it earned truly are.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold