Based on John 12:27-36 (New King James Version)
“Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.’ Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to Him.’ Jesus answered and said, ‘This voice did not come because of Me, but for your sake. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.’ This He said, signifying by what death He would die. The people answered Him, ‘We have heard from the law that the Christ remains forever; and how can You say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this Son of Man?’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘A little while longer the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you; he who walks in darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.’ These things Jesus spoke, and departed, and was hidden from them.”
Have you ever imagined how the Lord must have felt knowing during all of His days here on Earth that He was going to die in the most horrid way for the sins of the world? What did every minute that passed feel like for Him as His time kept drawing closer and closer to the horrible sacrifice of His death? I don’t think He felt good about it. Among the more insensitive and selfish, it may be said that: “Well, that’s what He came for, right?” And yes, He Himself acknowledged that, but nonetheless, that is what made the sacrifice so perfect: He was 100% human, with all of our weaknesses, feelings, and sensitivities. He felt pain, anguish, loneliness, and everything else we would have felt if the same were to happen to us (although no one would suffer what He did). He felt impotence of injustice, even though He is the Almighty. He felt loneliness. He felt the scorn and mockery. He felt the beatings and the lashes when they lashed Him with whips that were filled with pieces of glass and metal as they stripped off pieces of skin and flesh, leaving parts of His skeleton exposed with blood behind. He felt it when they placed the crown of thorns on His head. He felt the large nails they used as they drove them through His hands and feet, those of which would take the weight of His body. He felt hunger, thirst, and extreme pain upon His whole body as He hung on the cross. In the process, He felt something that none of us would ever feel: the weight of all mankind’s sin upon Him. And finally, as He breathed His last breath, He felt death. And He knew that all of this would happen way before it actually did.
Those people who spoke to Him in this passage ignored the Scriptures, because this was written about the Messiah over 700 years before, that He would be sacrificed and killed for the people. The Prophet Isaiah foretold it like this: “Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, everyone, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked—but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Isaiah 53.
Before the time of the rapture of which the Bible talks about is fulfilled (when the Lord will raise the dead in Christ from their tombs, and those of us still alive will be caught up into the clouds), each person shall die, including every believer, without exceptions. Every person will know what death is, and some sooner than others. And in reality, because of our sins, the natural consequence is that we should die, even though we may have been redeemed by the Lord because everything has consequences. But, what happened to the Lord was not fair. The thief that was to the right of the Lord understood this, when he said: “And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.” Luke 23:41.
Why talk about this? Because in order to be able to appreciate something, we must understand what was given, what was done for us. First, the Lord did not have to do what He did. There was no obligation neither on His part nor from the Father. What they did, they did because they wanted to, because of goodness, mercy, love, etc. Second, since He suffered it, the Lord experienced all of mankind’s injustice. He suffered for things He had nothing to do with. And third, not only did He die, but He died in the most horrid way a person could die. The process of the crucifixion that was used for Him was unique. It was a long and extended process. Through the same process, a supernatural power was observed, because a common man could not have made it to the place where they crucified Him. Within all of the torture that His body suffered and the amount of blood He lost, it was impossible for anyone to have lasted so long being conscious.
Now then, what should happen with this knowledge of the Lord’s divine sacrifice? First, there should be profound and infinite acknowledgement and gratefulness. Second, we should use this as the reason for living a very different life, a truly transformed life. Your salvation was given freely to you, but it cost a great and infinite price. In the end, the Lord did everything so that we could believe in the Light, so we could be children of the Light, and so we could do things that are of the Light. So, what effect has the Divine Sacrifice had on your life? Lord bless! John