The Love of Christ

Think of the love of Christ for a moment.  The Word was made flesh and dwelt among of us.  God Incarnate dwelt among us here on Earth for 33 years.  He was born of a virgin; He lived in humility as a poor man, a friend of sinners, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, despised and rejected of men.  Christ Jesus, the ever blessed Creator, to whom no pain, suffering, or shame should ever come, bled and died for His enemies.  Jesus loved guilty men.  Jesus loved you to death on purpose.  Jesus loved you only because He loved you, not because there is anything good in you.  Run from your love for sinning, and run to the love for Christ Jesus.  Jesus has a lot of Love to give away to sinners.

God so loved poor fallen man, that He took upon Himself our nature and actually became a man.  Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and was made of no reputation.  Christ came under the Law, and kept it perfectly by His active and passive obedience.  He fulfilled all the Law's commands and bore all its penalty on our behalf.  He was persecuted, threatened, and then taken before human judges and unjustly condemned.  He was seized by His captors, the Roman soldiers; they hurried Him to the high priest, Herod and Pilate where He was falsely accused for crimes He never committed.  The soldiers crowned Jesus with thorns, and whipped Him with a scourge.  He was nailed to a Cross, hung up as a felon and numbered with the transgressors.

The Savior endured the shame and spitting, the jeers and jibes, the cruel looks, and malicious speech and taunts.  He bled away His life for your sins, bearing almighty wrath, and enduring the dreaded sentence of eternal death which is attached to your sins.  Jesus hung upon the Cross, and bleeds and dies.  God is glorified at Calvary for divine justice has its due and Law's demands were vindicated.  Divine Justice was satisfied at the Cross by the Lamb of God all by Himself.

Then Jesus' mangled body was laid in a borrowed tomb for three days.  Then the third morning He came back to life and actually and really rose from the dead bodily.  The best news this world ever heard came from a graveyard delivered by a woman named Mary.  Low in the grave He lay, waiting the coming day. Vainly the soldiers rolled the stone over the face of the tomb and put Pilate's seal upon it, but Death could not keep the Resurrection and the Life in the grave.  Jesus tore away the bars of death. Up from the grave He arose with a mighty triumph over sin, death, and hell.  He arose a Victor from Death itself, and now He is alive forevermore, and is reigning and interceding at the right hand of God in glory.  Hallelujah Christ Jesus is risen from the dead!  He did all this for your soul.  *Soli Autem Crucis - The Cross Alone*