How He Finishes It

The cross.  The lamb.  The blood.  There are levels of knowing. How can this horrible act remove my sin?  And where, then, does that forgiven sin go?

Every year I watch Jesus struggle His weary way up the hill, listen to the hammers, wait for the words, 'My God, My God..."  I know the reason for all this.  This horror, this terrifying travesty happened because I sinned, because we all sinned, and because God could not tolerate that.  He could not leave it alone.

God made the Jews kill sweet young lambs to repair this sin.  He made them cast out goats into the wilderness to die because of it.  He told His people that these innocent animals bore the sins of  men.  He made those same men sentence to death what would otherwise nourish them.

Then He sent Jesus.

Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.  He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.--1Peter 3:18.

So, by God's act and decree, what He did to Himself He also does in me.  Jesus Christ died, and so must I.  My corrupt body, my sin, what I am in this world must be put to death so that, like Christ, my Spirit can be raised up.


I must die to the world.  I must die to finish in me what Christ did for all.  As I recognize, confess, and repent of each sin, Christ takes them from me with hands both tender and bleeding, and absorbs them into His own wounds, carries them in His own flesh and blood, and they die there.

On the cross, my sins are carried as far as the east is from the west because Christ moves them from earth to Himself.  By this single act, He gathers sins daily from all confessing believers and transports them to the instant of His own death, a cataclysm shaking heaven and earth, and pronounces, "It is finished."