“And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58)
He took on the form of a servant, His life was lived to please the Father, and He asks us to do the same. Go against everything in your nature, deny your lusts, deny your wants, love those the world calls unlovable. “Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.” (Romans 12:17)
I mean this in no offensive way whatsoever, but for the Lord, who knew no sin, to tell us to deny sin seems, well, I don’t quite have the words for it. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2nd Cor. 5:21)
He didn’t just take the consequences of our sins upon Himself, He became sin, He was tempted in all ways that we are, but never once sinned, we do not have that ability. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1st John 1:8)
Here is the best analogy I can offer you, and it fails to speak to what I am attempting to say here. Many decades ago, I was ordered by the courts to attend psychological counseling sessions, because I was not a nice person. After revealing to the first two psychologists my thoughts about them, and they rejecting to council me, I was sent to a third, and I might add, my final choice or be incarcerated, counselor. After my twice a week, six month required sessions were completed and the courts dropped the charges against me, I paid out of my own pocket to continue speaking with this person because she was once what I was, an outcast, downtrodden, heartless, without mercy and a serious drunk and junkie.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was never any of these things, and so in the minds of many, He can in no way relate to what we have experienced. He never sinned, we have, and we will again. It is why the angels desire to look into this thing called grace, and it is why few truly understand it.
In their minds it is incomprehensible, how can one who has never woken up in the gutter after a three-day binge understand how to help one who has? How can One who has never sinned help those who lived a life of blatant sin? Did He who knows the beginning from the end, in whose image we are created, from whose face all is open and naked need to experience the desires of the flesh to understand them fully?
I think not.
“He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.” (Matt. 27:42)
No, you wouldn’t.
“And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (Luke 16:31)
Because He is omniscient, He did not need to sin to understand sin, He became sin, all sin. That was more than anything any of us will ever be able to comprehend.
“You just don’t know what its like.” No, I don’t, but He does.
There is a great mystery here that I do not believe we will ever fully comprehend, the words are there, “To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” (Romans 3:26) The love is shown, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) But how does He who never sinned understand the plight of one who has?
To become sin, all sin, yet never to have sinned. We will never realize the depth of those words.
A debt was owed, the price has been paid, every single sin you have ever committed, no matter how vile, no matter how irreprehensible, has been laid on Him. He has paid the price in full for you. We do not have to understand it, not logic, not love, nothing in us will ever be able to fully comprehend what was done for us that day. All we need to do is believe.
Faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone.
