The Burden of Love: He Himself Bore Our Sins…The Just for the Unjust

REFLECTION QUOTES

“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”

~Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese dissident and politician

“God…did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember our iniquity against us. He showed great patience and bore with us. Then he took the burden of our iniquities on himself. He gave his own Son as a ransom for us—the Holy One for transgressors; the Blameless One for the wicked; the Righteous One for the unrighteous; the Unfading One for the Fading; the Immortal One for those that are mortal.”

~Letter to Diognetus, an early church letter from around A.D. 130

“If thou wouldst be revived to everlasting life thou must by faith as it were set thy self upon the cross of Christ and apply thy hands to his hands, thy feet to his feet, and thy sinful heart to his bleeding heart, and content not thy self with Thomas to put thy finger into his side, but even dive and plunge thy self wholly both body and soul into the wounds and blood of Christ.”

~William Perkins (1558–1602), English clergyman and theologian

“There is little that we can point to in our lives as deserving anything but God’s wrath. Our best moments have been mostly grotesque parodies. Our best loves have been almost always blurred with selfishness and deceit. But there is something to which we can point. Not anything that we ever did or were, but something that was done for us by another. Not our own lives, but the life of one who died in our behalf and yet is still alive. This is our only glory and our only hope. And the sound that it makes is the sound of excitement and gladness and laughter that floats through the night air from a great banquet.”

~Frederick Buechner, American writer and theologian

“It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”

~G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English writer and journalist

“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”

~C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

SERMON PASSAGE


1 Peter 2:21-25 (ESV)

21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

1 Peter 3:18 (NASB)

18 For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit;

Galatians 3:13 (NASB)

13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”—

Isaiah 53:4-6, 11 (ESV)

4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.

1 John 4:10 (J.B. Phillip New Testament)

We see real love, not in that fact that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to make personal atonement for our sins.