A Library Of Resources For Spiritual Growth
“At the birth of the Son of God,” Douglas Webster has written, “there was brightness at midnight; at the death of the Son of God there was darkness at noon.” What happened in the darkness is expressed by biblical writers in a variety of ways:
He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment of our peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own ay; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5-6)
Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)
The Son of man (came)…to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45)
Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people. (Hebrews 9:28)
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. (1 Peter 2:24)
Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. (1 Peter 3:18)
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. (Galatians 3:13)
The fearful concept of Jesus “bearing,” even actually “becoming,” our sin and curse, how it could be and what it could mean, we will leave until the next chapters. Meanwhile, it seems that the darkness of the sky was an outward symbol of the spiritual darkness that enveloped him. For what is darkness in biblical symbolism but separation from God who is light and in whom “there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5)? “Outer darkness” was one of the expressions Jesus used for hell, since it is an absolute exclusion from the light of God’s presence. Into that outer darkness the Son of God plunged for us. Our sins blotted out the sunshine of his Father’s face. We may even dare to say that our sins sent Christ to hell—not to the “hell” (hades, the abode of the dead) to which the Creed says he “descended” after death, but to the “hell” (gehenna, the place of punishment) to which our sins condemned him before his body died.
The Cross of Christ - John Stott
All quotes are randomly selected from our Topical Quotes Treasury using this schedule.
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