Another Ninety-Five
T H E S I S # 20
The greatest suffering of Christ was taking the sins of all people upon Himself while on the cross. No one understands how this occurred.
2 Peter 2:24: Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.
“In His own body.” He carried our sins in His body! Consider: Your sins were actually, for a time, inside the body of Jesus Christ.
He bore all sins. Everybody’s. “In His body.” While “on the tree.”
Judas betrayed the Master “with a kiss”; the next day Lord Jesus bore that sin while on Calvary’s cross. Jesus carried the lies of the pharisees’ false witnesses, and those that spit in His face and pulled His beard, and those who beat Him with rods and with the whip. He bore Pilate’s sins. And those of Barabbas. And every sin of every person who cried, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” And the sins of the thief who repented…. and the thief who didn’t.
Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.
Adam’s treason put a curse on mankind; Lord Jesus bore that trespass on the cross. And at the same time He bore Cain’s murder of his brother.
Our precious Christ bore the sins of all people during and previous to Noah’s earthly sojourn, sins so perverse “the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth”. And our precious Christ carried within Him every perverse sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. And the sins of the prideful pharaohs who abused His chosen people. And, also, the multiple and varied sins of His own people, including the worship of the golden calf.
Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.
He bore the sins of “the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites” and all the –ites that have risen and fallen throughout our planet throughout the ages. And all the –ites of our time: the Canada-ites, the America-ites, the China-ites, the Australia-ites.
The France-ites, the Brazil-ites, the Greenland-ites, the Germany-ites, the Ukraine-ites, the Spain-ites, the Nigeria-ites, the Egypt-ites, and the many etcetera-ites.
Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.
The rapist’s sins. The fornicator’s sins. The murderer’s sins. The prostitute’s sins. The liar’s sins. The hypocrite’s sins. The kidnapper’s sins. The thief’s sins. The abuser’s sins. The controller’s sins. The pimp’s sins.
Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.
The evangelical’s sins. The pharisee’s sins. The muslim’s sins. The catholic’s sins. The pagan’s sins. The atheist’s sins. The buddhist’s sins. The satanist’s sins. The jew’s sins.
Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.
All past sins. All present sins. All future sins. Every sin and all sins.
If a sin were a thin dime, the sins of humanity would fill a sizeable warehouse. If every sin became a raindrop, the creek would flood over.
Every trespass against God was carried by His Son while on the cross.
How is it possible? No one knows.
Notice Lord Jesus bore our sins in, not on, His body. Inside Christ’s body, as in ours, were His soul and His spirit; did intangible sin somehow get into either His intangible soul or spirit? No one knows.
Luke 23:44: And it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.
How dark was dark? Like when there’s an eclipse of the sun and you can still see well enough to get around? Or rather like the “thick darkness which may even be felt” that cursed Pharaoh’s Egypt for three days? Was our Christ actually out of man’s sight for a time? We only know “there was darkness” for three hours, from noon till three. Why? For what purpose?
Did our Father decree darkness so none would see His Son bearing all humanity’s dark and putrid sins?
Did Lord Jesus deal with our sins one person at a time? If so, each one of us must have been on His mind and in His heart, for a time, while hanging on that cross. Yes, such is impossible considering the huge numbers who lived and live and will live on our planet. But is He not the God of the impossible?
Or did the Lord Jesus deal with all of our sins together, at one time – an immense, repulsive brew of mischief and decadence and feebleness?
We simply don’t know.
2 Corinthians 5:21: He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.
Lord Jesus became sin!? Or was He, as some translations suggest, simply an offering for sin?
We simply do not know.
But one day we will.
How utterly and completely horrifying it must have been for our Lord Jesus Christ to have been contaminated by our corruption and weakness and betrayals and perversions! The “Holiest of all”, He “who knew no sin”, carried “in His own body” all that is despicable and mean and corrupt.
Thank You, Sir.