Good Monday morning (10-11-10),

I’ve been thinking about what Jesus did for me — what’s already completed, finished, zipped up and shipped out. As is usual when I attempt to describe something almost totally spiritual, words fail.

But The Word is never insufficient, it can’t go wrong, it always comes through. So, in writing about what Jesus accomplished for me in the atonement, I turn to the eternal truth of God’s Word and find the help I need.

1. Jesus removed the sin of the world. He removed the sin by paying the penalty, or the price, required of the one who committed the sin. By serving the sentence, taking my punishment, He removed the sin by destroying the sin. It isn’t going to be done; it is already finished.

When the Word says, “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities”, that means He bore my pain. He took the wounds and the bruises I deserved because of the evil I would do. Notice: the evil I would do. Jesus suffered for my transgressions, He bore my guilt, long before I was born.

There is nothing more I can do to make things right with God. All my wrongs against Him have already been righted.

2. Another component of the Atonement, the work Jesus did for me, is a provision for peace. He received the discipline, allowed Himself to be corrected, because that was necessary in order to obtain peace.

Until the punishment for sin had been carried out there would be no peace, because there is no peace where guilt and condemnation live. I can rest in perfect peace today, not because I have done nothing wrong, but because the wrong has been satisfied. My conscience is clean…not because of good I have done…but because Someone paid the price to make it white as snow.

3. Finally, the price Jesus paid in the Atonement included healing: both physical and spiritual. I am healed and made whole. I have been given authority over disease and infirmity because of what Jesus suffered on my behalf.

It’s so difficult in my human way of thinking, this linear thought where everything has to make sense in an orderly fashion, to realize that the most important provisions for my life have nothing to do with who I am or what I do. I’m so shaped by a culture that holds out reward and punishment like the carrot and the stick.

I’m programmed like Pavlov’s dog to believe I receive good when I’ve been good…and to expect punishment when I have not been good.

But God’s ways are not our ways. Contrary to all worldly logic He determined that Another, who had done no wrong, would suffer my punishment. He established that Another, who had never contemplated evil, would bear my sicknesses. His plan substituted Another, who would receive the chastisement for my guilt and mistakes, so I could be at peace with my Creator and with myself.

How do I respond to such extravagant love? What do I say to One who did not consider it anything important to give up and turn away from the status of being equal to God, so He could bear the scolding and criticism and chastening and penalty that I rightly deserved?

How do I relate to the One Who took my place?

There is no response except love — because there is nothing else I can offer Him that has any meaning or value in His world. And because love is all He has ever requested from me.

So today, as inadequate and undeserving as I feel (and rightly so, because I am both of those things in abundance), I will endeavor to simply love my Savior. I will attempt to love Him the way He has asked to be loved.

I will love Him before all others. I will love Him with a pure heart. I will love others as I love myself, putting their needs before my own because I am using Him as a model for my behavior.

And I will obey Him. Because He said that if I love Him I will obey Him. I am not going to be good or be kind or be generous to earn His love or His peace or His healing. All those things have already been accomplished. They are all finished. They have been completed.

I will obey Him just because I love Him. Obedience is my response to everything He has done for me, because everything He did was rooted in His exorbitant, no-holds-barred, giving-up-Heaven-to-pay-my-penalty kind of love.

I understand I will not always be successful in loving Him, or others, in that fashion. But I’m beginning to comprehend how much He loves me and that makes me believe it is possible for me to try. He doesn’t expect perfection. He expects me to make the effort. I can love Him because He first loved me, and in loving me showed me how to love Him and love others.

I can make the attempt. That’s all He asks. It is little enough under the circumstances.

“He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains of punishment…He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities, the chastisement needful to obtain peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes that wounded Him we are healed and made whole.” Isaiah 53:4-5

Laurie Gross