Jesus Suffered - so WHAT?

Queer title? We know that God sent his only son Jesus to earth; He suffered and died for our sin, and rose again. Christians know that God made this sacrifice because He loved us and wanted us to be with Him.

But some may look at that sacrifice and think, “how is that any worse than the things we go through today?”

You may know someone who has died of cancer in horrible pain and their family is devastated. There is a place I go to check up on kids with cancer in Arkansas Children's Hospital on the internet. There is a list of children on the page that have died of the monster. Many of the kids I had come to virtually know passed unexpectedly, and whenever I see that list of familiar names all I can think is, "WHY?"

Your own brother may have taken his life for reasons you don't understand, and you know that you will never see him again in this life on earth.

I know you've walked through Wal-Mart and seen those "Have you seen me?" charts of an abducted child who has been stolen away and ten years later, nobody knows what happened.

So with all this pain and suffering in the world, for God to send His only Son to die... only to be raised again just three days later... does not seem to measure up to all the hurt we endure today. It may just not seem like enough to you.

What do we know of Jesus? "Well, let’s see... He healed people, He taught people, He worked miracles, He had twelve disciples, He was God's Son... what else?" The most important thing about him is that He was without sin. He had never ever sinned in His whole life. Let's talk about inner pain. The kind that sin causes. The kind that happens when you know you've done something wrong and it preys on your mind all the time. Put yourself in Cain's shoes for a minute. When he killed his brother, it was probably the first time he'd ever seen a dead person, and knowing he had done that awful thing probably gave him nightmares for the rest of his life. Would you want to live with that? Maybe you've stolen something of little consequence and then you realized the guilty conscience you got wasn't worth the four dollars you still have in your pocket. Do you like living with that? It's hard to admit what you did and apologize for something like that, and knowing that you should do it and can't bear to only makes the guilty feeling worse. Imagine how you'd feel if you robbed a jewelry store! Some people have. Imagine if, in spite of your guilt, you kept on stealing and lying and getting away with it, feeling worse and worse and not knowing what to do about it. Not a good feeling. What do you do? We've all done something that's preyed on our conscience and it feels terrible. Where am I going with this?

"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 had no sin. We talked about that. No guilty feelings, no pain that sin caused.

In those days people would sacrifice these perfect little lambs who hadn't done anything wrong every day in order for God to forgive them of their sin. Innocent blood is the only way to get God's forgiveness. But it wasn't enough. Too much sin, too little lamb. Every time you sinned, God's judgment was upon you. God didn’t want things to be this way. He knew there was a way - a greater sacrifice that could be sacrificed – that would enable Him to forgive us our sin. So He sent His own perfect Lamb, and instead of just sacrificing Him for our sin, the sacrifice became sin. Jesus didn't just "wear" the sins that had already been committed - He became sin. He was sin. All the sin that had been and EVER will be committed! Something disgusting for God to look at. Can you imagine having every sin there will ever be on this earth on your shoulders? Can you imagine everything being all your fault? You know the bad feeling of "a little" sin - can you imagine all the sin ever? Jesus had never even had the sin of putting gum in a classmate's hair, so this was all horrifically new. THAT was the sacrifice. The ultimate perfect lamb has enabled God to forgive all the sins you will ever commit. It wasn't how He suffered, necessarily, though the cross makes it more special. The cross is not the cup He prayed to be taken away in the garden. It was becoming sin. It was having God too repulsed to look at His own son.