Meyer on Easter

March 24, 2010

I was just thinking…

Out of some reading related to the Easter season, I was struck again with the measure of what Christ’s suffering “in my place,” or “for my sins” really means.

F.B. Meyer, a British preacher and teacher of the 19th and early 20th century wrote the following which powerfully describes what Jesus’ suffering on the cross means for fallen sinners (that’s all of us): “This was not a normal human experience. Only once in the history of the race has all iniquity been laid on one head; only once has the curse of sin of the world been borne by one heart; only once has it been possible, in drinking the cup of death, to taste death for every man. ‘He who knew no sin was made sin for us. He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.’ (2 Corinthians 5:21; Isaiah 53:5) On no other hypothesis than that Jesus was the Lamb of God, bearing away the sin of the world can you account for the darkness of that midday midnight which obscured his soul. I cannot tell what transpired; I have no philosophy of the Atonement to offer; I only believe that the whole nature of God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself; and that, in virtue of what was done there, we may apply for forgiveness to the faithfulness and justice of God.” (A Commentary on the Gospel of John, Grand Rapids: Zondervan. 1952, p. 351).

What Jesus did at the cross created a “bridge” and made it possible for sinful man to be reconciled with the Holy God. That event enabled an “Atonement,” a theological term that means quite simply that there is now “At-one-ment” between a repentant sinner and a welcoming God. Thank God for what happened on that ugly hill outside the walls of Jerusalem! He did that for you and me—almost beyond our comprehension!!

The truth of what Jesus did would exhaust the vocabularies of all the languages that have ever existed. It is one of those “Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade, to write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry. Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky” kind of things.

Without Christmas, there would have been no Easter; but without Easter, there would be no salvation nor hope in this world for a heaven that is “out of this world!”