I was blown away with praise for our Savior after reading this:
Do we really think that the false judgment of men heaped upon Christ would pay the debt for all humankind’s sin? Do we really think that a crown of thorns and whips and nails and a wooden cross and all the other facets of the crucifixion that we glamorize are powerful enough to save us?
Picture Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. As he kneels before his Father, drops of sweat and blood fall together from his head. Why is he in such agony and pain? The answer is not because he is afraid of crucifixion. He is not trembling because of what the Roman soldiers are about to do to him.
Since that day countless men and women in the history of Christianity have died for their faith. Some of them were not just hung on crosses; they were burned there. Many of them went to their crosses singing.
. . .
Did these men and women in Christian history have more courage than Christ himself? Why was he trembling in that garden, weeping and full of anguish? We can rest assured that he was not a coward about to face Roman soldiers. Instead he was a Savior about to endure divine wrath.
Listen to his words: ‘My Father, it if is possible, may this cup be taken from me.’ The ‘cup’ is not a reference to a wooden cross; it is a reference to divine judgment. It is the cup of God’s wrath.
This is what Jesus is recoiling from in the garden. All God’s holy wrath and hatred toward sin and sinners, stored up since the beginning of the world, is about to be poured out on him, and he is sweating blood at the thought of it.
What happened at the Cross was not primarily about nails being thrust into Jesus’ hands and feet but about the wrath due your sin and my sin being thrust upon his soul. In that holy moment, all the righteous wrath and justice of God due us came rushing down like a torrent on Christ himself. Some say, ‘God looked down and could not bear to see the suffering that the soldiers were inflicting on Jesus, so he turned away.’ But this is not true. God turned away because he could not bear to see your sin and my sin on his Son.
This was taken from parts of chapter 2 from Radical by Platt.
