Outrageous Love

"He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her sheerer is silent, so He did not open His mouth."
Isaiah 53:7

If there were ever a man who deserved to live a life filled with joy, it would have been Jesus. He deserved to be clothed in royal robes, crowned with a golden crown, and handed a scepter. He deserved to be honored and respected. His character was marked by a righteousness no other man has ever achieved. Miracles, forgiveness, teaching, and healing that transcended from the physical realm to the emotional and spiritual realms characterized His ministry. He exhibited power and authority over nature, illness, death, and demons that taunted men's souls. More importantly a sacrificial unconditional love was the motivation for every act He performed and for every word He spoke. To begin to understand the depths of Christ's outrageous love we have to look past the life He lived to the death He died. It was in His life that He set aside His right to live eternally to experience our sin. It was in the death he died that His love poured out. He set aside His glory to bear the burden of all of our ugly sin. He chose to set aside His relationship with His Father to feel our deepest pain—separation from the Heavenly Father.

During His life, Christ expressed His love through teaching, confrontations, miracles. transparent relationships, and continuous prayer. He also chose to express His love another way. As He was arrested, tried, beaten, and crucified, He chose to love through a determined silence that spoke as loudly as the words He preached and as loudly as the actions he demonstrated. To prove His love to us, the same mouth that spoke the universe into being remained silent in the face of accusations. The same mouth that calmed angry seas remained silent as crowds mocked Him. The same voice that preached to crowds was silent during illegal trials. It was silent when the earth darkened and as sin was poured out on Him. The same voice that called a dead man out of  the tomb refused to answer false accusations hurled, refused to call down angels to help Him. The same voice that caused soldiers to fall back when they arrested Him was silent as He endured brutal beatings. 

He was God. He was innocent. He was sinless. He had every right to defend Himself and He had the power to walk away from the hate and the sin—yet He chose to remain silent, sentencing Himself to die. He even remained silent when soldiers took whips with sharp stones and bits of bones embedded in the end and beat Him, ripping His flesh wide open. He was silent when they put a scarlet robe on His bleeding flesh and jammed a crown of thorns onto His head. So enraged by the perfect life He lived, they slapped Him and pulled hairs out of His beard, hurling curses and spit at Him. They even drew lots to see who would get His clothes. He was silent as they placed His hands on the cross bar and hammered nails through His hands and His feet. With each clang of the hammer, the searing pain of the nails tearing through flesh and bones, emphasized His silence, As they picked up the cross and dropped it into the ground He faced faces filled with hate. He remained silent when the searing pain of nails intensified with each breath He took. He remained silent when His bloody, raw back rubbed against the wood grain. He remained silent as the thorns dug in His brow and the blood trickled down. 

Hanging suspended between heaven and earth every breath increased the pain, He did we could never have done. He looked at the people below him and broke His silence to ask His Father to forgive them. As our sin was placed on Him, a cold darkness blanketed the earth. Christ was thrust into another realm of pain He had never before experienced – it was the emotional pain you and I feel when we are bound by sin--He felt the same loneliness we feel when we walk away from God in guilt. He felt the same hopelessness and despair we feel when we no longer go to our Father to have needs met. He felt the same sense of being forsaken as we feel when we are buried beneath a mountain of shame. Jesus, alone for the first time in all eternity, was separated from His heavenly Father. Then and only then He broke His silence. It was not a cry for His release, but a heart-rending cry that rose up from the deepest parts of His soul. "My God, My God why have You forsaken me?" With a heart broken by separation, He died our death.

By looking at His death, we get glimpses of the depth of His love and we see the high cost of grace. He loved enough to die for fearful disciples who ran when He was arrested, to die for Peter who vehemently denied knowing Him, to die for those who arrested Him, for those who beat Him, for those who mocked Him, for those who hammered the nails. He even loved deeply enough to stay on the cross when sin made Him feel alone and forsaken. His outrageous love was enough to endure the cruelty of the cross for the joy of presenting us to His Father—not as sinners, but as beloved children, purchased and purified by His blood. He loved with a love so outrageous it killed Him. I want to remember that when I face trials and God seems silent. His silence has been one of the loudest declarations of His love we will ever hear. He has chosen to be a peculiar person, a priest, and an adopted child. He has promised to never leave me or forsake me. So, when He chooses to speak to me through His silence again, I want to hear what He is saying?

Prayer: Father, thank you for the love that Christ demonstrated to us in His suffering and His death. We also thank you for your forgiveness. Please help us love those who are difficult to love. May our commitments of love not be here today and gone tomorrow -- but be firm and steadfast through every circumstance imaginable. May we always experience Your love at it deepest levels when You seem to be silent. AMEN.