Day by Day

[Soldier4Christ]

"I’m Thirsty"

Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty." A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. John 19:28-29

I spoke last year to a group of missionary doctors about how these words communicate to us that Jesus is real. After all those great, moving, profound words of forgiveness, love, and eternal life, this “I am thirsty” sounds very much like any other man dying of wounds inflicted upon Him. That is why His men have recorded it. They wanted us to know that He died as real men die.

After I spoke, the medical doctor who had introduced me was moved almost to tears. He told me about his son, 21 years of age, who had been fatally injured in a mountain-climbing expedition. He was the lead man in his team and had just made his way to a ledge above the rest of the young men. As he did, he came tumbling down with rock falling all around him. The next man on the team snagged him by the rope and let him down to a ledge below. The boys climbed down and were there with him for the 10 minutes before his death. They came back to report that during those 10 minutes his son had said two things: “It hurts” and “I’m thirsty.”

From his long experience in medicine, the father understood that kind of language. It’s for real. It was the language of the man who died that day on His cross. He is for real, and so is everything about Him—His Sonship with the Father, His claim to be the Messiah, the fulfillment of God’s promise to the world. He is the Savior of the world.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Goodbye, Mother"

When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, "Dear woman, here is your son," and to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. John 19:26-27

Jesus promised His mother, as He does all of us, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Here in these last moments, He is showing again how really human He is.

I have watched families say good-bye to a son in uniform, leaving to resume his station, maybe somewhere halfway across the world. The father shakes hands with his boy and impulsively embraces him. The boy is moved and tries not to show it too much. Sister kisses him and then starts to cry openly. The younger brother holds out his hand, trying to pass off this solemn moment with a light remark. The mother’s pain is etched in her face and forms dark pools in her eyes. After the boy is gone, one sees the family going down the long corridor in the airport, the women clutching each other, the younger brother trying to act as if nothing has happened, and the father walking beside them, alone with his thoughts. Taking leave from family and friends would not be so hard if it were not for the fact that each parting is a reminder of another from which there is no returning. In the back of our minds is the possibility: we may never see these people again.

Here at the cross of Christ, we come face-to-face with love as it was always meant to be. There is courage to take the unbearable, hope to overcome the hopelessness, and joy to meet the inevitability of death itself. There is faith and in that faith victory.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Promise of Paradise"

Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." Luke 23:42-43

On Christmas Eve last year I visited an army stockade in Southeast Asia and talked with prisoners who were there because of major crimes like murder, rape, and assault with intent to kill.

Among them there was not one whom you could describe as the criminal “type.” Each was different, and each for real. I could talk to them about that one man who was born for real, lived a real life just like ours, died for real, and rose from the dead as the real man He is.

Is Jesus for them, as we like to think He is for us? If He is not for them, He is not for us. If He is for us, He is for them, too. He is for everyone, and that’s for real.

Jesus Christ came for real people, not for imaginary stereotypes. We write off whole classes of people; He writes off no one because he is rich or poor, because he is black or white, because had a jail record, because he is old or young.

When Jesus was executed, two criminals were crucified alongside Him. The two criminals deserved to die. One of them recognized that Jesus had the power to save him and asked simply, “Jesus, remember me.” That man got more than he dreamed of: the promise of paradise. God promises more than anybody could ever ask or think. He gives more than we desire or deserve. We ask for a creek, and He gives us an ocean.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Forgive Them"

Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. Luke 23:34

If there is anything to Lent at all, it is the cross of Jesus Christ.

There you see a piece of raw life. It isn’t a stage, but the world in which we live. In that world a real man died for real people. Because of His death there is real forgiveness for the real sins of those real people—sins they don’t like to talk about, sins they don’t want to recognize, sins that damn and kill.

The cross was an outrage at the time, and it still is. It was never meant to be a genteel fixture in a stately gothic cathedral. The men who went out to tell His story lived in the middle of a world that still considered crucifixion not a religious act but an outrage. They said His cross was a skandalon, a fatal obstacle to faith.

Real people need forgiveness. The heart of forgiveness is the cross of Jesus Christ, a real man. He is not a little God created by His followers. He is not a religious figure popping up in the pages of history. This is God’s Son, crucified as a real man on a real cross, proving His Sonship once and for all: “Father, forgive them,” He said, “They do not know what they are doing”

Our world needs redemption. It cannot live without His forgiveness. In His cross, the death of that real man by that real instrument of torture, there is forgiveness. That’s the Good News of God in Jesus Christ.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Anything but Beautiful"

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. Isaiah 53:2

None of Jesus’ men who were with Him practically every day for three years ever bothered to give us a really good description of His personal appearance. We do not know whether He was short or tall, or even whether He had a beard. It really does not matter, they seem to say. But what He was and what He did overwhelmed them!

What people saw on the day of His crucifixion was a man beaten and bloodied, His face so marred and His figure so fractured that you could hardly recognize Him as a man. He was anything but beautiful that day. Yet He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.

He is like a fireman whose face was burned so badly from fighting a tremendous fire that people don’t like to look at him. But he rescued a woman from that burning building, and the disfigurement of his face somehow never repels her. She sees herself in that face and in those brutally burned hands.

Liberated from death with the scars still in His hands and feet, and the mark of the spear in His side, the Son of God goes forth to war for us. We are saints who know we are sinners saved by the grace of God on that anything-but-beautiful day, by that anything-but-beautiful silent sufferer. He died to give struggling people rest. “Come to Me,” He said, “all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). It is the rest of the children of God.

[Soldier4Christ]

"How Do You Take Jesus?"

Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). John 19:16-17

How do you take Jesus, who allows Himself to be taken and goes out bearing His cross to the place of the crucifixion?

With a shrug of the shoulders, a little bit of indignation soon forgotten? With the sad recognition that this is the way the world does things? Or seeing it as people began to see it after He rose from the dead, the dramatic declaration of the grace and the glory of the great God Himself?

How do you take Jesus? Take Him in faith with everything that goes along with being His disciple. As Jesus Himself said, “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24).

It sounds hard and it is. You can’t bear Christ’s cross. He bore that once to pay for the sins of the world as only He could. That cross of His is the glory of God to you. You can take up your cross, which is whatever it takes for you to be a follower of Jesus. The glory of God is in the cross you bear.

Go and do in the power of Jesus. The same power of God that raised Him from the dead will give you the power to bear your cross. You can forgive when you know you have been forgiven by God Himself—all for the sake of Jesus. You can live, when you know that Jesus lives in you.

[Soldier4Christ]

"It Is Finished"

When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19:30

Your relationship to Christ is not something you can attend to later. There may be other matters that seem to claim your primary attention, making a living, providing a good home, furnishing an education for your children, improving your personal circumstances.

I want to tell you today that not one of these concerns is nearly as serious as a right relationship with God through Christ.

Perhaps you think, “I would like to believe, but how can Christ's death 2,000 years ago mean anything to me today?” As the stars reflect the glory of the sun, so the face of Jesus Christ reflects the glory of God shining on you right this moment. The light of God's kindness and God's forgiveness is there to stay.

The cross of Christ is inescapable. Either you shrink from it or you embrace it, but you cannot be indifferent to it. Calvary is not so much a scene as a mirror, for it reveals something about ourselves, our moral destitution, our twisted way of looking at things, our failure to live the kind of life we ought to live. By the answer we give to the cross, we judge ourselves.

Let Jesus Christ take your hand and lead you along the way, till you reach that turn in the road where for the first time you will come in sight of the land of which you had hardly dared to dream. By His cross, Christ tells you how to live. What may be even more important, by His cross Christ tells you how to die.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Turned Off by the Cross"

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” That’s the talk of a man who once had been turned off by the cross of Christ, and then was turned on by that same cross. Jesus Christ died for sin—not His but ours. That’s the glory of the cross of Jesus Christ, but it is also the reason some are turned off by His cross. They turn away from it for they cannot and will not see themselves on that cross.

Faith means going Christ’s way, which is the way of the cross. Some people think life is supposed to be one glorious picnic and that anything else is not really life. I have even heard religious people giving themselves credit for being prosperous because they followed God. The secret of the cross of Jesus Christ is that life is not a matter of things. Things you can take or leave.

It isn’t enough that you have to see God in the cross of Jesus Christ—you have to see God in your own crosses. That turns people off. They are perfectly content to see God in their prosperity, but they don’t want to see God in their adversity. They don’t want to see adversity at all. Life is a thing of the Spirit, with joy running over in both good times and bad. It is knowing God, trusting God, following God, and hoping in God, just letting God lead and following His leading. That’s the secret of real life.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Charm or Charter?"

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 1 Corinthians 1:18

The cross has become one of the most common symbols of our day. But what does it mean? Is it a charm, as many people seem to treat it, or is it a charter to an especially satisfying way of life?

I’ve noticed that some people today wear little crosses made of nails around their necks. It’s a little closer to the real cross. I like a simple cross, for the most part, one that says something about crucifixion and resurrection at the same time. It is a sign of remembrance that Christ died for our sins and was raised again from the dead, commanding our faith.

The cross of Christ is not just a symbol, it is a charter for life. It is human cruelty and human sin turned by the power of God into divine grace and forgiveness working their way into the hearts of people. It represents a real demonstration in real life of the power of God.

By God’s power, Christ died on that cross for the sins of the world. By the power of God, the sins of people are forgiven. By the power of God, people are raised again from death to life. By the power of God, things happen in this world of ours—things that only God could do!

That’s the meaning of the cross of Christ.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Death’s Indignities"

"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:55, 57

In the cross of Jesus Christ I see God dealing with death and all of its indignities. He did not avoid it; He took it just as it is. That’s God, facing death.

In Jesus Christ you see God letting death have its way with Him, heaping the indignities of pain and helplessness upon Him. In the cross of Jesus Christ, God dealt with the cause of death, which is sin. His Son died without sin. He didn’t have to die; He just laid His life on the line. God’s Son took the ultimate indignity of sin upon Himself. Though He was without sin, He was made to be sin for all this sinful world of ours.

You say that isn’t right? Maybe it isn’t to our way of thinking. But it’s God’s way of doing things. His is not the ordinary way. If sin causes injustice and evil and suffering and tragedy, the Son of God took that for all of us. If sin causes death, He took that, too. He did not just die a martyr’s death. He faced the greatest enemy of all and overcame it.

Jesus Christ bore the indignity for us. It is our sin and our death that He took. Nobody has understood His cross until he has gotten that. As the prophet said, "He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows … He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4-5). That’s what He did.

[Soldier4Christ]

"When I Survey the Wondrous Cross"

But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." John 12:32

The hymn writer Isaac Watts celebrated the central symbol of our faith in his well-known hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” This is the cross of Christ, not a replica of wood or stone encased in gold, but the [one] on which “the Prince of Glory died.”

The cross struck horror into the hearts of millions in the ancient world, just as the twisted cross of the Nazi swastika or the hammer and sickle of communism were meant to strike terror into the modern world. No one gloried in the cross until the Prince of Glory was elevated upon it. Then the cross became for the first time the “wondrous cross,” the sight of which can turn a man’s life inside out. The dying Prince of Glory made it so.

Christ was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification. The Crucified is not dead. He lives! And faith is not in vain. As He is true and real, as His wondrous cross was true and real, as the open tomb is true and real, so true and real is faith that trusts in Him.

At the cross, life meets death, and only life remains for those who pin their hopes on Him. Fear is turned into faith, and hatred of God and man transformed into love. All this comes from the Savior Christ who speaks to you today: The whole realm of nature is Mine. I gave it all up for you. For you I died. For you I live.

[Soldier4Christ]

"The Final Solution"

It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour. "Here is your king," Pilate said to the Jews. But they shouted, "Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!" "Shall I crucify your king?" Pilate asked. "We have no king but Caesar," the chief priests answered. John 19:14-15

Hatred killed Jesus. We can hate just like the crowd that crucified Him. We cannot understand these events unless we recognize that we could very well have been there. Who of us has not been drawn into that hurricane of hatred where men lose their good sense—doing, saying, and thinking things they know very well to be unworthy of human beings.

People who consider themselves decent and respectable have been responsible in our own time for some of the worst manifestations of hatred that have crept up in the modern scene. When hatred takes over, truth and honesty go by the board. Nothing else matters, except to accomplish the ends of hatred. Hatred has one goal in view: the final solution.

Our Lord searched the crowd in vain for even one look of pity. It looked like hatred overcame that day, but hatred was being overcome. Wherever people keep the cross of Christ in view today, everything is changed.

Christ was crucified for sin, even the sin of hatred. By virtue of the innocent death of Jesus Christ at Calvary, sin has been forgiven. No man can recognize that fact, accepting forgiveness for his own sin, and continue to hate. It just can't be done.

For love, Christ went to His cross. For love, He died. For love, He lives. Hate makes no sense at all, but love makes all the sense in the world. It is God's final solution to the problems of mankind.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Nothing to Live For"

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1

Suicides occur in the United States at the rate of about 60 a day (in 1965), and one can only guess what the worldwide figures must be. These are people who openly and avowedly took their own lives; the figure does not include what authorities call “hidden suicides,” which have been estimated by reputable authorities to be five times as numerous as the official figures.

Without knowing exactly what is wrong, people all over the world know that something is wrong with themselves. Self-condemnation leads to self-distrust, which turns into self-despair, and finally to self-loathing. This is the hell in which millions of people are living today. Abject loneliness is the result, but not the problem. The problem is [often] guilt, made worse when it is not recognized for what it is and what it does.

The cross of Christ is the only real solution to guilt. Saint Paul expressed it in words that have come with healing power in moments of great desperation: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” No condemnation. This is the Good News. It is meant for all, for you.

It is there to give life with new surging power that comes from faith in Christ to fill the emptiness of the old house haunted with guilt.

No man is too desperate to be saved by the power of Christ. No life is too empty to be revived by the power of the living Christ.

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"Selling Out"

The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: "Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times." Luke 22:61

Saint Luke tells the unadorned story of Simon Peter's disloyalty. He does not editorialize; he does not have to. The facts speak for themselves: “A servant girl saw [Peter] seated there in the firelight. She looked closely at him and said, ‘This man was with Him.’ But he denied it, ‘Woman, I don’t know Him,’ he said. A little later someone else saw him and said, ‘You also are one of them.’ ‘Man, I am not!’ Peter replied. About an hour later another asserted, ‘Certainly this fellow was with Him, for he is a Galilean.’ Peter replied, ‘Man I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: ‘Before the rooster crows today, you will disown Me three times’” (Luke 22:56-61).

Just a look from Jesus and the sell-out is complete. Jesus and Peter know. That is enough. Peter knew what his disloyalty meant, and no amount of bitter tears could make up for what he had done. Christ paid the price for Peter’s disloyalty and ours. He makes it all good, no matter what we have been or done. His cross is your forgiveness.

Simon Peter did not turn away from Christ. He did turn away from himself in that bitter moment when it came to him that he had sold out. Turning away from himself, from what he had been and what he had done, he was on his way to Christ. This is the way of repentance and faith, away from yourself and on your way to Christ.

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"Under Pressure"

The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: "Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times." Luke 22:61

Simon Peter had pledged his whole life to Jesus, promising, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death” (Luke 22:33). Peter knew very well that Jesus was a controversial figure, particularly in Jerusalem. He was well aware that the leaders of the people, both political and religious, were actively plotting to get rid of Christ. Nevertheless, he did not hesitate to follow. His loyalty was unshaken and, he thought, unshakable.

When the fateful hour came that Christ had predicted, everything went wrong. He betrayed his earnest pledge of loyalty. Simon Peter’s ordeal is a classic illustration of what temptation can do under pressure. It is also a dramatic illustration of the fact that no amount of pressure, however strong, can destroy a man who is personally attached to Jesus Christ. While Peter sat there beside the fire, Jesus looked at him. Wherever He was at that moment, Jesus turned and looked Peter right in the eye—and in one flashing moment everything became clear to this great-hearted fisherman. He had betrayed a friend. Peter stumbled out of there, down the dark street, weeping bitterly.

Whoever you are and wherever you may be, the Son of God looks upon you. He knows you for what you are, and still He looks. No matter where you have been or what you have done, He is there for you. For you He went to His cross that you might be forgiven. For you He was raised from the grave that you might put your trust in Him.