Becoming Sin

I used to think the battle for our souls was waged the three days in the tomb. You've probably heard some creative orators imagine the battle that took place in time, space, and history during those three days Jesus lay buried in the tomb, postulating the possible stories of death's defeat and life's victory celebrated for all time and history in His resurrection.

But as I study the crucifixion of Christ this week before Easter Sunday, I feel my eyes have been opened, and I am astounded and humbled. 

Every step of Christ's ministry here on earth, He raged a war against the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh. The battle began as soon as His heart beat miraculously inside the womb of a virgin girl who thirty something years later would weep at the foot of her child's cross.

Jesus came to earth to do exactly what His people, the Jews, wanted Him to come and do--overthrow an evil, oppressive kingdom. It just wasn't Rome. It was bigger than Rome. So much bigger. No, He came to wage war and defeat the principalities, the powers, the rulers of darkness, and spiritual wickedness of this world. (Ephesians 6:12) He came to destroy everything and anything separating His people from eternity in His Father's presence.

So He became sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). In His human form, God the Son became the very disease that plagued His creation and slaughtered it once and for all--for all mankind, for all eternity.

What does it look like to become sin?

It looks like an innocent man who lived a life of peace and miraculous provision, freedom, and healing for all who encountered Him to be accused falsely. For this man to be treated to one of the most unjust trials in the history of trials only to be condemned by not just Jews who were suppose to know Him, who should have been studying for His arrival and known the signs of prophecy He fulfilled, but to also be condemned by the indifference and cruel apathy of the Gentiles under Pilate's cowardly sentence. Becoming sin looks like suffering injustice, indifference, apathy, having a blind eye turned, and cold hearts in charge.

How the Jews must have hated him! In their self-righteous hypocrisy, they schemed for the murder of an innocent man choosing to release a known criminal instead. To become sin, Jesus bore their hatred, vehemence, murderous hearts, their jealousy, ignorance, fear, and pride. His battle looked like bearing suffering with dignity and self-control. Always speaking truth. 

Even when they stripped His dignity. Skin ravaged, probably hanging in strips from His flogging, He endured the shameful mocking of bored Roman soldiers who treated Him like their afternoon entertainment. They did not know Him. They didn't care to. Their hearts were foreign to the words of God, unlike the Jews steeped in them. They fashioned a crown of thorns to shove on His head for fun. To make fun. The mocking robe of purple they threw across His beaten back must have felt like sand paper on His open wounds. Only for a rough piece of heavy lumber to be strapped to His back. Only for it all to be ripped off His body again. I'm sure some of the blood from His wounds at started clotting around the cloth pressed into His back only to be ripped off once again. Agony! Torture! To become sin, Jesus carried the weight of humiliation, cruelty, the depths of the depravity of a human mind and heart to the hill of Golgatha, the place of death.

Take note of every detail friends, we are watching the Creator of the Universe battle our greatest enemy for us, in front of us.

Naked. Completely exposed. Blood dripping over every sinew of His form. Nailed with scientific precision to be lifted up between two known criminals, yet Jesus takes center stage. There in utter torture He would suffocate in front of a watching world on a hill near the entrance of Jerusalem where all coming to celebrate Passover would be sure to see Him. King of the Jews. Innocent. Not giving up His Spirit one second before every prophecy was fulfilled concerning His death. Not one prophecy went unfulfilled. He didn't give up His Spirit until He had fully become sin, right there on the cross for all to see, for all history to re-read.

As sin, Jesus was mangled beyond recognition. Scripture says He was so disgusting in form, many could not even look at Him (Isaiah 53:3). As sin, the sky darkened over all the land as He drank the full cup of the Father's wrath and for the first time in all of time, the Son was physically, emotionally, spiritually severed from the Father's presence. Forsaken. If you read the details, every Gospel account together, and if you ask the Spirit to open your eyes and open your heart, you see Jesus become sin, what sin looks like, what sin smells like, what sin feels like, what consequences sin ravages on our souls. What we always complain is so hard to see and understand because it exists in a spiritual realm is right there in front of you, on display, for all the world to see on a perfect, innocent, spotless human. 

You want to know what sin looks like? What it does to the heart and soul of a man or woman? Look to the cross. Don't pretend it's not real. Don't turn away and believe the lie it's not that big of a deal. Don't be indifferent. Let your eyes gaze upon the picture of sin, the very real proof and evidence, the unseen we're always asking to see. Gaze upon Christ on the cross, and let the nausea, repulsion, and anger be turned back upon yourself because my sin put Him there.

My sin put Him there. My rebellion. My need for control. My selfishness and self-righteousness. My pride. My greed. My jealousy. All of them. All the sins. They are mine, and He took them and became the picture of them, so I would understand their cost. A cost I am incapable of paying despite all my good intentions and positive thoughts and right motivations. In the eyes of God, my life looks like the ravaged form of Christ hanging on the cross. That is what sin does. That is what sin looks like.

And until a perfect sacrifice was made we were condemned to that fate, that gruesome fate, eternally severed from connection with God. Living tortured, broken, scarred, shame-filled lives, marred inside if not also out.

But the more I study the crucifixion, the details, the intention of Christ, the more I believe we are watching the battle for eternity be fought in front of our very eyes. Satan threw his absolute worst at Jesus, tempting Him to give up His mission with every excruciating breath. Yet, we watch Jesus stay the course. Fulfilling every prophecy to the last detail. What the crucifixion of Christ shows is the innocent Son of God, human in every way we are human, yet also one with God the Father and God the Spirit--we watch Him become sin before our very eyes.

And in willingly and purposefully giving up His Spirit at the exact perfect time in history, we watch our innocent, perfect, omnipotent, obedient Lord defeat sin. He became sin and crucified it on the cross.

He became sin and crucified it on the cross.

No other human in history could have done this. Born of the seed of Adam, we are all born with sin (Romans 3:23). That ugliness already exists within us from our first heartbeat. It's in our DNA. Only God Himself in His perfection could have planned a way to save us. So now, once again, as in the Garden of Eden at the beginning of all mankind, we have a choice. Because there can be no true love without free will, so there must always be a choice.

At the fall of Adam and Eve, Satan thought he had stolen our choice, and for God to make a way for another one once again for all time, He had to provide a better choice, one we could better see and understand the consequences, counting the cost of our choice. The choice not to eat the fruit of a physical tree or not, but the choice to eat of the Body of Christ or not, to be one with Him in the Body of Christ by the body of Christ or to be separated from God belonging only to sin. There only ever has been and only ever will be two choices.

Christ willingly bathed Himself in the blood of our sins, so we could choose to be cleansed by that same blood, wrapping our sinful lives in the righteousness of Christ's sacrifice, the innocence of His sacrifice. We can now choose sin's guilty rags or Christ's innocent robes. We can choose to live in an eternity of filth or in an eternity of the cleansing, bathing Light of Christ. We can choose separation from God or unity with Him forever. We can choose death or life.

I cannot help but love my Jesus for the hurt and unimaginable pain He willing endured both emotionally, psychologically, and physically on my behalf, in my place, for my sin, choosing to do something I could not do even if I had wanted to. I LOVE Him for that choice He made. I am moved to a deep realization of gratefulness I too often forget. Satan, this world, this flesh, too often distracts me from the love, devotion, and gratefulness I have for my Jesus.

May we all take the time to truly appreciate the cost of having a choice, and the Love it takes to be able to willingly give that choice to children who despise their Father, their Creator, in their ignorance. Because sin breaks, bruises, mars, ravages, and fatally wounds every aspect of our senses, yet God loved us enough to send His only Son to not just die, but suffer, becoming sin, in our place, just so we could have the CHOICE to choose Him again.

Whatever you think you know of God, whatever false image of judgement, wrath, suffering, indifference, etc. that may be stamped on your heart or mind of who He is, I pray the scales of blindness and the walls of false, self-preservation will fall this Easter season in light of the reality of what God orchestrated just to give us the opportunity to choose Him again. Knowing too many still wouldn't choose Him, God the Father sacrificed His only Son to give us all the same chance anyway. The same choice. The same chance. Equal opportunity.

WHO DOES THAT?!?!? Who do you know who would willingly, intentionally do what Jesus did? Because whoever that person is, they deserve my whole heart for my whole life.

What's Next?:When You Find Yourself Staring Into the Wilderness

So the Red Sea shut behind the Israelites with what I can only imagine was a dramatic, tumultuous splash, thundering with finality.  Can you imagine how big their eyes were when the water crashed back down into place?  Can you imagine the hush that must have fallen over the crowd and the sea as the waters settled, burying their enemies at the bottom of the deep, blue abyss?  Don't you think some of those people fell to their knees in awe and kissed the ground on the other side? unable to hold back the tears of emotion in release of fear and hope and joy all at the same time?

Then what?

Well if you read the story--like I did not long after we landed our family here in California (Exodus 14)--you will see the Israelites break forth in praise and singing to God the Father. (Exodus 15)  Gratefulness and thanksgiving abound. And so they should!  And so have I.

But then what?

Well, then they're in the wilderness.  The desert.  They're in a dry, hot, unknown place somewhere between what-they-knew and what-they-were-promised. I am here.  In the wilderness, in the desert, in the great in-between of what-I-knew and what-I-am-promised.  And let me tell you, it is a dry, thirsty, weary, heavy, hot place to be.

By dry, I mean I thirst for familiarity, for friends, for family, for companionship not just for myself, but for my children.  I literally crave something familiar, something that feels routine or normal.  I thirst, and my children thirst, and my husband thirsts, and the wilderness is simply dry.

By weary, I mean that I'm pretty sure I'm using parts of my brain that have been dormant for years, like remembering to read street signs and notice land markers.  When you've lived in the same county for 30 of your 34 years of life, these are skills that you no longer have to use.  I'm learning new grocery stores, new playgrounds, new beaches, and all the little ins and outs of toting two kids through that maze of a process all while making sure they feel safe and loved and secure.  My brain is weary.  I've never slept so hard in my entire life.

By hot, I mean well, it's hot here right now, actually unusually hot according to the radio.  And I am in the wilderness.  I and my family are in the wilderness, and it hasn't taken long for the natives to become restless.

In Exodus we find it took all of three days for the Israelites to begin to grumble against God. (Exodus 15:22)  3 Days! I'm pretty sure their children spear-headed this movement of complaint because if Israelite children were anything like my children, they just wanted everything to return to normal, to be the same, to have all the same things they had back in Egypt, for everyone to act the same way, for experiences to be the same, and well, now they're not. We're in the wilderness, and it's a little harder here.  Everyone is sticking a little closer together, wary of what's around the corner or over the bend. Unsure of the terrain and their surroundings, I'm sure the Israelite mothers kept a tight leash on their kiddos.  I can relate.

Unfortunately a tight leash also means having them underfoot, all the time, 24-hours a day, no breaks. No babysitters.  No grandparents to spend the night with.  No playmates to distract them for 2-4 hours and tire them out.  Nope.  You're keeping them close, and you're holding yourself responsible for them, and they are complaining about everything and anything.  Having to help more, hold more doors, eat at new places, ride more elevators, push more buttons, walk more places for longer periods of time. There is an endless list of things for them to complain about!!!

And you, the parent, the mature one, you are doing your best.  I'm doing my best.  I'm making sure I stay in the Word, filling up with as much of God's presence and peace and wisdom as possible, so that I can manage to diligently teach the same, dad-gum, character lessons to my children every. single. day. The hope is if I don't complain, maybe they won't complain.  If I have a good attitude, maybe they will have a good attitude.  If I bite my tongue and focus on the positive, maybe I can teach them to do the same.  Trying to take full advantage of every teachable moment with a six and four year old is also very weary and heavy and hot--hot-tempered that is.

So I completely sympathize with those miserable Israelites only holding out for three days with no water before they started complaining at God, accusing Him of not providing for them, grumbling against the Great God that just parted the Red Sea three days earlier. I get it.  To be honest, I give them mad props for making it through three whole days if their little ones were as out of sorts as mine have been.

So what does that mean for me?  I'm throwing myself at the mercy of that Great God and begging NOT to be like them.  In my moments of weakness and short tempers and harsh words, I am trying to remember to stop and breath and physically take in the presence of the God who brought me here, to this place in time, to this very difficult moment, and REMEMBER what He has already done and what He promises to see me through to--the Promised Land. (Deuteronomy 8:2, Exodus 6:8)

Remembrance, gratefulness, thanksgiving--these are the long, tall, cool drinks in the desert.  These are wells that never run dry.  Jesus Christ Himself is the Living Water. (John 4:14)  His Holy Spirit inside of me is the never-ending wellspring of life. (Isaiah 58:11)  I don't even have to ask for it.  I just need to breathe deep and draw Him in.  Refocus, remember, be grateful, be thankful, be a worshipper of God. Abide. (John 15:5) It's not something I do; it's a realization and acceptance of this is who I am.  His child.  He knows me; He sees me. (Psalm 139)

No, those Israelites grumbled and complained against God, either forgetting what He had already provided or taking for granted how powerful a God He was. He is.  And if you keep reading, you find they just continue to complain and grumble and whine (even though God keeps providing everything they ask Him for!), and God gets so furious He actually wants to destroy them, (Deuteronomy 9:13-14) (I too have wanted to destroy my children on days.)  But instead of destroying them, He shows great mercy once again by only exiling them to wander in the desert for 40 years. (Numbers 14:26-35) (My kids would probably describe their room as the "desert." They wander there a lot.)  I guess that's better than death, but holy cow, shoot me now. I really, REALLY don't want to wander aimlessly in the desert.

So what's next?  LOTS of gratefulness.  Lots of praise and thanksgiving for all the small victories and small moments of blessing that add up to pointing to the provision of a Big God who's involved in the small stuff.  Like when you show up to your new apartment late at night after an 8-hour day of traveling only to find the fridge and pantry are already stocked with all the staples you need for breakfast the next morning thanks to kind friends. (God's provision.) Like when that cost of living paycheck shows up, and you can breathe a little easier because stuff out here is 'xpensive! (God's blessing.) Like when you're sitting in your first church service on your first Sunday in what is sure to be many visits to many churches to find the right one, yet out of all the stories in the Bible a preacher could preach on you hear a message on the Israelites crossing the Red Sea and how they should have remembered God rather than grumbling against Him!  No seriously, that was the message we heard. And tears rolled down my cheeks because in that moment, in that church service, hearing that message, I knew that the Creator God of the Universe has His Big Eyes on little 'ole me. It was a sign for me that He knew exactly where I was and what I was going through, and He was with me. (God's grace, also translated God's favor.) Praise God!  He is with me!!!

And in those moments when I just can't take it any more?  When my entire being wants to wail at God and yell, "Now what?!? Is this all you've brought me here for?!?" Well, in those moments, I fall on my face at the feet of my Big Heavenly Father, crying out to Him that I'm weak and I'm worn out and I just can't take it anymore, and I ask Him to forgive me for leaning too much on myself and not enough on Him, and then I simply ask Him to fulfill the need, just prayerfully, worshipfully, humbly...ask.

And really, it doesn't matter in that moment if He chooses to give me what I ask for or not. All that matters is that my heart is right and clean before Him, and I know I have been heard because whether His answer is yes, no, just wait, or complete silence, the truth is He has heard my cry. (Psalm 116:1-2) He has heard, and He will answer in His perfect time, in His perfect way, and my heart can rest and trust in that truth knowing that He did not bring me out of Egypt to die of thirst in the desert.  There is always streams in the desert by His provision. (Isaiah 43:19)

So what's next?  Learning the ropes. Doing the next thing.  Buying groceries and wet suits and boogie boards.  Exploring beaches and mountains and the lay of the land. Numbering my days carefully and in the process, being fully aware that my interactions, actions, and reactions represent a Big God to the world around me.  I pray who I am brings Him glory.  I pray who my children are and who they become brings Him glory.  I pray our family represents Him well just by smiling at strangers and being kind to the clerk who checks us out at the register.

And I AM GRATEFUL.  It is a state of being, a state of the heart, a state of mind, a spiritual state of matter.

And when a friendly stranger shares the information that Orange County sees 2-3 DAYS of rain in an entire YEAR, and all of a sudden I am physically thirsty and dry just thinking about the afternoon rain showers back in Georgia, longing for it's cooling effects; it's in that moment of longing, that thought, that I must capture my thoughts and bring them into submission of the truth. (2 Corinthians 10:5)  And the truth is...

Psalm 63:

O God, You are my God; I shall seek You [b]earnestly;
My soul thirsts for You, my flesh [c]yearns for You,
In a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary,
To see Your power and Your glory.
3 Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips will praise You.
4 So I will bless You as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
5 My soul is satisfied as with [d]marrow and fatness,
And my mouth offers praises with joyful lips.

6 When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches,
7 For You have been my help,
And in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy.
8 My soul clings [e]to You;
Your right hand upholds me.

AMEN! AMEN! and AMEN!  What is the truth to which you cling when life is dry and weary?  Will you grumble at a God you must believe to be to powerless to save you to even think about grumbling in the first place? (Exodus 16:7b) Or will you humbly seek the help and favor of the All-Powerful God who is mighty to save and quick to come to the aid of His people? (Zephaniah 3:17)  Will you humbly ask? (Matthew 7:7)  

If we would only ask.  

     Humbly ask and seek His face.  

He would heal our minds

     With His favor and grace.

             (reference to 2 Chronicles 7:14)