The Great Exchange

I have been working on my YL club talk on the cross for a couple of weeks and also on a Campaigner lesson for the freshman girls. It has focused my thoughts on Good Friday and what actually took place in those hours Christ spent on the cross. Joni Eareckson Tada describes it as the Rescue- it is also described as The Great Exchange.


Did you ever stop to think that the Roman soldier who is nailing Christ to the cross is only kept alive by the power of Jesus Himself? He "who holds all things together" is the one who allows this man to live and to put nails in His hands.


What did Christ's Rescue cost Him? I would like to quote from her book because she says it so much better as she describes Christ on the cross -

"He begins to feel a foreign sensation. Somewhere during this day an unearthly foul odor began to waft, not around his nose, but his heart. He feels dirty. Human wickedness starts to crawl upon his spotless being- the living excrement from our souls. The apple of his Father's eye turns brown with rot. His Father! He must face his Father like this!... Never has the Son seen His Father look at him so... The Father watches as his heart's treasure, the mirror image of himself, sinks drowning into raw, liquid sin.

Father! Father! Why have you forsaken me?

But heaven stops its ears. The Son stares up at the One who cannot, who will not, reach down or reply. Two eternal hearts tear - their intimate friendship shaken to the depths. The Father rejected the Son whom he loved. Jesus, the God-man from Nazareth, perished. The Father accepted his sacrifice for sin and was satisfied. The Rescue was accomplished. God set down his saw. This is who asks us to trust him when he calls on us to suffer."


Whose sin caused this? Mine - my gossip, my greed, my critical spirit, my love for other things more than the Father, my impatience, my anger and bitterness - the list is endless. I will never truly understand what it cost Him to take my place - My sin for His righteousness - The Great Exchange.


"We will never stand in awe of being loved by God until we reckon with the seriousness of our sin and the justice of His wrath against us." John Piper



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