An
Unintentional Tribute
For reading & meditation:
Matthew 27:32-44
"'He saved others,' they said,
'but he can't save himself!' " (v. 42)
What humiliation and shame our Lord endured for us on the cross of
Calvary. Cicero, a Roman philosopher, said of crucifixion: "Far be
the very name of a cross not only from the bodies of Roman
citizens, but from their imaginations, eyes and ears." But He, our
Lord, though sinless, was crucified on a cross. Although His blood
was flowing freely from wounds inflicted by the crown of thorns on
His head, from His back that had been lacerated by cruel thongs,
from His hands and feet through which He was skewered to the tree,
yet He refused the deadening drug offered Him. He underwent the
ordeal with brain unclouded and with nerves unsoothed. The crowd
who watched Him cried: "He saved others, but he can't save
himself!" But strange as it seems, that mocking phrase became the
central truth of the gospel. He was saving others and therefore He
could not save Himself. That is one of the greatest truths of life
- if we are to save others we cannot save ourselves.
To quote Spencer again: "It is a great mystery," he says, "yet an
everlasting fact, that goodness in all moral natures has the doom
of bleeding upon it, allowing it to conquer only as it bleeds. All
goodness conquers by a cross." This law of saving by self-giving
runs through life. Those who save themselves cannot save others,
and those who save others cannot save themselves - cannot save
themselves trouble, sorrow, hurts, disappointments, pain, and
sometimes even death. This is a law of the universe, and it applies
to God as much as it does to us.
For further study:
Galatians 1:1-5;
1 Timothy 2:6;
Titus 2:14;
1. What does Paul emphasize?
2. What is the implication for us?
