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LARRY'S LETTER - March 2009

His Pain for Our Gain

I am not sure where I heard it first.  It might have been a cool Christian t-shirt design that played off of the old Gatorade^® commercial theme “No Pain No Gain.”  I’m just not sure.  There are some Christian clothing companies that do that sort of thing with well known slogans.   No matter when I first read it, it stayed with me.  "His pain for our gain."

His pain:  this of course is a reference to the true, undiluted, excruciating pain that our Lord Jesus Christ went through that good Friday so many years ago.  You remember it?  It really began the previous night.  After praying, Jesus is seized and bound by a mob.  Taken from the garden on the Mount of Olives, Jesus has been pushed, and shoved, and tried, and found guilty for no reason, and beaten and mocked all night and all morning.  First he was taken to the home of the high priest.  While he waited to be judged there, we are told, the men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him.  Luke Chapter 22 tells us that they blindfolded him and demanded, "Prophesy! Who hit you?" And they said many other insulting things to him. After this went on throughout the night we are told that at daybreak the council of the elders of the people, both the chief priests and teachers of the law, met together, and Jesus was led before them. Luke 22:67-71:

    "If you are the Christ," they said, "tell us."

    Jesus answered, "If I tell you, you will not believe me, and if I asked you, you would not answer. But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the mighty God."

    They all asked, "Are you then the Son of God?"

   He replied, "You are right in saying I am." Jesus fully embraces his identity as the Son of God. . .and how do they respond?

    Then they said, "Why do we need any more testimony? We have heard it from his own lips."

Tried and convicted, Jesus would soon be sentenced to death.  After this brief interrogation Jesus was taken, still bound to Pilate.  From Pilate Jesus was sent to Herod who was also in Jerusalem.  And after Herod mockingly demanded Jesus perform some miracles for him like some sort of circus clown, we read in Luke 23:11:  Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate.  The whole world rejected Jesus.  Pilate in turn called the chief priests, the rulers and the elders together.  Three separate times he tried to release Jesus, finding nothing he had done wrong.  But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed.  So Pilate decided to grant their demand.  Mark describes the next events. . .

Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified. The soldiers then led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him.   And they began to call out to him, "Hail, king of the Jews!” Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him.   And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. 

This is my body broken for you.  “His Pain. . .for Our Gain!”  Finally Luke 22 verse 33 narrates for us this:

When they came to the place called the Skull, (probably a hill outside of Jerusalem that looked like a skull), there they crucified him, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left.

And then Luke records the first words Jesus said on the cross. "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  We know who Jesus was talking to.  His Father in heaven, watching with tears in his eyes.  Watching as his only Son was sacrificed, six hours in excruciating pain on the cross.  Do you really think that if there was another way, God would have put his son through this?  We know who Jesus is talking to, but who was Jesus talking about?  Father forgive them. Perhaps it was a specific reference to the soldiers who were just following orders.  Or perhaps it was Pilate, an unstable leader who had become part of God’s eternal plan of salvation.  Could it have been the religious leaders who worked with every ounce of their being to crucify the one they had been waiting for?  Or perhaps it was all of them and all of us.  Stuart Townsend wrote:

“Behold the man upon the cross, my sin upon his shoulders. 
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice, call out among the scoffers. 
It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished;
his dying breath has brought me life, I know that it is finished.”

Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.  “His Pain for our Gain.”  It was all for us.  It was all for us.  As we remember his pain this Lenten Season, as we remember Jesus' suffering, as we remember again how our Savior died, let us never forget. . .it was all for us.

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.

“His Pain for Our Gain”

Happy Easter!