He Could Have Stopped It

   Jesus is with His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane. Judas has arrived with a contingent of officers from the chief priests and elders. He had told them to arrest the person he kissed. He went to Jesus. The Lord asked him, “Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:48) Judas should have realized Jesus was reading his mind. If the Lord were giving Judas one last chance to back out, he didn’t take it. He betrayed Jesus.

   Simon Peter, in defense of the Lord, swung a sword at one of the servants of the high priest and cut off his right ear. Was he aiming for the head, and the Lord deflected the stroke? Maybe. Jesus stopped the assault, “And he touched his ear, and healed him.” (Luke 22:51)

   Twelve legions of angels, at least 36,000, were ready to respond to their Lord’s aid. Angels are also “…greater in power and might,” (2 Peter 2:11) than people. To illustrate this point, the soldiers who guarded Jesus’ tomb were terrified at the appearance of just one angel: “And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.” (Matthew 28:4) Even a small contingent of angels, then, could have destroyed Jesus’ persecutors with no problem.

   Jesus didn’t even need the angels. He could have stopped the persecutors Himself. One day He stopped an angry crowd from throwing Him off a cliff in His hometown of Nazareth. Yet on this occasion, Jesus did nothing to stop this travesty of justice from playing out. He said, “But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” (Matthew 26:54)

   Jesus suffered gruesomely. Isaiah 50:6 says His beard was ripped from His face: “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.” Isaiah 52:14 says, “As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men:” Being God the Son, Jesus had inspired Isaiah’s writing, so He knew how gory and brutal His suffering and death would be. Still, He let it happen.

   Yet as bloody and mutilated as Jesus looked, people took a sadistic enjoyment in watching Him suffer: “And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads,” (Matthew 27:39)

   As He hung on the cross, Jesus became sin for us: “For he [God the Father] hath made him [God the Son, Jesus] to be sin for us, who knew no sin;” (2 Corinthians 5:21) Jesus took every sin of every person throughout history upon Himself. We can’t understand how He could do that, but we can trust the Bible that He did. Jesus died to pay our sin-debt, then rose again the third day! “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen:” (Revelation 1:18)

   One word explains why Jesus did this: love. Someone without sin had to pay our sin debt or we would have no hope. Life would be a meaningless one-way train ride, paved with shallow pleasures but ending in hell. Nothing we could do, no good deeds or religious rituals could erase our guilt before a holy God. Someone had to love us and pay our price. That someone was Jesus.

   Jesus’ resurrection is the joy of Easter. He still forgives sins, saves souls, and changes lives today. If you want to see how to receive Jesus as your personal Saviour and have eternal life, please go to www.clevelandbaptist.org, click “Helpful Links”, then “How Do I Go to Heaven?”

Brian Miller 4/11/2022

Cleveland Baptist Church 4431 Tiedeman Road, Brooklyn, Ohio 44144 216/671-2822