SteemChurch:The Promise of God in the Crown of Thorns

«I LOVED THEM AS MUCH AS I DID AS ONE OF YOU»
the promise of God in the crown of thorns

God was pleased that all of him lived in Christ.
Colossians 1.19

The Word became flesh and made his home among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the Only Begotten, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1.14

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I and the Father are one.
John 10.30

You were bought, not with something that perishes like gold and silver, but with the precious blood of Christ, who was like a pure and perfect lamb. Christ was chosen before the world was made, but he was shown to the world in these latter times for his benefit.
1 Peter 1.18-20

He not only perfectly understood our case and our problem, but he has resolved it morally, actively? and forever.
P.T. Forsyth

Do you know what is the most wonderful about the return of Christ? Do you know which is the most remarkable part of the incarnation?

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Not only that he changed eternity by calendars. Although such change deserves our attention.

The Scripture says that the number of God's years is inscrutable (Job 36.26). We can go back in history until the moment when the first wave of the sea kissed the banks, or the first star shone in the sky, but we will never be able to establish the exact moment when God was God, because that moment does not exist.

There is not a moment when God was not God. He has never been, because he is eternal. God is not subject to time.

But all this changed when Jesus came to earth. For the first time he heard a phrase that was not used in heaven: "The time has come". When he was a child, he had to leave the Temple because the time had come to do so. When he was already a man, he had to leave Nazareth because that was the time when he had to get out of there.

As a Savior, he had to die because the time to do it had arrived. For thirty-three years, the sky stallion had to live in the corral of time.

This is certainly remarkable, but there is still more.

Do you want to see the brightest jewel in the treasure of the incarnation? Maybe you think it's having to live inside a body. At one time, he was a spirit without limitations, and the next, it was flesh and bones.

Do you remember these words of King David? «Where can I go to get away from your Spirit? Where will I flee from you? If I ascend to heaven, there you are. If I go down to the grave, there you are. If I get up with the sun in the east and put myself in the west beyond the sea, even there you will guide me "(Psalms 139.7-10).

Our question: "Where is God?" Is as if a fish were asking, "Where is the water?" Or a little bird would ask, "Where is the air?" God is everywhere! Equally in Beijing than in Peoria. As active in the lives of Eskimos as in those of Texans. The dominion of God is "from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth" (Psalm 72.8).

There is no place where God is not.

But when God entered into time and became a human being, he who was infinite became finite. He was imprisoned in the flesh. Restricted by muscles and eyelids with a tendency to fatigue. For more than three decades, its once unlimited reach was restricted to the length of the arm and its speed to the foot of a man.

I wonder: "Were you ever tempted to recover your infinity? Have you considered, in the middle of a long trip, miraculously moving to the next city? Have you ever been tempted, when the cold rain numbed your bones, changed the weather conditions? And will not he have wanted, when the heat dried his lips, to plunge into the Caribbean in search of relief?

If he ever had these thoughts, he never gave in to them. Not even once. Christ never used his supernatural powers for personal gain. With a single word he could have transformed the hard earth into a soft bed, but he did not.

With a wave of his hand he could have returned the spit of his accusers and made their faces white, but he did not. With a lift of his eyebrows he could have paralyzed the soldier's arm that encrusted him with the crown of thorns. But he did not.

Remarkable. But will this be the most extraordinary thing about his coming? Many may say no. Many others, perhaps in greater numbers, may point beyond their condition of infinity to their condition of impeccability. It is easy to understand why.
Is not this the message of the crown of thorns?

An unidentified soldier took branches: mature enough to have thorns, flexible enough to bend and made with them a crown of derision, a crown of thorns.

Through the Scripture the thorns symbolize, not sin, but the consequence of sin. Do you remember Eden? After Adam and Eve had sinned, God cursed the earth: "So I will put a curse on the earth ... The earth will produce thorns and weeds for you, and you will eat the plants of the field" (Genesis 3.17-18). Brambles on earth are the product of sin in the heart.

This truth finds echo in the words of God to Moses. He ordered the Israelites to cleanse the land of the ungodly peoples. There would be problems if they disobeyed. "But if they do not drive these people out of the land, they will bring them difficulties. They will be like sharp knives in their eyes and thorns in their sides "(Numbers 33.55).

The rebellion produces thorns. "The life of bad people is like a road covered with thorns and traps" (Proverbs 22.5). Even Jesus compared the lives of perverse people to thorns. Speaking of the false prophets, he said: "You will know these people for what they do. The thorns can not produce grapes, and the thorns can not produce figs »(Matthew 7.16).

The fruit of sin is thorns. Barbs, sharp lancets that cut.

I put special emphasis on the thorns to tell you something you may never have thought about: If the fruit of sin is thorns, is not the crown of thorns at the temples of Christ a picture of the fruit of our sin that pierced his heart?

What is the fruit of sin? Enter the thorny ground of humanity and you will feel a few pangs. Shame. Fear. Dishonor. Discouragement. Anxiety. Have not our hearts been trapped in these brambles?

It did not happen that way with the heart of Jesus.

He has never been harmed by the thorns of sin. He never knew what you and I face daily. Anxiety? He was never disturbed! Guilt? He never felt guilty. Fear? He never left God's presence. Jesus never knew the fruits of sin ... until he became sin for us.

And when such a thing happened, all the emotions of sin fell on him, like shadows in a forest. He felt anxious, guilty, alone. Do not you see it in the emotion of its cry ?: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). These are not the words of a saint. It is the cry of a sinner.

And this prayer is one of the most outstanding parts of his coming. But I can still think of something even bigger. Do you want to know what it is? Do you want to know what is the most wonderful thing about his coming?

It is not that He who played marbles with the stars has given up on that to play with common marbles.

It's not that he, in an instant, has gone from needing nothing to needing air, food, a stream of hot water and salts for his tired feet and, more than all of that, he needed someone -anyone- who was more concerned about where would spend eternity where would spend your check on Friday.

Not that he kept his cool while the dozen of his best friends felt the heat and rushed out of the kitchen. Or that he did not give the order to the angels, who begged him: "Just give us the order, Lord. A single word and these demons will turn into scrambled eggs. "

Not that he refused to defend himself when he bore every sin of every dissolute since Adam. Nor that he had kept silent while a million guilty verdicts resounded in the court of heaven and the giver of light was in the middle of the cold night of sinners.

Not even that after those three days in the dark hole he went out into the Easter sun with a smile and a wiggle and a question for the humiliated Lucifer: "Was that your best blow?"

That was fantastic, incredibly fantastic.

But do you want to know what was the most wonderful thing about Him Who changed the crown of heaven for a crown of thorns?
What did he do for you? Yes for you.