By His Wounds We Are Healed

This week is one we should be reflecting on and contemplating and humbly grateful for. This is Holy Week. We talk of medicines and supplements and exercise as healing. But, truly there is only one Healer and there is one thing that heals better than anything else—Love. It wasn’t our sins that kept Jesus on the cross. It was His love. His undying, unconditional love. Jesus knew how perfect His Father is and how much He wanted us all to get to know His Father. He also knew that there was only one way for that to happen—through Him. We struggle when someone wrongs us and we certainly don’t accept the blame for it. Can you even imagine accepting the blame of not just one of your siblings, but the whole world? He was beaten, betrayed and bleeding because of us. He promised He would rise from the dead, but anyone could say that. He said He came to be the sacrifice for sin, but anyone could say that. The Christian faith is the only faith where our Founder loved us enough to die in our place, experience the wrath of God for us, pay the price for our alienation, and then demonstrate to the world His accomplishment by conquering death for us.

"Here is the amazing thing about Easter; the Resurrection Sunday for Christians is this, that Christ in the dying moments on the cross gives us the greatest illustration of forgiveness possible." - T.D. Jakes

The empty tomb is much more than an incredible accomplishment, the empty tomb says Jesus has kept His word. When Jesus rose from the dead, He proved that everything He said, did, promised and lived was true. Billy Graham said, “God proved His love on the cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, ‘I Love You’” But as William Barclay once wrote, “Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and take up His cross.” So, enjoy your time with your family as you reflect on how the events of this week have transformed your life. As Henry Knox Sherrill said so beautifully, “The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, make the sacrifice.” For God so loved the world, that He gave His only son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. - John 3:16