Jesus is condemned to death
“What
is truth?” “Here is the man!”
(John 18:38; 19:5)
Have you ever been wrongly
accused of something in your life? It doesn’t have to be something criminal but
even a small thing at home or at work.
Injustice has been served on you, the innocent party in this injustice.
You feel hurt, abused, angry at your accusers.
You have been condemned without
fault sand there’s no way that you are going to be allowed to get out of it,
irrespective of who is right.
Imagine now that you are Jesus
and the same thing is happening to you.
You are accused of blaspheming.
Of attacking God by claiming to be His Son. Of being in league with Satan and his clique.
If you were Him you would probably be saying to yourself “But can’t the world see that this is not
right? How could I have been seen to be
so bad? I only healed their sick. I only
gave the marginalised their dignity back. I only spoke about loving your
neighbour. I taught them how to be better people and how to pray to their
God. And have a relationship with
Father.
“I loved them as if they were
my children and now they do this to me. Look at me now. On show before this
crowd and for all my good works I am condemned to death. I hear the Roman say this about me: Here is
the man!. I feel anger well inside me. I have the power inside me to balance
things out and assert myself. But Father
whispers to my heart that this is not to be….I must suffer for them so that
they will be given the chance to find the salvation that was promised to them
from the beginning of time. .But, now that I think about it, I realise that
all this is unfair. I have a right to my own freedom too, to my
anger. I can roar and rage if I really want to…as I have done many times before
(as Amos and others wrote about Me) but Father just looks at me and says
nothing. Has He gone away and left me to the whims of these people?
Or perhaps He wants me to decide whether I want to follow His will or
mine. It is so difficult. Father has always known the plans He has for
me, for us all too, plans to make us prosper and not to harm us. What is
truth?”
Ezekiel 32: 17-20
"Yet your countrymen say, `The way of the Lord is not just.'
But it is their way that is not just. If a righteous man turns from his
righteousness and does evil, he will die for it. And if a wicked man turns away
from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he will live by doing so.
Yet, O house of Israel, you say, `The way of the Lord is not just.' But
I will judge each of you according to his own ways."
