In Our Place: Lenten DevotionsSample

Who did it? There is plenty of blame to go around for the horrible crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The religious leaders of the Israelite people plotted his midnight arrest. Judas betrayed him with a kiss. The Jewish council convicted him on trumped-up charges. The Roman legal system sacrificed him to quiet a mob. Does it surprise you to know that behind it all was the punishing hand of God the Father? Seriously! The prophet Isaiah takes us behind the scenes to see the true significance of the cause of the suffering and death of Christ. “Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer . . . [to make] his life a guilt offering” (Isaiah 53:10). We are among the guilty ones who put him to death, because our sins make us collaborators. God the Father punished him instead of us, and he put his back into the scourging and the hammering of nails because a world of sin was being punished. But by Christ’s wounds we are healed. Through an incredible divine exchange, our guilt was put on him and his holiness is put on us. Through your faith in Christ, the Father now looks on you as though you have never sinned, as though you are as holy as his Son.