Tricky: The hardest questions to ask about Christianity (and some answers) by Michael Dormandy & Carl Laferton

Author:Michael Dormandy & Carl Laferton [Dormandy, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781910307069
Publisher: The Good Book Company
Published: 2014-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

To be honest, I don’t know how I’d feel in these situations. But I know it’s possible to see them as part of the way in which Jesus helps us—because I can see how these people have responded. Because they know Jesus, they have been able to face horrendous situations and yet find hope and even joy in knowing him.

Jesus serves us in suffering

Remember what I said in the first section about how Jesus knows what it’s like to suffer? That’s actually only half of the story. Jesus not only suffers with us—he suffered for us.

Jesus didn’t simply come to earth so he would know what suffering feels like. That would just be patronising, a bit like a celebrity spending 24 hours living as a homeless person for a publicity stunt. No, Jesus came to suffer so that he could serve us. In fact, his suffering can save us.

Remember the amazing, perfect world we thought about in the previous chapter? There’s a problem with it. Well, actually, there’s a problem with us. None of us can ever get there by ourselves. It’s a perfect world, and nothing imperfect can enter it. And so, since we all disobey God, we don’t deserve to enjoy that world—we deserve only to be shut out of it. The punishment for choosing to live without God as our ruler in this world is that we don’t get to live in it at all.

But amazingly, the Bible says that Jesus was punished instead of us. That’s what was happening when Jesus suffered. When he died, he was suffering the punishment that we deserve, so we could have an amazing reward, which we could never deserve. The Bible puts it like this:

“But he was pierced for our transgressions,

he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was on him,

and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to our own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.”

(Isaiah 53 v 5-6)

This is one of the most surprising and wonderful truths in the Bible. Jesus died—he was crushed—in our place. And Jesus is God himself. God laid the punishment we deserve on… God. And that means that we can be at peace with him again. It means that our imperfections, our sins, can be taken away, and Jesus can give us his perfection, so that we can live in the perfect world we long for.

It means that you can enjoy a world without any pain, disappointment, fear or anxiety… for ever.

So does God care? He cares enough to leave heaven, live on earth, and die on a cross—for you. The Bible puts it like this:

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

(Romans 5 v 8)

Whatever the songs we download off iTunes may tell us, love is not really all about feelings or all about sex. The reality is that love is about sacrifice. That sounds weird.

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