Lent (part 1)

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Today is Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of a season called Lent.
Growing up, other than a few friends whining about not eating candy for a month, I never really heard much about Lent. I have had a chance to learn a lot more about it over the past couple of years. Lent is a season devoted to focusing on the beauty of the cross and preparing for Easter. It is a time of self examination, taking an honest look at what hinders the flow of God's spirit in our hearts and lives. Thomas Merton puts it this way,

"The purpose of Lent is not only expiation, to satisfy the divine justice, but above all a preparation to rejoice in His love. And this preparation consists in receiving the gift of His mercy - a gift which we receive insofar as we open our hearts to it. Casting out what cannot remain in the same room with mercy. Now one of the things we must cast out first of all is fear. Fear narrows the little entrance to our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves. If we were terrified of God as an inexorable judge, we would not confidently await His mercy or approach Him trustfully in prayer. Our peace and our joy in Lent are a guarantee of grace."

As I walk through the next 40 days of Lent, I am going to be reading through John Piper's book, The Passion of Jesus Christ. I snagged this little book at a thrift store a few months back and rediscovered it a few days ago. As I was thumbing through its pages, I noticed that it covers 50 different reasons why Christ suffered and died. In the introduction, Piper writes, "When all is said and done, the most crucial question is: Why? Why did Christ suffer and die Not why in the sense of cause, but why in the sense of purpose. What did Christ achieve by his passion? Why did he have to suffer so much? What great thing was happening on Calvary for the world?"

I hope you will read along as I explore the answers to these questions. Each week during the next 40 days or so, I will do my best to post a handful of reasons and excerpts from the book as I make my way through. Here is the first bunch:

Christ suffered & died...

To absorb the wrath of God (Galatians 3:13, Romans 3:25, 1 John 4:10) - "God removes His wrath by providing a substitute. The substitute is provided by God himself. The substitute, Jesus Christ, does not just cancel the wrath; he absorbs it and diverts it from us to himself. God's wrath is just, and it was spent, not withdrawn."

To please His Heavenly Father (Isaiah 53:10, Ephesians 5:2) - "But what is most astonishing about this substitution of Christ for sinners is that it was God's idea... On the one hand, the suffering of Christ is an outpouring of God's wrath because of sin. But on the other hand, Christ's suffering is a beautiful act of submission and obedience to the will of the Father."

To learn obedience and be perfected (Hebrews 5:8, Hebrews 2:10) - "The point is this: If the Son of God had gone from incarnation to the cross without a life of temptation and pain to test high righteousness and his love, he would not be a suitable Savior for fallen man. His suffering not only absorbed the wrath of God. It also fulfilled his true humanity and made him able to call us brothers and sister."

To achieve His own resurrection from the dead (Hebrews 13:20-21) - "What the death of Christ accomplished was so full and so perfect that the resurrection was the reward and vindication of Christ's achievement in death... The point is not that the resurrection is the price paid for our sins. The point is that the resurrection proves that the death of Jesus is an all-sufficient price."

To show the wealth of God's love and grace for sinners (Romans 5:7-8, John 3:16, Ephesians 1:7) - "There is only one explanation for God's sacrifice for us. It is not us. It is "the riches of his crace." It is all free. It is not a response to our worth. It is the overflow of his infinite worth. In fact, that is what divine love is in the end: a passion to enthrall undeserving sinners, at great cost, with what will make us supremely happy forever, namely, his infinite beauty."

To show His own love for us (Ephesians 5:2, Ephesians 5:25, Galatians 2:20) - "Surely this is the way we should understand the sufferings and death of Christ. They have to do with me. They are about Christ's love for me personally. It is my sin that cuts me off from God, not sin in general. In is my hard-heartedness and spiritual numbness that demean the worth of Christ."

To cancel the legal demands of the law against us (Colossians 2:13) - "What a folly it is to think that our good deeds may one day outweigh our bad deeds. There is no salvation by balancing records. There is only salvation by canceling records. The record of our bad dees, along with the just penalties that each deserves, must be blotted out -- not balanced. This is what Christ suffered and died to accomplish."