an invitation to meditate

The following is a quote from We Would See Jesus:

We cannot begin to see the grace of God in the face of Jesus Christ until we have seen the truth about ourselves and given a full answer to all its challenge... In all, that region outside the camp was not a pleasant place. It was the place of foreigners, lepers, criminals, and sin-cursed refuse—a place to be avoided. Yet the Scripture tells us that it was to the spiritual counterpart of that place outside the camp that the Lord Jesus went forth, bearing His cross, that He might sanctify the people with his own blood. The actual place where He was crucified has a name as gaunt and grim as the associations connected with the outside the camp of old—“a place of a skull.” However God’s Word tells us that the place He went to was our place; yet how glibly sometimes we say, “He took my place!” But when we consider the place He actually had to take for us, we get a shock, for it is then we see—as perhaps we can in no other way—what our true place is, and what also is our true character before God... Ours was the curse He bore. Ours was the God-forsakenness which He endured. The logic of it all is inescapable; if the moment He took our place God forsook us, what must our true place be before God? What truth shines from Calvary as to our dreadful condition before God! ...Jesus hanging on the cross outside the camp as a moral outcast is a declaration of my condition. (Hession 56-58)

Often when I am faced with the Cross of Christ, I quickly want to run toward His empty tomb, and save myself the thoughts of my own depravity and the necessity for God's wrath to be alleviated. However, it is not enough to simply recognize that I've done wrong things in my life. I must acknowledge that I have a broken relationship with God to the point that by His just nature, He must deal with sin. At this point, am I to atone, that is, to pay for my own sins in my imperfect and mortal state with my pithy deeds and words? Or do I believe the Truth that Jesus Christ has already taken the wrath of God on my behalf and released me of any need for personal penance?

The authors Hession have helped me to understand the depth of Christ's condescension, not only in taking on mortal flesh and stepping down from His place of glory, but that He substituted Himself as the needed sacrifice in order to restore our relationship with God the Father. In this renewed relationship, we are no longer bound to legalistic practices of the law nor are we enslaved to this world's passing pleasures. Since Christ has indeed taken away the wrath of God and brought us to reconciliation, how then do we respond to the most gracious and merciful of acts? As we are now under the grace of God, is there nothing that God can demand of us but our whole devotion to Him?