Categories
Christian Living

Do You Worship the Cross?

We Must Guard Against Turning the Symbol of Jesus’s Death into a Modern-Day Idol

Do you worship the cross? The cross is the instrument of Jesus’s death when he died in our place for the wrong things we did—our sins. As such, it rises as a powerful symbol of our faith.

Yet some well-meaning people place too high of emphasis on this image. In effect, they worship the cross.

Don’t Point to the Cross

When people worship the cross, they end up making it a modern-day idol. They place crosses prominently in their homes and on their cars. They wear them on their body, be it in the form of jewelry, clothes, or tattoos.

Yes, this symbol of Jesus can serve as a means for us to talk to others about him. But how often do we do that? To make this work, we must live our life like Jesus.

Yet too often when we fall short and don’t exemplify him well, the cross we adorn—and adore—leads other people to confuse our failings with Jesus and who he is. And that’s exactly the kind of witness we want to avoid.

I’ve also heard people who refuse to attend a church that doesn’t prominently display the cross of Jesus on the building and have it on the inside. But they’re missing the point.

Point to Jesus

Jesus is what matters. The cross is secondary. It’s a symbol of the savior, not the savior.

Have you ever seen people bow down before a cross? I have. When they do this, they appear to worship the cross. Though we can’t know their motives, and they may be worshipping Jesus in their minds, this isn’t how it appears.

You may wonder if a crucifix (a cross with the suffering savior upon it) solves this problem. Though it visually lessens the disconnect between the savior and the instrument of his death, it can also become an image of worship.

A crucifix can serve as an idol just as much as a cross.

It would be an overreaction, however, to remove these iconic symbols from our lives. They serve as important representations of our faith, pointing to the savior we worship.

But we must be careful to not worship the cross.

Instead, we should worship Jesus who died on the cross and then rose from the dead to save us.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

Celebrating the Passion of Jesus

Embrace the Season of Lent in a Fresh Way

Many Christians and churches celebrate the season of Lent to remember Jesus and his passion for coming to earth to die for us and our sins.

This is a gift to us and not something we need to earn. When we accept Jesus’s present, he makes us right with Father God and reconciles us to him.

In this devotional, we’ll remember the season of Lent, building up to Jesus’s greatest gift to us: his death as the ultimate sin sacrifice.

Traditionally, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and continues through to Maundy Thursday (the day before Good Friday and Jesus’s death).

Some church calendars, however, end Lent on Good Friday and others on Holy Saturday. (Resurrection Sunday begins the Easter season.)

Because the passion of Jesus culminates with his sacrificial death, we’ll use that to conclude our devotional. This is a matter of convenience and not a theological statement or alignment with one Lenten calendar over another.

We think of Lent as lasting forty days. This parallels the forty days Jesus spends in the desert being tempted by Satan (Mark 1:12–13). This time of testing prepares Jesus for his public ministry, which culminates with his death and subsequent resurrection.

In truth, Lent spans longer than forty days. Though some church calendars tweak the details to make Lent cover forty days, let’s not worry if it’s longer.

Regardless of the details, the purpose of Lent stays the same. During Lent we focus on Jesus and his sacrifice for us.

Depending on the year, Ash Wednesday can start as early as February 4 or as late as March 10. This is because Ash Wednesday always occurs forty-four days before Good Friday, which falls on a different date each year.

Given this, we’ll treat the days of Lent as building up to Good Friday, starting with Day 1 on Ash Wednesday.

We’ll begin our story with Jesus’s prediction that he will die—and then rise again. Following that, we’ll focus on what occurs during Holy Week, starting just prior to Palm Sunday (the week before Easter).

This means we’ll expand the events of Jesus’s last few days before his crucifixion to span most of this devotional’s Lenten readings.

As a result, we’ll cover events prior to their appearance on the church calendar. For example, we’ll cover Palm Sunday on Day 6, several weeks before its actual date on the calendar.

As we move forward, we’ll give primary attention to the account in Matthew, weaving in passages from Mark, Luke, and John. This will give us a holistic perspective of the sacrificial death of our Savior.

We’ll also incorporate Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah to expand our appreciation. Along the way, we’ll tap into our imagination to better see things from the perspective of Jesus, his disciples, and the people he meets.

Throughout this, the goal is to consider Jesus’s passion and sacrifice for us from several vantages to offer a comprehensive Lenten devotional.

The result is an inclusive meditation to remember Jesus’s resolute aim to die on the cross as the ultimate sacrifice to end all sacrifices and save humanity. May God speak to you during this Lenten season.

Join us this lent in Celebrating the passion of Jesus.

Discover more about celebrating Jesus and his passion to save us in Peter’s new book, The Passion of Jesus. It is part of the Holiday Celebration Bible Study Series.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Bogged Down Reading the Bible?

10 Essential Bible Reading Tips, from Peter DeHaan

Get the Bible Reading Tip Sheet: “10 Tips to Turn Bible Reading from Drudgery to Delight.”

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Christian Living

What’s It Mean to Take Up Your Cross Daily and Follow Jesus?

Discover the Truth and Spiritual Significance of Luke 9:23

What did Jesus mean when he said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23)? This reference to the cross—the torturous instrument of Jesus’s death—is enough to make us squirm.

Though not to dismiss this idea of taking up our cross to be a follower of Jesus, it’s not where we should place our focus—at least not right away. This verse contains three key elements. It’s a progression, a spiritual journey.

Here they are in order.

Follow Jesus

The foremost thing—the most important part of this verse—is to follow Jesus. When we follow Jesus, it implies we stop following the things of this world. We make a U-turn with our life and go after Jesus. We say yes to him and no to other distractions.

This is the first step to becoming his disciple.

Yet this isn’t the destination, it’s the beginning.

Yes, making this decision may be enough to get our go-to-heaven-card when we die. But if that’s the only reason for us to say yes to Jesus, we’ll miss out on so much here on earth. And though we may enter heaven by the smallest of margins, we’ll miss out on a fuller reward.

Do It Daily

The next word to focus on in this verse from Luke 9:23 is daily. Following Jesus shouldn’t be a once-and-done decision. We should make it a daily commitment. When we open our eyes each morning, we should make a conscious decision to say yes to Jesus again.

Who would get married and think that saying I do at the wedding ceremony would be enough to establish and sustain a strong, long-term marriage? No one. For a marriage to work well, we need to work at it daily. We need to say I do every day.

The same is true when we follow Jesus. To grow in our relationship with him and realize the riches of being his disciple, we must do it daily.

Make Sacrifices

Having committed ourselves to following Jesus each day, we can now address this troublesome phrase of taking up our cross. For Jesus, the cross meant sacrifice. For him it was the ultimate sacrifice of giving his life for us. Though as Jesus’s disciple, we should be willing to die for him, few of us will be called to do that. Yet we must be prepared that it could happen.

A more applicable understanding is that the cross implies making less lethal sacrifices as we live a life a following Jesus in service to him. Yet if we love Jesus, these sacrifices need not be burdensome. Instead, these are things we willingly give up to serve him and to be a part of team Jesus.

What’s critical here is to comprehend that we don’t need to make sacrifices to get Jesus’s attention, earn our salvation, or merit his favor. Jesus loves us regardless of the things we do or don’t do.

When we make sacrifices for him, we do it in response to the ultimate sacrifice he made for us. It’s how we show our love to him since he already showed his love for us.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Bogged Down Reading the Bible?

10 Essential Bible Reading Tips, from Peter DeHaan

Get the Bible Reading Tip Sheet: “10 Tips to Turn Bible Reading from Drudgery to Delight.”

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Christian Living

Jesus Fulfills the Old Testament

He Becomes the Ultimate Sin Sacrifice

Jesus fulfills the Old Testament, but today’s church still follows the Old Testament model for church: we have a church building where we go to worship God, hire a minister who represents the Almighty to us, and take a collection to support the whole thing.

This is not what Jesus has in mind. Instead Jesus fulfills the Old Testament, not to perpetuate it or to eliminate it.

Here’s how: Through his sacrificial death, in one single action, Jesus does away with the need to go to a building, hire staff, and take an offering. (More on what Jesus did here.) We should do the same.

This all hinges on Jesus.

Jesus draws people to him—both then and now. The words he speaks and the hope he communicates attract them. Two thousand years ago, people assume Jesus comes to replace the Old Testament Law and the work of the prophets, but this isn’t his calling.

Jesus doesn’t come to do away with what the Old Testament teaches. Instead his mission is to bring the Old Testament into fruition, according to God’s plan, set in place from the beginning. Jesus makes this clear.

He says, “I have not come to abolish the Law and the prophets but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17).

How does Jesus do this?

Jesus Becomes the Ultimate Sacrifice

The Old Testament is packed with instructions for making sacrificial offerings, commands that show the people’s relationship with God. These sacrifices have various meanings, but one key sacrifice occurs—and recurs—to redress sin. An animal must die because the people have sinned.

Since the people continue to sin, animal sacrifices persist as a requirement. These sin sacrifices must happen over and over, day after day, year after year, century after century.

Jesus, in his sacrificial death on the cross, becomes the ultimate sacrifice for sin to end all sin sacrifices. This is the main way Jesus fulfills the Old Testament. In his once-and-for-all sacrifice, he dies to make us right with God, to reconcile us into right relationship with the Almighty.

Jesus Turns Law into Love

Despite Jesus’s fresh way of looking at the assumptions of his people, his disciples struggle to understand what he means. They wrestle to reconcile his teachings with their traditions.

One such person asks Jesus to cite the greatest commandment in the Old Testament. Jesus’s answer is love. He says to “love God with all our heart, soul, and mind.”

This stands as the greatest commandment, but then he adds one more. He says to “love others as much as we love ourselves” (Matthew 22:36-40). These two simple principles summarize the purpose and intent of the entire Old Testament Law and the writings of the prophets.

Jesus removes a set of impossible-to-please laws and replaces them with one principle: love. This is another way Jesus fulfills the Old Testament.

May we love others because Jesus loves us.

Read more about this in Peter’s thought-provoking book, Jesus’s Broken Church, available in e-book, audiobook, paperback, and hardcover.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Bogged Down Reading the Bible?

10 Essential Bible Reading Tips, from Peter DeHaan

Get the Bible Reading Tip Sheet: “10 Tips to Turn Bible Reading from Drudgery to Delight.”

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Christian Living

The Season of Lent

Celebrate Jesus and His Death on the Cross to Save Us

Traditionally, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. It continues through to Maundy Thursday (the day before Good Friday and Jesus’s death). Some church calendars, however, end Lent on Good Friday and others on Holy Saturday. This is the season of Lent. (Resurrection Sunday begins the Easter season.)

Fasting

Lent is a time when some followers of Jesus practice weekly fasting. This starts after Ash Wednesday. Though fasting is a Biblical concept, Ash Wednesday and Lent are not. There are no Scriptural mentions of either day. They were added later to the church calendar.

We think of Lent as lasting forty days. This mirrors the forty days Jesus spends in the desert being tempted by Satan (Mark 1:12–13). This time of testing prepares Jesus for his public ministry.

Three years later, his work culminates with his death on the cross to cover humanity’s sins and his subsequent resurrection from the dead. Him rising from the grave proves his mastery over death.

In truth, Lent spans more than forty days. Some church calendars tweak the details to make Lent cover forty days, by not counting Sundays. But let’s not worry if it’s actually longer.

Ash Wednesday

Depending on the year, Ash Wednesday can start as early as February 4 or as late as March 10. This is because Ash Wednesday always occurs forty-four days before Good Friday, which falls on a different date each year.

Regardless of the details, the purpose of Lent stays the same. During the season of Lent, we focus on Jesus and his sacrifice for us. One way we can do this is by fasting or giving up something during this season. We can use this depravation as a reminder to turn our focus on Jesus and what he did for us.

The Sacrifice of Jesus

By his crucifixion on the cross, Jesus died as the ultimate sin sacrifice to end all sacrifices. In doing so he fulfills the Old Testament law and makes us right with Father God. He proves his power to do this on Easter when he rises from the dead.

Discover more about celebrating Jesus and his passion to save us in Peter’s new book, The Passion of Jesus. It is part of the Holiday Celebration Bible Study Series.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Insights

7 Last Sayings of Jesus on the Cross

Discover What We Can Learn from the Final Words of Jesus

We’ve talked about the Bible’s first recorded words of Jesus and his last words before he ascends into heaven. But what people focus on most is what he says as he hangs on the cross, dying in our place for the wrongs we have done.

Let’s explore the 7 last sayings of Jesus.

Three of these come from Luke and three from John. The seventh one appears in both Matthew and Mark’s biographies of Jesus. Here’s what he says, the 7 last sayings of Jesus on the cross.

1. Jesus Forgives

Jesus addresses the people who are killing him and those who brought about his execution. He says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34, NIV).

In doing so he models the forgiveness that he taught his followers to do. He said to them that if they don’t forgive others, then God won’t forgive them (Matthew 6:15).

Stephen, the Bible’s first martyr, follows this as he is being stoned to death. He asks God to not hold his attackers accountable for what they did, to forgive them (Acts 7:60).

2. Jesus Promises Salvation

To the thief crucified next to him on the cross, Jesus promises that they’ll spend eternity together. “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43, NIV).

Though this directly applies to the criminal being executed for his crimes, we too can receive the promise of salvation when we follow Jesus.

3. Jesus Cares for His Mother

As Jesus dies an agonizing death, he carries concern for his mother. He wants to make sure she’s cared for when he’s gone. He asks John to make it happen.

He says to Mary “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” (John 19:26-27, NIV).

Jesus’s concern for his mother warms my heart. Yet it also perplexes me because Jesus has four brothers and some unnamed sisters (Mark 6:3). Couldn’t one of them—shouldn’t one of them—have cared for their mother?

Regardless, in Jesus’s deepest despair, he still thinks of others. We should do the same.

4. Jesus Talks to God

Jesus faces his darkest moment at the time when the weight of humanity’s sins throughout all time rests squarely on him. He must complete this journey on his own.

He calls out to God “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34, NIV).

This fulfills David’s prophetic words in Psalm 22:1.

Though it’s necessary for Jesus to complete this on his own, we never need do anything by ourselves. God is always with us and will never forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).

5. Jesus Shares a Physical Need

Being thirsty while undergoing one of history’s most brutal forms of execution is minor in comparison to all else that Jesus is physically enduring.

Yet no one can help him deal with any of those sufferings. But someone can give him a drink.

This may be why he says, “I am thirsty” (John 19:28, NIV). We see this foreshadowed again by David (Psalm 22:15). Earlier Jesus taught his followers to give water to those in need (Matthew 10:42).

6. Jesus Completes His Mission

As Jesus is about to die, he has fulfilled what he came to earth to do. He confirms this when he tells everyone who is keeping vigil, “It is finished” (John 19:30, NIV).

7. Jesus Gives Himself to His Father

Death will complete Jesus’s earthly mission. Rather than suffer any longer, he wills himself to die and gives his spirit over to Papa: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46, NIV).

This also fulfills David’s prophetic words (Psalm 31:5).

The 7 Last Sayings of Jesus

These are the 7 last sayings of Jesus

The result is that Jesus dies so that we may live.

Thank you, Jesus.

Read the 7 last sayings of Jesus during his crucifixion and the events that precede it in Matthew 26:14-27:66, Mark 14:12-15:47, Luke 22-23, and John 18-19.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Bogged Down Reading the Bible?

10 Essential Bible Reading Tips, from Peter DeHaan

Get the Bible Reading Tip Sheet: “10 Tips to Turn Bible Reading from Drudgery to Delight.”

​Enter your info and receive the free Bible Reading Tip Sheet and be added to Peter’s email list.

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Christian Living

Let’s Reclaim Easter Before It Loses All Meaning

Remember to Celebrate Jesus this Easter

According to those who track public thought and opinion, the majority of people don’t realize that Easter is a religious holiday—or at least a holiday with a religious origin.

Given this, we must reclaim Easter for what it means.

The commercialization of Easter is strange. To start, we have Easter bunnies and Easter eggs, with the implication that the rabbits produced the eggs. How illogical is that?

Then there are colored eggs (both the real and plastic varieties), Easter baskets with a requisite bed of faux grass, pastel colored candies, and my favorite, the marshmallow peeps.

We send our children on Easter egg hunts and pile them with sugary candy. We do all this with nary a mention of Jesus.

Jesus is our savior who died in our place for all our sins (the mistakes we make throughout our lives). Then he proved his mastery over death by rising from the grave.

Celebrate Easter

If there is any connection between all this and Jesus’s history-changing victory over death, it certainly escapes me.

Where is the empty cross, the open tomb, and the risen savior? (Though it would seem a bit sacrilegious to chomp into a chocolate Jesus.)

In light of this disconnect between the origin and present reality of this day, my goal is that with each dip into commercialized Easter, I will have a conscious reconnection to historical Easter.

As I nibble on my peeps, I will meditate on Jesus and all that he did for us through his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead.

Let’s all strive to reclaim Easter.

Celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and his return to heaven in The Victory of Jesus. The Victory of Jesus is another book in Peter DeHaan’s beloved Holiday Celebration Bible Study Series. Get your copy today.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

See How Jesus Fulfills the Law and the Prophets

Jesus does three things to complete what the Old Testament started

Jesus draws people to him. The words he speaks and the hope he communicates attract them. Some people assume he had come to replace the Old Testament Law and the work of the prophets. Instead, Jesus fulfills it.

Jesus doesn’t come to do away with what the Old Testament teaches. Instead his mission is to bring the Old Testament into fruition, according to God’s plan from the beginning.

Jesus makes this clear. He says, “I have not come to abolish the Law and the prophets but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). How does Jesus do this?

Jesus Becomes the Ultimate Sacrifice

The Old Testament is packed with instructions for making sacrificial offerings, commands that showed the people’s relationship with God. These sacrifices had various meanings, but one key sacrifice occurred to redress sin.

An animal had to die because the people had sinned. Because the people continued to sin, animal sacrifices continued to be required. These sin sacrifices happened over and over, year after year, century after century.

Jesus, in his sacrificial death on the cross, becomes the ultimate sacrifice for sin to end all sin sacrifices. In his once-and-for-all sacrifice, he dies to make us right with God, to reconcile us into right relationship with the Almighty.

Jesus Turns Law into Love

Despite Jesus’s fresh way of looking at the understandings of his people, most of his followers struggle to fully comprehend what he means. They wrestle to reconcile his teachings with their traditions.

One such person asks Jesus to identify the greatest commandment in the Old Testament. Jesus’s answer is love. He says to “love God with all our heart, soul, and mind.”

This stands as the greatest commandment, but then he adds one more. He says to “love others as much as we love ourselves” (Matthew 22:36-40). These two simple principles summarize all the Old Testament Law and the writings of the prophets.

Jesus removes a set of impossible-to-please laws and replaces them with one principle: love.

Jesus Changes Our Perspectives

Jesus likes to review what the Hebrew Bible says, and then he expands on it. He often makes this transition by saying “but I tell you…” Then he gives his enlightened explanation about what God meant.

We’ll do well to carefully study what Jesus says immediately after his words “but I tell you…” Read about what he says in this post.

What’s important to understand when we consider that Jesus fulfills the Old Testament law and the writings of the prophets is that we must put the Old Testament in proper perspective.

This doesn’t mean to ignore the Old Testament because Jesus fulfills it, but it does mean we need to consider the Old Testament in the context to which it was given. In addition to teaching people how to live back then, the Law and the prophets also points them to the coming Savior, Jesus.

As we read the Old Testament we see allusions to Jesus and the freedom he represents. And if we read the Old Testament with care, we will also see that this future revelation about Jesus applies to all people, not just God’s chosen nation of Israel.

Jesus Fulfills the Old Testament Law and Prophets

Yes, Jesus fulfills the Old Testament Law and the writings of the prophets. And we are the benefactor of that.

Thank you Jesus.

Read more about this in Peter’s thought-provoking book, Jesus’s Broken Church, available in e-book, audiobook, paperback, and hardcover.

Discover more about celebrating Jesus and his passion to save us in Peter’s new book, The Passion of Jesus. It is part of the Holiday Celebration Bible Study Series.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

There’s No Shortcut to Heaven: Buying Full Indulgences Won’t Help

Martin Luther Worried That Buying Full Indulgences Served to Hinder Salvation

What most raised the ire of the Church against Martin Luther and his ninety-five theses, however, was not his claim of salvation through Jesus alone or the pope having no power over purgatory, but his bold statement that full indulgences served to hinder salvation.

False Security

Martin realized indulgences instilled a false sense of spiritual security in those who bought them. It was as if they had purchased a pass to enter heaven; they were good to go. Then they could live their life as they wanted, without regard for what God wanted.

Instead, the people’s complete trust in papal indulgences to secure their salvation removed the requirement of repentance and damned them for eternity.

With their certificate of indulgence in hand, a full indulgence, the people no longer felt a need to repent, Mark 1:15, or to work out their salvation by doing good and helping the poor, Philippians 2:12.

Martin Luther’s 95 Theses: Celebrating the Protestant Reformation in the 21st Century

Help the Poor

Jesus, however, commends those who clothe the naked and care for the sick, Matthew 25:34-40. Yet all the attention given to buying indulgences removed the focus from those in need.

Jesus didn’t say, “Sell your cloak and buy an indulgence.” (He said to “sell your cloak and buy a sword,” Luke 22:36.)

Martin noted that when people paid for their indulgences, they in effect diverted money from the poor and even the needs of their own family. Instead, they redirected it to the Church. Full indulgences had the direct impact of producing less charity for those who needed it most.

Selling Full Indulgences Fund the Church

Instead it provided more money to those in power who already had too much. The Church wanted the people’s money. They had already downplayed helping the poor so they could receive more.

The sale of indulgences advanced their unethical quest to get more of their followers’ cash.

Full indulgences were also dangerous because they encouraged complacency.

God’s work in the lives of his creation unfolds in a strange way. Only when a person feels completely lost can the light of God provide the needed illumination.

Yet the crutch of indulgences kept people from ever feeling utterly lost and in need of God. True peace comes from faith in Jesus, not by receiving absolution through the purchase of an indulgence.

Faith in Jesus

As a response to placing faith in Jesus comes the need to carry our cross to follow him as his disciple, Luke 14:27. We die to self to live for God. We deny our wishes and become crucified with Jesus, just like Paul, Galatians 2:20.

The cross of Jesus, not an indulgence from a pope, provides the way to cover our wrongs.

The German people had long lived under the financial tyranny of the Church. They sought relief. Martin’s theses demanded financial liberation and resonated with them.

They understood it. It became their manifesto against the Church’s corrupt money grab.

Luther’s 95 Theses

What most of the German people didn’t grasp, however, was Martin’s call to be crucified with Jesus. The people rallied around a vision of financial release from the Church’s practices, thanks to some of Martin’s theses.

As a result, the other theses accompanied them. This pushed the group of ninety-five theses forward, even if the people didn’t understand them all.

Though Martin understood his 95 theses, he had no idea of the problems they would cause.

Read more about Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation in Peter DeHaan’s book Martin Luther’s 95 Theses: Celebrating the Protestant Reformation in the 21st Century. Buy it today to discover more about Martin Luther and his history-changing 95 theses.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

How Much Did Jesus Suffer When He Died for Us?

Jesus Died as the Ultimate Sacrifice So That We May Live

The Old Testament of the Bible overflows with instructions about offering sacrifices to God and how his people but them into practice. One of those sacrifices served as an annual sacrifice for the sins of the people.

The people had to repeat it each year because the sacrifice offered only partial coverage.

The Ultimate Sacrifice

Jesus came as the ultimate sin sacrifice to end all sacrifices. He accomplished for all time what the Old Testament sacrifices could only cover annually.

When followers of Jesus look at his sacrifice, some celebrate him as the suffering Savior who died for our sins and others laud as the risen Savior who overcame death. Which is it? Both. Jesus died and defeated death so that we may live.

In his death as the ultimate sacrifice for all the mistakes we’ve made, Jesus suffered greatly.

Each of the Bible’s four biographies about Jesus include the account of his sacrificial death: Matthew 27:32-61, Mark 15:21-47, Luke 23:26-56, and John 19:28-42.

Physical Pain

The first-century people who read these passages knew too well about the physical pain and suffering that crucified people endured. They witnessed it firsthand many times.

Therefore, the writers of these accounts of Jesus’s crucifixion didn’t need to give details of the agony he endured.

The people understood it. They comprehended what Jesus underwent.

For us in the twenty-first century, we lack this firsthand understanding of the physical pain brought about by death through crucifixion. Yet a medical description of what Jesus underwent is truly horrific. But there’s more.

Emotional Pain

Beyond the physical trauma of receiving a beating beyond recognition, being nailed to a cross to suffer, and then dying, Jesus also endured emotional pain. All around him people mocked him, taunted him, and belittled him and his mission.

He worried about the future of his mother, Mary. He carried concern about his disciples wondering if they could manage without him. And when Jesus needed it most, his Father had to look away.

Spiritual Pain

Yet even more than the emotional agony and the physical trauma of his execution, Jesus endured a spiritual pain. It was most horrific.

Recall our embarrassment over the most shameful thing we’ve ever done. If you’re like me, you’d rather not. Now multiply that over a lifetime of mistakes.

It’s a huge weight to shoulder. When King David considered this, he said that his guilt overwhelmed him. It was a burden he couldn’t bear (Psalm 38:4).

Now multiply one lifetime of shame times several billion people. That’s what Jesus bore when he died as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. At that one moment, the sins of everyone who ever lived and ever will live all fell on Jesus.

What an overwhelming, incomprehensible weight to bear. Yet Jesus took all of our sins, for all people, for all time and sacrificially bore them so that we wouldn’t have to.

Jesus suffered, died, and overcame death so that we may live with him forever. Thank you, Jesus.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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