Imago Fidei

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He Resolutely Set Out

Photo of the Seventh Station, Gate of Justice in Jerusalem taken by the American Colony between 1898 and 1914. From the Library of Congress.

As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.
- Luke 9:51


When Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem, he set his face to die.

Remember, when you think of Jesus' resolution to die, that he had a nature like ours. He shrunk back from pain like we do. He would have enjoyed marriage and children and grandchildren and a long life and esteem in the community. He had a mother and brothers and sisters. He had special places in the mountains. To turn his back on all this and set his face towards vicious whipping and beating and spitting and mocking and crucifixion was not easy. It was hard. O how we need to use our imagination to put ourselves back into his place and feel what he felt. I don't know of any other way for us to begin to know how much he loved us. "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).

If we were to look at Jesus' death merely as a result of a betrayer's deceit and the Sanhedrin's envy and Pilate's spinelessness and the soldiers' nails and spear, it might seem very involuntary. And the benefit of salvation that comes to us who believe from this death might be viewed as God's way of making a virtue out of a necessity. But once you read Luke 9:51 all such thoughts vanish. Jesus was not accidentally entangled in a web of injustice. The saving benefits of his death for sinners were not an afterthought. God planned it all out of infinite love to sinners like us and appointed a time.

- John Piper, from "He Set His Face to Go to Jerusalem"

Posted by Susan Wunderink on March 26, 2009 12:00 AM

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