September 8, 2024

Luke 9.51 (NIV)
As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.

When Jesus came he was really man and really God.*

This verse makes my heart hurt. This awful thing that Jesus knew he had to do – this thing that has been hanging over him his whole life – is only weeks away. As a man, he clearly did not want to go through with it. But as God, he strode into Jerusalem and put the last act into motion. Max Lucado calls it Jesus’ “death march.”* Clearly, his time on earth was running out.*

Jesus later prayed in the garden for the “cup” to pass from him. He knew what was in store for him, he knew what he had to do – and he had a very human dread of the agony he would have to endure. And yet, in the words of another writer, if he had “been forced to nail himself to the cross, he would have done it. For it was not the soldiers who killed him, nor the screams of the mob: It was his devotion to us.”*

As much as Jesus may have wished there was another way to save us . . ., he humbly submitted to the most excruciating punishment to pay for our sins.*