GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 2:30-31
30 For my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
Simeon has said, “You dismiss your servant.” Now he gives the reason for saying that: He has seen the very thing that was going to bring salvation, this child, Jesus. This, the coming of Christ, was prepared “in the sight of all people.” This means two things: First, the coming of the Savior was not done in secret, but openly. The record of his birth is common knowledge. Second, he came in the sight of all people, but more importantly, for the sake of all people. The salvation won by Jesus is universal salvation, offered freely to everyone.
Jesus brought this salvation in person, as a man, because sin came through a man. And “just as through the disobedience of the one man (Adam) the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man (Jesus) the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).
Jesus took on the punishment that was meant for all. “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). He bore our punishment at the hands of the Jews, when the Sanhedrin descended on him “and struck him with their fists, and slapped him” (Matthew 26:67). They mocked him, and blasphemed his divinity. He also bore our punishment at the hands of the Gentiles, when Pilate handed him over to the Roman soldiers who had him flogged, and who crucified him (Matthew 27:26).
Jesus suffered at the hands of Herod and Pilate, but this was simply what the power and will of God had decided beforehand should happen (Acts 4:28). His suffering did not merely meet man’s requirements, but God’s. He fulfilled everything, every last pang of agony, to death itself.
Jesus did not suffer for his own sake, but for ours. If we could have been saved or could save ourselves simply by keeping the law, or “if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:21). But salvation and forgiveness cannot be achieved by any other means than the sinless Son of God taking on our flesh as a baby, in order to be under the law just as we are, and to give up his life as a ransom for our lives (Mark 10:45).
Jesus’ sufferings are complete and paid the price for our sins completely. He said on the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30). But Christians continue to suffer. Why is this? It is because sin persists in the world, and like a bully kicking a man who is already down, the world and its master the devil keep kicking at Christians to make us suffer because of his defeat. Paul told the Colossians, “I fill up in my body what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church” (Col. 1:24). Paul’s sufferings, the church’s sufferings, and even your own personal, private sufferings continue because the devil is screaming in his defeat, kicking and thrashing and causing us misery. So even though our sufferings aren’t payment for sins, they still happen as if more of them are still “lacking,” and so we suffer because of our faith.
Finally, Jesus’ patience in his suffering offers us an example of the way we face our own trials. Christ is so much more than an example—he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 2:2)—but we can nevertheless follow his example when we suffer, too. We can rejoice in our sufferings. Paul said that sufferings produce perseverance, character, and hope (Romans 5:4), and so we endure these things knowing that we have a place with Jesus already in heaven, and that after we endure whatever the devil wants to throw our way we will have eternal life. Nothing can take that away from us.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota