The Sounds of Salvation

Do you hear the screams? The clash of metal against metal? The gasps? The jeering crowd? The dull thud of bodies against wood? The anguish?
 
These are not pleasant noises. But, they are the sounds of salvation.
 
On this weekend, we celebrate what was earned 2000 years ago. Jesus died the most brutal death imaginable. This death was not natural: it was the death of a criminal. This was a slow, painful death. The slow loss of blood circulation and coronary failure. The suffocation. The painful muscle spasms of agony.
 
Do you hear the sounds of salvation?
 
Jesus was perfect. He never did anything wrong. He never sinned. So, why did the God who became man go through such torture?
 
In his words: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
 
Jesus died for us. When he hung on the cross, the weight of the world’s sins, from Adam and Eve until the end of time, was placed on him. He died our death. He experienced our separation. Eternal damnation was his.
 
Again, why did he go through this?
 
Paul writes: “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life” (Romans 5:10).
 
God created humanity to have an intimate relationship with him. But, our sin broke that relationship. By our actions, we declared ourselves “God’s enemies.” So, we deserve judgment.
 
But God loved the world, desiring to have a relationship with his creation, so he sent his son Jesus to take our judgment on himself. The sounds of salvation, his cries of agony, gave us the ability to know God personally.
 
“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
 
This Easter weekend, do you have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ? Have you responded to the sounds of salvation?