#DailyDevotion Jesus Hanging On The Cross Is God’s Answer To Sin & Evil In The World
John 3:14-17 14“As Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up 15so that everyone who believes in Him has everlasting life. 16God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. 17You see, God didn’t send His Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through Him.
To understand what Jesus is getting at here, you must know the biblical account from Numbers 21. The people were grumbling against Moses and therefore were grumbling against the LORD. The LORD, as a punishment, sent serpents to to bite the people and kill them. Once they realized their sin, the begged Moses to intercede for them to have God remove the serpents. God did not remove the serpents though. He told Moses to make a bronze serpent and hang it on a staff. If anyone got bitten by a serpent, if they looked at the bronze serpent, they would be healed.
So it is with us sons of Adam. In Adam we grumbled against the LORD, rebelled and ate the fruit we were commanded not to eat. The LORD punished us with sin and death. Jesus interceded for us and the LORD God sent his son to hang upon the tree so that everyone who looks and believes in him will have everlasting life. When we look to Jesus hanging on the cross we see our punishment for our sin—we see sin and death. Paul writes, “God made Jesus (become) sin that we might become the righteousness of God.” As God did not remove the serpents until his people entered the Holy Land, so too, he does not remove from us sin and death until we are resurrected and enter the New Heavens and New Earth.
We see in this the love God has for the world in sending his son into it. God our Father gives Jesus Christ, his only-begotten son as a sacrifice for sin and death upon the cross so that we would not perish but have everlasting life by believing on Jesus. In John’s Gospel, Jesus tells us a number of times when we believe in him we have passed from death to life. Having faith in Jesus is possessing eternal life. We don’t experience death as believers because Jesus has become our death for us on the cross. We may look dead as a door nail in front of the Church one day but we are still alive. We did not taste death as we closed our eyes but passed from death to life. I hate to think what those who do not have faith in Christ experience when they close their eyes in death. It must be quite horrifying, particularly if they had heard the good news of Jesus Christ and they rejected it. But not us. For those who put off Christ because they don’t think God loves us because of all the bad things that happen in the world, Jesus hanging on the cross is their answer. Look what God has done to his son. All the evil in the world is wrapped up in Jesus on the cross.
So we then see one of my favorite passages in the bible John 3:17, “God didn’t send His Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through Him.” Here we see God’s true attitude towards the people of the world. God does not want to condemn them. He provided a means to save them from sin and death. He saved them through Jesus Christ, every one of them, from the infant in the womb, to the nicest person, the most despicable person, even the person we think are monsters and deserve everlasting torment. If they would repent and believe in Jesus Christ, everlasting life is theirs and it is yours.
Merciful Father, you provided your Son Jesus Christ to be our sin and death so we may have everlasting life through faith in him. Grant us your Holy Spirit that we may look to Jesus in faith and be saved. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.