Save One

Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? --Luke 15:4



As I look forward to the beginning of Holy Week, and the celebration of Christ's resurrection, I find myself reflecting on the magnitude of God's love for me. I am ashamed to admit that in the past I preferred to dismiss the gruesome reality of Jesus' crucifixion as the middle step in between Palm Sunday and Easter. By distancing myself in this way, I downplayed the power that Christ exhibited over death. I was also depriving myself of the joy of fully acknowledging that Christ died for me personally. Me!

If I had been the only human on the face of God's earth, He still would have sent Jesus to die for my sins. Jesus was fully capable of coming down off that cross, thereby avoiding an excrutiatingly painful and humiliating death, but He didn't. As he hung there, abandoned by His own heavenly Father, He saw me in His mind's eye. He didn't just hang on the cross, He clung to it in order to give me the gift of eternal life.

In taking on the world's sins, He took on my sins. He willingly stepped away from a place that knew no pain, to come to find me in the middle of mine. This may sound strange, but knowing that He died for the sins of the world doesn't impact me nearly as much as knowing that He died for mine. I am rocked to my core to realize that I am loved so intensely by the Creator. He chose me. He saved me--one solitary human--from the eternal punishment of my sins. He conquered death...for me.