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I hope you have been preparing your heart to celebrate Resurrection Sunday, for it is truly the most important celebration for us as Christ-followers. And in preparation, I’d like us to focus on a very unusual question, which is: What kind of god dies?
If you or I were given the assignment to determine how the sins of mankind could be forgiven, would we ever have come up with a plan that God becomes man and dies? The disciples certainly had difficulty hearing Jesus when he repeatedly told them that he had come to die, not to get rid of the Roman rule in Israel and establish himself as the ruler. Even though there were many clues and prophecies from the Old Testament showing that the coming Messiah would die, their belief at the time was that Jesus was Messiah and he had come to save them from Rome, not from their sins.
I’ve been trying to put myself in the shoes of those disciples as they grappled with Jesus’ mission. Clearly Jesus told them, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). He told them that he was the Good Shepherd and the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He even gave them an indication of the kind of death he would die when he said, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up” (John 3:14). But they just couldn’t hear it because what kind of god dies?
Only the true eternal God would have put this plan in place. To send his only Son who was equal with God the Father for the purpose of dying could only come from the mind and heart of God himself.
Then think of this—the way Jesus died was not only the most painful and horrendous way to die; the Jews considered that any crucified person was condemned by God. Don’t you imagine that in those early days following the crucifixion, the disciples were struggling to understand why Jesus had to die, and why he died on a cross? He died this ignominious death and all along they thought he was from God—which of course he was—but how could he be from God and die on a cross?