Perfect Punishment

Have you ever felt distant from God? Undoubtedly due to your sin, you realize you don't feel like you know God. Yes, you remember who He is, what He's done, and everything you ever learned. But personal devotions have been shallow to non-existent. Fellowship has faded into hang-out time. Discipleship has dissipated. You long for what you had so recently. As soon as you realize it, and your heart screams and your eyes begin to water. "God where did you go?! What have I done? Please, please, come back!"

Now, rewind a couple thousand years. (Though, to God, then is the same as now.) Jesus hangs, humiliated. His face is hidden by his blood. His beaten body --or what's left of it-- is bear to the masses and the harsh afternoon of the middle east. People mock the very incarnate of God while some lay clenched in the mud formed by their tears. Yet all of this is superficial, minor details to Him.

This man spent 30+ years in a perfect, intimate, father-son relationship with the Perfect God of everything. Since birth this man knew the most powerful, most loving, and wisest Being like one knows his family. When God turned His back on Jesus that day, it was not the little experience that we had. Multiply it by the stars. It was a cataclysmic shift from perfect loving intimacy to wrathful devastating abandon. God not only disowned His most loved Child, but He unleashed on Him all the guilt, condemnation, and abhorrence of the whole world and of all time. God lead His willing Son by hand to execution, turned his back, and walked away.

This is what we have done to our Lord. It wasn't the cross, but what happened there. And think: He not only forgets it, but turns to us and says, "Look, I have taken the punishment that would have obliterated you, and see I will escort you into the presence of the Holy One that you may know Us."

That. Is. Irresistible.