June 23 | Luke 23:32-47

Pam Mann
3 days ago
3 min read

DAILY READING

REFLECTION

In Our Place

By Pam Mann

Since Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, every human who has ever lived has deserved death. We are all children of a fallen humanity. We each deserve death, the just punishment for sin before our holy God. However, there is one human who never sinned, who lived a life of perfect obedience to our holy God. That singular sinless human is Jesus, God’s only begotten Son made flesh. Jesus alone is capable of giving His life to rescue us from the eternal death which our sinfulness merits.

In the Luke 23 account of the horrible abuse Jesus endured, we see the crowds mocking him, the rulers sneering at him, the soldiers ridiculing him, and even a man condemned beside Jesus insulting him. It’s an entire cast of clueless, cruel creatures surrounding the Savior of the world. Only two individuals begin to grasp the eternal significance of that afternoon’s events. The first is the thief, who from his own cross, asks Jesus to remember him, and the second is the centurion, who perceives that Jesus is righteous, totally unlike every other man he has crucified.

We want to be like the insightful thief and centurion, don’t we? We want to get what’s going on. When God is on the move, we want to see where He’s headed and follow Him. But to be honest, there are many, many moments when we are the scoffers. We let the present pressing circumstances smother our faith. Our loss of focus and our failing faith, that follows it, can come from out of nowhere: from grief, from anxiety, from anger, from indifference, from simply getting sucked into the crowd of scoffers surrounding us. It’s easy to turn scoffer. We know this. This is why we build habits that God’s people have treasured for millennia. We regularly read the Word; we pray privately and with others; we worship God at every reminder of His might and goodness; we listen to God’s voice throughout the day; we join others for worship and Bible study.

We are the redeemed of the Lord, thanks to the precious blood poured on that terrible afternoon described in Luke 23. I grew up hearing again and again, year after year, about

that horrid afternoon and its amazing consequences for my eternal future. Then, when I was in college, a friend recommended a children’s book to me called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I didn’t expect much from a children’s book. I’d not heard of the author, C.S. Lewis. (Spoiler alert!) I was quickly intrigued by the idea of WWII-era children going through a wardrobe into a fantastic land called Narnia with talking animals, a wicked witch, and an amazingly gentle yet mighty lion called Aslan. One of the children, Edmond, is taken captive by the witch through his own insolence and greed. When there is no rescuing him, his sister Lucy is rightfully distraught. Little does she know that Aslan has a plan.

Because I had no prior knowledge of the author or his intent, I was totally taken into the story and feeling fully Lucy’s distress. I cried when Aslan died in Edmond’s place. I’m grateful that I was not astute enough to see Aslan as a Christ figure as I read. Instead, I felt the travesty of someone perfect and wonderful dying for a selfish, undeserving monster of a boy. Only when Aslan rose from the dead, did I realize what Lewis was depicting. And I cried again, knowing I was the monster child for whom Jesus had died.

Whether you feel yourself faithless or fiend today, know this good news. We have a Savior, a spotless lamb (who is also the mighty Lion of Judah). He has died in our place. Evil can no longer have hold of us. We are set free for new life in Christ!

PRAYER

Thank you, Jesus, for dying in our place. Thank you for setting aside Your might in heaven, for living a perfect human life, dying an excruciating death, and breaking the grip of sin, death, and the power of the devil in our lives!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PAM MANN

I first joined UALC when my husband (then my fiancé) and I were college students involved in youth ministry. God has used UALC to nurture our family’s faith, even in our years outside the U.S. I’ve participated in UALC ministries with kids, art, prayer, exercise, ESL, and Bible teaching. I do all the fun church things.