September 11 I Saturday

Proverbs 10-12

2 Corinthians 4

“The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.”  —Psalm 2:4

Some of us may imagine God sitting on His throne in heaven looking down on us, and laughing and scoffing at us. But the laughing and scoffing that the psalmist writes about, from the opening verse of this devotion, speaks to the humour that God sees in humanity. Thinking by nailing Jesus to the cross, burying Him in the grave and rolling a stone over it that the Author of Life, the One who sustains all things by His powerful Word, could be killed. It is as though heaven looked down and said, “You really thought that you could kill the Creator? You thought that you could kill Life itself? C’mon! Haha!”

      When Jesus exposed the hypocrisy of the religious leaders, who perverted God’s law to elevate their own status, and shined the light on their warped understanding of who God is, they raged against Him. Jesus’s own covenant people resisted Him and His Word, and eventually deliberately chose to crucify Him. The nations conspired to put the Son of God to death on a cross. But this is where the rage of man meets the redemption of God. Their strategy to destroy Him actually became the very vehicle He chose to save them.

      In His grace, in His compassion and in His mercy, God extended forgiveness to humanity and salvation to the world by taking the Person of Jesus Christ that humanity sought to kill and revealing Him as the Saviour of the world. God knew that they would nail the Son to the cross in an attempt to rid themselves of God’s rule in their lives, and yet, that very act became the source of salvation by which God extended reconciliation to humanity. God took the vehicle of humanity’s rage and turned it into the greatest expression of His love.

      Paul tells us, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Why did God do this? Paul reveals, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). God transformed our most rebellious moment into His most redemptive moment.

      Have we marveled at how amazing His love is? May we remember the words of Paul that “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Prayer: Almighty God, while I was raging against You, thank You for bearing all my sins and dying on the cross to save me. I praise You for how amazing Your love is!