Our response to Jesus' crucifixion
Our reply
On that cross Jesus carried your sins and mine. God has never left anyone else in the way that he left Jesus then.
13 So God's Law shows that it is right for God to punish us. But Christ took that punishment away from us, because God punished him instead of us. It says in the Bible: ‘When people hang someone on a tree to kill him, it shows that God has cursed that person.’
Galatians 3:13 EasyEnglish Bible (EASY)
Our sin became part of Jesus. He felt that God left him alone. Jesus seemed to suffer on the cross more than other people did. The Romans were surprised when he died so soon. But His real pain was the result of your sin and my sin. He carried our sins and that made him feel completely alone.
How can we reply to what he has done for us? There is only one way.
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘A person who wants to come with me must not think about himself. He must decide that his own life is not important. He must be like someone who carries his own cross to go and die. Then he may come with me as my disciple. 25 Whoever wants to keep his life safe will lose it. But whoever gives his life to serve me will have true life. 26 A person may get everything in the whole world for himself. But if he loses his life, it will not be any good for him. There is nothing that a person can give to get back his life.
Matthew 16:24-26 EasyEnglish Bible (EASY)
Jesus meant that we must not think about our own life first. We must not do what we want to do. We must think about God. We must live as he wants us to live.
Many people here in Britain think that it is easy to be a Christian. And I hope that their lives will be easy. But this is not what the Bible says. What Jesus says is difficult. He wants us to trust him completely. Ask yourself this question: 'Do you trust Jesus completely?' If not, you are playing a very dangerous game.
We should think again about what Jesus suffered for us. Then let us all, because of him, pray to God. Let us ask that his Holy Spirit would come to us. He will change the way that we live. He will help us to obey completely whatever God asks us to do. And if we are not sure about anything, he will help us. He will give us no inner peace, until we find our peace in him.
Some words of Isaiah, and of the apostle Paul are a suitable end to this chapter:
6 We have all turned away,
like sheep that take the wrong path.
Each of us has turned to follow our own way.
But the Lord has taken all our sins
and put the punishment on him.
Isaiah 53:6 EasyEnglish Bible (EASY)
God's friends
1 So we see that God has accepted us as right because we believe in him. As a result, we are friends with God, because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. 2 Also, because we trust Jesus Christ, he has caused us to know that God is very kind. That makes us strong in our lives here. We also are sure that we will live with God in heaven. So we are very happy.
5:2If we trust Jesus Christ and we believe that he died on the cross as a sacrifice on our behalf, then we are happy. We know that God is kind and he makes us strong in the life that we live here. We also know that one day we will live with God in heaven. We will see that God is very great and we will praise him.
Romans 5:1-2 EasyEnglish Bible (EASY)
We can live by God's Spirit
1 Now we know this: God has forgiven those people who are united with Christ Jesus. God will never say that they are guilty.
Romans 8:1 EasyEnglish Bible (EASY)
Read: Psalm 22
