I wasn't going to blog today. I have so much to do, and so much that should already be done but isn't, that somethings just had to give and today it was going to be the blog.
Then I read Charles Spurgeon's "Morning and Evening" devotional for March 30 Click here to read). When I read Spurgeon's writing, I can't simply skim it or speed read it. His older English obligates me to actually stop all my mental multi-tasking and just focus on what he was trying to say. No zipping through. That's a good thing. We have so many easy to understand paraphrases and translations of the Bible available to us that I think it is easy to "zip through" without completely focusing all of our thoughts on what we read and meditating on it. Reading the works of people like Charles Spurgeon and Oswald Chambers is good mental exercise and builds study skills that I can transfer to my reading of the Bible.
On my huge list of "things I thought I already knew but seem to keep learning again" is that Jesus doesn't just love me as I understand love, He loves me with an intensity I can't begin to fathom. He didn't just die for me, He also identified Himself with me.
"Now, when the sinner is brought to the bar, Jesus appears there Himself. He stands to answer the accusation. He points to His side, His hands, His feet, and challenges Justice to bring anything against the sinners whom He represents; He pleads His blood, and pleads so triumphantly, being numbered with them and having a part with them, that the Judge proclaims, 'Let them go their way; deliver them from going down into the pit, for He hath found a ransom.' Our Lord Jesus was numbered with the transgressors in order that they might feel their hearts drawn towards Him."
He came and was numbered with us, the transgressors. Sometimes we generalize that and forget that He didn't just become a face in a crowd of sinners that suddenly turned on Him. He counted the cost before He came, and did it anyway. He was loving and thinking of every individual one of us while He was being crucified, paying the price for each. Your price. My price.
Because Christ was numbered with the transgressors, I can rejoice that am numbered with those whom He has made new.
He is risen! Have a joyful Easter!
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