“HE HIMSELF BORE our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24). Again, to be in Christ and in His body are not exactly the same, and yet they belong together. You cannot be in Christ and not be in everything that is in His body. In His body are our sins, which He bore once and for all on the cross, and yet continuously bears in His body in the continuing cross of identification with our sins and sorrows. If we are to be in Him, we too must bear in our bodies what He did and does bear in His.
“It’s not on my body” is an old Chinese saying, meaning “It is not my responsibility.” A missionary tried to pay some fishermen to save a drowning man, but each shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s not on my body.” That saying and that attitude was the cause of the downfall of the old China. Atheistic communism stepped in and said, “The condition of the poor and the dispossessed is on our bodies, is our responsibility.” They took over, and they will run their course, and then fail for they are using wrong means, and the means are corrupting and will corrupt the ends and ruin them sooner or later. Then someone with right ends and right means will take over—and that will be the kingdom.
Last year there was translated to heaven a saint—a rugged, battling, loving saint, Mrs. Nobu Jo. After three days and nights in prayer in the mountains around Kobe she came down convinced that the suicides taking place at a certain bend in the railway track were on her body, were her responsibility. She put up a sign at the spot: “Don’t. See Mrs. Nobu Jo first. God is love.” I asked her how many she had rescued from suicide, and she replied: “We have a record of five thousand. And a record of sixty thousand more who probably would have committed suicide if we hadn’t helped them.” The sorrow and despair of these people were on her body. At the end, the emperor and empress came to thank her. We all do.
O Lord Jesus, we see lesser problems around us. Help us to take them this day on our bodies and make them our own. That will mean a cross, but it will also mean an Easter morning for us—and them. In Thy blessed name and spirit. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I refuse to take the sins of others on my body, then I refuse His taking my sins on His body.
