Week 14—Wednesday 1 Peter 1:18-20
Week 14—WEDNESDAY
THE UNSEEN CROSS ON THE HEART OF GOD
We ended yesterday on the thought that God being love would create objects of love upon whom God could lavish love and be loved in return. But God would be responsible for our sin by making us free! Yes, and God accepted that responsibility and discharged it upon a cross.
That is what the passage means in the book of Revelation where it speaks of “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (13:8, KJV). But the Gospel accounts say that Jesus was slain two thousand years ago! No, the cross began the moment humans sinned. There was an unseen cross upon the heart of God the moment humans began to sin. The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. But how would we know there is a cross upon the heart of God? God is Spirit. How would we know there is an unseen cross upon the heart of an Eternal Spirit? We could not know unless God showed this inner cross through an outer cross. The outer cross lifted up in history shows the inner cross upon the heart of God.
Amy Wilson Carmichael, a saint in India, had a home with three hundred girls in it, most of them rescued from prostitution. Through her wonderful spirit and the Spirit of God, these girls were changed and radiant. But one girl resisted the whole spirit of the home, was hard and rebellious. Miss Carmichael did everything to get the girl to change. No result. One day she took the girl into her home, bared her arm, took a needle, and told the girl that she was going to thrust the needle into her arm. The girl objected: “This will hurt you.” “Yes it will, but it will hurt me nothing to what you are doing is hurting me.” When she thrust the needle into her arm and the blood began to trickle down, the girl threw her arms around her neck and wept as if her heart would break: “I didn’t know you loved me like that,” she cried. From that moment she was changed.
O Father God, we know our sins hurt you, but we never saw it before we saw it in the cross. Now we know what our sins cost you. They cost a cross. When we really see that, we are changed. We thank you, thank you for the cross. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am a child of God’s love, also the result of my freedom—the love will win.