My Child

TAKEN FROM: “What is the Father Like?” W. Phillip Keller

BETHANY HOUSE PUBLISHERS C. 1996 pp. 53-55

“My child!  In mercy I come to you and to anyone who will receive Me. I come to seek, rescue, deliver....I come to set free those imprisoned by their own selfish interests and by their soul’s enemy. To set them free of their enmity against Me…

No one can fully grasp the enmity that exists between the soul of rebellious man and his merciful Maker. The appalling pride of the human heart is set in a hard, defiant will against My gracious goodwill. In the darkness of their angry delusions men and women despise and reject Me, though I do them great good.

I call you My children, and yet when I came to you humble as a child, Herod the king plotted My assassination. Later came the tempestuous three years in which I was under constant attack by the religious hierarchy. the priests and scribes could not “ see”--or comprehend with clear spiritual perception--that I came to reconcile men to Myself. Utterly oblivious to My divine nature, they charged Me with being a devil-but in fact, it was they who made themselves enemies to Me!

Various attempts were made on My life. In Nazareth, a crowd tried to push Me off a cliff to My death.

Then had come the hour for My supreme sacrifice. In soul and body I gave Myself to My foes to atone for their  sin of anger against God.

So, a great mystery began to unfold...beginning with hours of anguish in the olive garden...the grim betrayal by My friend Judas...and the priests’ midnight trial in a mock court...followed by the Romans’ cruel whips, tearing thorns, and nails...the wooden cross against My broken body...My very lifeblood spilling out on the soil.

There I hung...mercy itself, extended to all men.

I could easily have saved Myself. I chose to save you.

You see, My friend, genuine forgiveness extended to another costs a great price. The one who forgives literally lays down his or her life, in a humble self-sacrifice, to bear the cost of reconciliation.  It is a titanic transaction in which the merciful one takes on all the burden of the crime, the anger, the animosity--and sets his foes free. And that is what I did on that awful hill of Calvary. All men and women of all time were set free because I took upon Myself all of your iniquities.”