“And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.” – Mark 8:31
Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen to Him and He knew that it was God’s Plan A from before time began! The suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus was no accident or unfortunate turn of events. Jesus stepped out of eternity and into this world as a baby specifically to deal with the problem of human sin and to reverse the comprehensive damage it did to all creation.
By His perfect sin-free life, His sacrificial death on a cross, and His resurrection Jesus paid the penalty for our sin and set all who believe in Him free from sin and death. On the cross He carried all the righteous wrath of God for our personal sin, selfishness, and cruelty. He set us free, reconciled us to God, and established a new covenant between God and mankind in His blood.
When you put your faith in Jesus Christ, committing your life to follow Him, you enter that new covenant. The old covenant was all about laws and rules – hundreds of them – that we couldn’t hope to ever follow completely. The old covenant led to despair, because we could never measure up to the perfect holiness of God.
The new covenant is a covenant of grace – God’s gift of love, restoration, redemption, healing, and transformation that we can’t ever earn and never deserve. We don’t deserve what Christ did for us, and that’s the point. He did it out of love – for God the Father and for us – and all we must do is believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Do you believe?