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WHAT A SAVIOR! #13
THAT PERFECT SEASON
How old were you when you first sinned? Do you remember
your first sin? Do little babies sin there in their bassinet in the hospital?
Can a human being go a year, or a month, or even an hour and a half without
sinning?
I don’t remember this specifically, but someone was telling me about the
opening of the 1978 baseball season. Back in those wonderful days, the
Los Angeles Dodgers were almost always competitive – the “Big Blue Wrecking
Crew” – while the Atlanta Braves really stunk. A lot of us here at the
Voice of Prophecy appreciated that era, and prayed for it to continue
indefinitely, which it obviously hasn’t. But back in that glorious season,
the Dodgers had the good fortune to begin the campaign in Atlanta. Three
games against the perennially last-place tomahawk-choppers. And, according
to the Internet archives, Tommy Lasorda and the boys in blue came to town,
and promptly beat the Braves three straight games: 14-4, 6-2, and 7-4.
But the interesting thing is that, by the time the weekend was over, a
number of the Dodger players were still batting something like .750. They
had had a lot of hits! A couple of the players were something like 12
for 14 at the plate; the entire weekend they only made out a couple of
times. Again I say: those were wonderful days!
About four years later, though, the Atlanta Braves stunned the baseball
world by turning things around. You talk about living a sinless life!
They opened the season out here in California, and spanked the Padres
at San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium two straight games. Then they went
home and jumped all over the Houston Astros three straight. They got on
the team airplane, saying to themselves, “What’s going on here?”, and
flew to Cincinnati, where they turned the Big Red Machine into a bunch
of pale pink losers – so that’s three more straight victories. They took
their eight-game skein of perfection into Houston, where the Astros were
obviously hungry for revenge, and promptly barbecued the Texans three
MORE times. Back in Atlanta now, the Tomahawks were going wild at Fulton
County Stadium as the Reds limped onto the diamond and meekly lost two
more in a row. Finally, on April 22, the 13-game winning streak, best
in major league history to open a season, came to an end as Cincinnati
managed to eke out a 2-1 victory.
I suppose most of us, in terms of perfection and not sinning and a spotless
record in heaven’s books, feel a bit more like the 1988 Baltimore Orioles,
who took the field on Opening Day and proceeded to lose their first 21
games! About halfway through, if memory serves, a radio announcer for
the team declared that he would neither eat nor drink until the team won
a game . . . and probably starved to death! But it’s a spiritual law,
it seems, that descendants of Adam and Eve just cannot stop eating from
the forbidden tree. We are sinners. You are; I am. Our batting averages
are not very good, and a lot of balls Lucifer hits at us go right between
our legs for an error.
We’re studying the personhood, and the nature, and the character, and
the divine qualifications of Jesus Christ. Not ours – His. Why do we Christians
believe that Jesus was, and is, the Son of God? Why do we trust in God’s
Word when it says that He is fully and completely and eternally God? One
of the reasons is right here: for 33 years, Jesus lived here among us
. . . and He did not sin. Not once. Not a single time. Never. Zero. When
Jesus went back up to heaven following the Resurrection, His batting average
was still a thousand and His earned-run-average was zero. For His entire
life here on our planet, He simply did not ever commit a sin.
That in itself is an amazing thing, but we’re even more moved by the fact
that the perfection of Jesus the Messiah is predicted and announced in
the Old Testament too. It would be like a scouting report predicting ahead
of time that a young ballplayer from the AAA farm club is going to come
to Dodger Stadium and bat a thousand all year long. Here’s Psalm 45:7:
“You [Jesus] love righteousness and hate wickedness;
therefore God, Your God, has set You above Your companions by anointing
You with the oil of joy.”
If you’re one of those who love singing from Handel’s
Messiah at Christmastime, you already know Isaiah chapter 53. But a few
lines after the beloved Surely He hath borne our griefs motif, we find
this prediction in verse 9:
“He was assigned a grave with the wicked” – that certainly
came true after Calvary, didn’t it? – “and with the rich in His death,
though He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.”
In the New Testament, obviously, we find a powerful
litany of testimonials; let me give you just a synopsis, borrowing gratefully
from this book, Questions on Doctrine. The scholars remind us that the
sinlessness of Jesus is one of the great qualifying proofs of His divinity.
Listen:
“[Jesus is described] as the ‘Holy One of God’ (Mark
1:24), ‘holy thing’ (Luke 1:35), holy child Jesus’ (Acts 4:27), ‘hath
done nothing amiss’ (Luke 23:41), ‘no unrighteousness . . . in Him’ (John
7:18), ‘Holy One and the Just’ (Acts 3:14), ‘knew no sin’ (II Cor. 5:21),
‘without spot’ (I Peter 1:19), ‘without blemish’ (I Peter 1:19), ‘did
not sin’ (I Peter 2:22), ‘separate from sinners’ (Heb. 7:26).”
We could get into about twenty different theological
fields here – all of them difficult and even controversial – but let’s
observe that the whole Bible describes the necessary Lamb of God, the
sin offering, as perfect. The Lamb must be perfect. In the Old Testament
sacrifices, it had to be a lamb without blemish. And obviously, you cannot
have a sinner dying for sinners. A sinner would have to sacrifice for
his or her own sins, not for other people’s sins. The entire atonement
model of “substitution” – again, we’ll endeavor to stay away from difficult
debate themes – requires that the Messiah who dies for others must be
a perfect sin offering. A kind friend with cash paying for those who have
no cash.
The incredible thing – and a powerful proof of the divinity of Jesus –
is that He came to this world “in the likeness of sinful man.” That’s
in Romans 8. He was born from a human mother. He got hungry and tired
and sleep. He had male hormones when beautiful women went by. He had two
eyes that could see pornography just as clearly as the disciples could;
He had two ears that I’m sure heard obscene language every single day
of His ministry. After all, Jesus was hanging around with fishermen most
of the time! Enough said right there! And most of His friends were sinners
and prostitutes, a rough crowd. But in some miraculous way that we will
probably never understand, the divine Son of God had the “likeness” of
sinful man without being a sinful man! He was surrounded by sin without
being stained by sin. He could hear foul language all the time without
it becoming a part of His own mental framework or part of His own vocabulary.
We started this series borrowing a few ideas from the recent Mel Gibson
film, The Passion of the Christ. Actor Jim Caviezel, himself a born-again
Christian, agreed to play the title role, as most of you know. But when
they came to the grueling, wrenching, R-rated scourging scene in Pilate’s
courtyard – the bloody panorama which runs an agonizing ten minutes –
of course, they didn’t have Caviezel actually endure what Jesus did.
But here’s the interesting thing. This dedicated believer, also a Hollywood
actor, told Newsweek magazine how Gibson had them put a half-inch-thick
board up against his back. Shooting from the front, of course, the film
audience wouldn’t see that board. But when that whip with the metal lashes
came whistling through the air, one of the blows missed the board! And
Caviezel confessed to interviewer Sean Smith:
“[The soldier] missed, hit me flush on the back and
ripped the skin right off. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t breathe. It’s
so painful that it shocks your system. I looked over at the guy, and I
probably said the F word. Within a couple of strokes he missed again.
There’s like a 14-inch scar on my back. So we had good and bad days.”
And you know, that’s the confession of even loyal Christians
in the world today – and for the entire history of this planet. We have
good and bad days. Even a man who loves the Lord passionately had this
most harsh of profane words come out of his mouth, almost involuntarily.
But friend, somehow the divine Son of God, who was here in the “likeness”
of sinful flesh, did not actually have “sinful flesh.” Because Jesus endured
that scourging, and He didn’t curse. He didn’t complain. He didn’t cavil
or cry out for revenge.
Tomorrow we’ll prayerfully think about the question of whether or not
Jesus, as a holy God in human form, even COULD sin. Was He, as some theologians
put it, “impeccable”? For today, let’s quietly rejoice that, whether He
could or could not, He certainly DID NOT! Jesus came to our world as “that
holy thing,” and He was still “that holy thing” when He successfully concluded
His mission of redemption.
Again we say: “What a Savior!”
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