The day when a political prisoner held your life in his hands.

One day a young man had an intimate farewell dinner with his closest friends.  His friends were clueless as to what was about to take place.  Over the next 21 hours this thirty-something religious teacher would become a political prisoner. He would be betrayed, falsely accused, tortured, mocked, and murdered.  The men who said they were his friends would turn their backs on him. His own Father refused to honor his request for him to be spared from unspeakable suffering.  His country’s religious leaders turned on him in hatred. Crowds of people who had only days earlier shouted his praises, now rallied as an angry mob shouting for his death. 

 

What was at stake? This thirty-something outcast was all that stood between the tsunami of the wrath of God and the hell-filled destruction of all mankind. He held your life in his hands.  He knew that if you had been alive in the streets of Jerusalem that day that you, too, would have joined with the crowd calling for his death. He knew that you would have walked away from him in shame, just like those who were closest to him. He could walk away and leave you to face God’s wrath or he could chose to pay the price that you deserved to pay. 

 

This political prisoner was Jesus Christ, the son of God. The farewell meal was the last supper. Don’t think this is a religious story. It is humanity’s story. It is God’s story. It is the story of why you are alive today, blessed with the hope of heaven. It is a story that you and your children must be intimately familiar with. 

 

How much does this story impact you? Do you think about it once a year? Does the story grip you to the point that it defines who you are and how you live? Do your children know that this story is the pivotal point of all human history? Without this story nothing makes sense in this life.

 

If Christianity is going to be relevant to your children it must be relevant to you.  This story is the most relevant point of Christianity for your life. Without the sacrifice of Christ, the political outcast and prisoner, we could not live for the glory of God or for anything else. We would instead live in hell. 

 

Make the story the most important and dominant part of your life. 

 

Shepherd Press