SUNDAY CHOICE – He did it with you in mind – A Message for Lent – by Charles Schokman
Pray this hymn will be a blessing to you.
They made a crown out of thorn branches and placed it on His head.’ Matthew 27:29 CEV
The hymnist Isaac Watts wrote; ‘See from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?’ Jesus wore a crown of thorns so you could wear a crown of glory. Thorns in Scripture represent sin.
In Eden when Adam and Eve disobeyed, God said, ‘Cursed is the ground because of you… both thorns and thistles it will grow for you.’(Genesis 3:17–18 NASB) Later He told Israel that unless they purged the land of their enemies, ‘they will be like… thorns in your sides.’(Numbers 33:55 NCV) Solomon cautioned: ‘Corrupt people walk a thorny, treacherous road.’ (Proverbs 22:5 NLT) And Jesus warned, ‘You can detect them by the way they act, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit. You need never confuse grapevines with thorn bushes.’ (Matthew 7:16 TLB)
Max Lucado writes: ‘The crown of thorns Jesus wore represented all our sins. As we were caught in the brambles of envy, anger, shame, discouragement, guilt, bitterness, and unforgiveness, so Jesus, who knew no sin, became “an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10 NIV) Not once did Christ use His supernatural powers for personal comfort. With just a word He could have transformed the hard earth into a soft bed… hurled the spit of His accusers back into their faces… and paralysed the hand of the soldier who braided the thorns. But He didn’t. Instead, “He cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to Christ’s cross.”’ (Colossians 2:14 NLT) And He did it with you in mind. Amazing!
