Read Acts 2:23, 3:18; Psalm 22:16,18
“God knew what would happen, and his prearranged plan was carried out when Jesus was betrayed. With the help of lawless Gentiles, you nailed him to a cross and killed him.” (Acts 2:23)
Jesus of Nazareth had a magnificent obsession: the cross. He was consumed by a compelling sense of divine providence, and each day of His adult life drew Him inexorably closer to the fulfilment of His mission.
Jesus was not a helpless victim of fate, however. He was not a pitiful martyr. His death on the cross was no afterthought by God but the fulfilment of the Father’s predetermined plan for His Son.
“But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ should suffer, He has thus fulfilled.” (Acts 3:18 NASB1995)
Search the Old Testament, and you will find inescapable prophecies regarding the death of the Saviour. Some date as far back as nine centuries before the birth of Christ, at which time crucifixion was not even practiced.
Planned by God so our sins might be forgiven, the death of Jesus opened the pathway to heaven—a pathway prepared and paved with His blood.
They pierced my hands and my feet....
They divide my garments among them,
And for my clothing they cut lots. (Psalm 22:16, 18 NASB1995)
The psalmist wrote that the Saviour’s hands and feet would be pierced. His bones would be pulled out of joint. His captors would cast lots for His garments. He would be the object of scorn and mockery. Remarkably, those details were recorded some nine hundred fifty years before the fact.
As brutal as our Lord’s experience was, it led Him toward the fulfilment of His God-given “magnificent obsession.”
Alone thou goest forth, O Lord,
In sacrifice to die;
Is this thy sorrow naught to us
Who pass unheeding by?
—Peter Abelard, 1079–1142
Adapted by Insight for Living staff from The Darkness and the Dawn by Charles R. Swindoll. Copyright © 2001 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. Used by permission of HarperCollins Christian Publishing. www.harpercollinschristian.com
