Two Scarred Hands

The only hands that can pull you through are the two scarred hands of the One who’s gone before you.

April’s Awakening, Day 21

At Calvary we see what sin deserves and what God requires. Calvary was too terrible to be optional, the suffering involved too enormous to be unnecessary, and the Sufferer too precious to his Father to have been given over needlessly to such pain.

 —Peter Lewis 

Christ endured every kind of suffering in all those who foreshadowed him. In Abel he was slain, in Isaac bound, in Jacob exiled, in Joseph sold, in Moses exposed to die. He was sacrificed in the passover lamb, persecuted in David, dishonored in the prophets.

 —Melito of Sardis

The trouble is, people do not know that Christ is a Deliverer. They forget that the Son of God came to keep them from sin as well as to forgive it.

 —D. L. Moody

Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish. In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back. Isaiah 38:17 NIV 

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. Mark 8:31 NIV 

Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. Romans 8:17 NIV

            On the hill outside Jerusalem, the place of the skull, Golgotha in the Greek and Calvary in the Latin, Christ’s suffering was complete. In His life and in those final hours, He truly carried upon Himself all the sin, pain, suffering, sorrow, and shame of all those who came before Him and all those who would come after. He was no stranger to the rigors and difficulties of human life, and He experienced in full the worst of everything that we would face. He did it for you and me. He did it because of His unconditional love. He did it because there was no other possible way to mend our relationship back together with God. You can freely call upon His name because He truly knows what you’re going through—He’s been there and overcame it all for you. There is no condemnation in Christ—just His love and understanding and His two scarred hands reaching out to pull you through.