He Saw The List

I was looking through the books in my library tonight and came across this from Max Lucado's book 3:16 The Numbers of Hope. With Easter being near I thought it was something we could reflect on:

Come with me to the hill of Calvary. Watch as the soldiers shove the Carpenter to the ground and stretch his arms against the beams. One presses a knee against a forearm and a spike against a hand. Jesus turns his face toward the nail just as the soldier lifts the hammer to strike it.

Couldn't Jesus have stopped him? With the flex of the biceps, with a clench of the fist, he could have resisted. Is this not the same hand that stilled the sea? Summoned the dead?

But the fist doesn't clench...and the moment isn't aborted.

The mallet rings and the skin rips and the blood begins to drip, then rush. Then the questions follow. Why? Why didn't Jesus resist?

"Because he loved us," we reply. That is true, wonderfully true, but-forgive me-only partially true. There is more to his reason. He saw something that made him stay. As the soldier pressed his arm, Jesus rolled his head to the side, and with his check resting on the wood, he saw:

A mallet? Yes.
A nail? Yes.
The Soldier's hand? Yes.

But he saw something else. Between his hand and the wood, there was a list. A long list. A list of our mistakes: our lusts and lies and greedy moments and prodigal years. A list of our sins.

The bad decisions from last year. The bad attitudes from last week. There in broad daylight for all of heaven to see, was a list of your mistakes.

He saw the list! He knew the price of those sins was death. He knew the source of those sins was you, and since he couldn't bear the thought of eternity with out you, he chose the nails.