Day 24: We are accepted through His broken heart

Truly everyone who is without Christ is without hope and without God. We need to bear in mind that it was our sin that caused our original and basic rejection. In Habakkuk, chapter 1, verse 13, the prophet speaks to the Lord and says:

“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.” (NIV)

So, wherever evil comes, then God averts his eyes. He cannot accept it. He cannot admit it into His presence. He rejects it. His infinite holiness and righteousness makes it necessary that He reject all forms of sin, of evil, and wrong, and for that reason, we were in this condition of rejection, outside, aliens, not belonging.

But, thank God the death of Jesus changed all this and that next verse in Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 13, Paul speaks about this transformation:

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.” (NIV)

Jesus made possible this transition from rejection to acceptance because on the cross He bore our rejection. Actually, that was His ultimate agony. That was the thing that broke His heart and caused Him to die. This is very vividly set forth in the Gospels, in the account of the crucifixion. We look in Matthew 27, verses 45 and 46, the account of the crucifixion:

“From the sixth hour [that's midday] until the ninth hour [that's three P.M.] darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour, out of that darkness, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’”

That's Aramaic. It's a quotation from Psalm 22. It means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' It always touches my heart that Jesus cried out in Aramaic. I think it's a fact that when people are in desperate agony, their mind frequently goes back to the language they first learned in childhood and that's how I understand that. Jesus used His mother tongue, the tongue that He learned in His home. He cried out, but not to a human being, but to God, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' And remember, no answer came from Heaven. That was the first time that Jesus had ever prayed or cried to God and did not receive an immediate answer. Heaven was silent. God averted His eyes. God stopped His ears.

Why? Because God is too pure to look upon sin and cannot tolerate wrong and when Jesus became identified with our sin, because of His own justice and righteousness, God had to avert His eyes and stop his ears and there came no answer from Heaven. That result was for our good.