NEW LIVES FOR OLD

We all know the fable of The Beauty and The Beast. The boy was once handsome, but that was before the curse. The curse changed everything. That all changed when the girl came.

What would have happened if she hadn’t come or even cared? She was beautiful and kind. He was an ugly ogre with a bad disposition. Because the Beauty loved the Beast, the Beast became beautiful himself.

The story is painfully familiar, not because we have read it to our children, but because there is a beast within every one of us.

The evil beast was never so raw as on the day that Christ died on the cross. After being beaten, Jesus was taken by the soldiers to the governor’s palace where they put a robe on him and placed a staff in his hand. They mocked him as king by placing a crown of thorns on his head. They sarcastically bowed down to him, calling him King of the Jews. Then they spat on him.

Strong soldiers beat up and spat on an exhausted, nearly dead Jesus. What kind of beast beats on a half-dead man? Spitting isn’t intended to hurt the body. Its purpose is to degrade the recipient.

Ephesians 2:3 says that we are by nature children of wrath. It’s not that we can’t do good. It’s just that we can’t keep from doing bad. It’s called sin. Jeremiah 17:9 says “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it?”

We have a problem. We are sinners and the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). We have another problem. We are evil and Proverbs 10:16 says that wicked people are paid with sin and death.

What can we do?

We can allow the spit of the soldiers to symbolize the filth in our hearts. And then observe what Jesus did with the filth for which we have asked forgiveness. He carried it to the cross.

Mingled with His blood and sweat was the essence of our sin. He knew what he was taking to the cross. He saw the beauty in the beast that is us.

He did it because he loves us.