24 “He personally bore our sins in His (own) body on the tree (as on an altar and offered Himself on it), that we might die (cease to exist) to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed.
25 For you were going astray like (so many) sheep, but now you have come back to the Shepherd and Guardian ( The Bishop) of your souls”.
He who carries something needs to be stronger than the weight of what He is carrying. When you carry something you get personal and intimate with it, hands are used, strength is exercised, feelings are involved and sometimes pain is experienced-nevertheless, you keep on carrying it till you reach your destination. Jesus carried a Cross, but the Cross was just a piece of wood used to punish criminals, if we were to be biblically correct - Jesus carried you, your issues, your mess, your shame, your sin, your guilt, your history and your weakness. There are two ways in which we can approach the Cross. We can approach the Cross from the past, by looking at its history, this approach makes us confront the thousand criminals who died on the Cross before Jesus – all of them crucified for breaking social law; or we can approach the Cross from the future, by looking to the future for the benefits of what Jesus did on the Cross in the past. This approach forces us to look beyond history, beyond Golgotha and into tomorrow, where the same Jesus who was crucified comes riding on the clouds and wearing a crown, not the one given to Him by the Roman soldiers but the one recognized in His kingdom. Outside of Jesus the cross reminds us of our weakness, but the Cross with Jesus on it - points us to the physician who remedies that weakness. The Cross is a symbol of death, but with Jesus it points us to the source of life.
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