Jesus the Savior (Friday Devotional)

It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” And with him they crucified two rebels, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.

- Mark 15:25-32

Everyone at Golgotha had heard the stories by this time. Five thousand fed with just a few loaves and fish. Demons driven out with an authoritative word. Paralyzed men walking, sick women made well, a dead girl brought back to life.

These stories had inspired so many to welcome Jesus to Jerusalem just a few days earlier the way they would greet a conquering king. Shouting their hosannas and waving their palm branches, the people eagerly awaited a new manifestation of Jesus’ power. Their victory was at hand, their oppression at its end, their salvation assured.

But as the week dragged on, Jesus didn’t work the kinds of wonders the Galileans went on and on about. He threw the money changers out of the temple, and he lambasted the religious officials for their hypocrisy, but he didn’t say a word against the occupying Romans. Worst of all, when his preaching did get political, it wasn’t to raise an army or inspire a revolution—it was to predict Jerusalem’s destruction.

So when the religious officials predictably had enough, the people joined them in condemning Jesus. He hadn’t wielded his power properly, he hadn’t fought the right enemies, he hadn’t met their expectations. He hadn’t saved them.

So now the Romans would do what they did best. With brute force, they would make an example of Jesus, showing what happened to anyone who dared oppose the empire. Jesus, this failed messiah, would see what happened to all would-be saviors.

Repeatedly—voices dripping with sarcasm, but perhaps also with a lingering trace of hope—they called upon Jesus to save himself from his fate. Come down from the cross if you can, they shouted. Call down your angels, they jeered. But, silently bearing the agony of their rejection, their taunts, and their sins, Jesus refused to save himself.

Instead, by his death, he did what they’d demanded all along: he saved them. The Lamb of God was slain for the sins of the world. The righteous one died for the ungodly. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, upon him was the punishment that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed.

Like the people so long ago, we still long to be saved, and we still want it to be on our terms. We expect a new routine or a new job or a new city or a new election to be the cure-all, to fix what ails us. But the truth is that salvation has already come—it is finished—and not through any manner we’d have conceived. Through his own suffering, Jesus brought about our salvation.

He didn’t save himself. He saved you instead.