Don’t You Think He Would Have?

He was despised and rejected
He was wounded and bruised
He was oppressed and afflicted
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter
He was cut off from the land of the living
He was a man of sorrows, well acquainted with suffering
He was beaten to the point that He was unrecognisable. (Isaiah 53:3-8)

My kids are different. They’re brain damaged and their behaviours are not always socially appropriate. They will never be on the “A List.”
My kids sometimes get teased.
My kids sometimes get picked on.
They sometimes get punched and taunted.

I want to hurt and mangle and rip and tear apart those who hurt my kids.

Instead I sit with a bursting heart and wonder at a cruelty of our world.

Atheists mock the brutality of what was done to Jesus the Christ. They mock their Creator and say that He could have done it differently. In their ignorance atheists say, “Well, why didn’t He just create a different kind of universe?”

The greatest possibility in the whole universe is Love closely followed by the freedom to choose. Because of His inherent love, God created beings who could also experience the best thing ever.


To achieve that goal God stood back and watched you nail His Son to the cross. He watched you exercise your right to choose and turn your back on love.


What do you think that was like for Him to watch His perfectly innocent, holy, pure and loving Son endure the fallout of our sinfulness?

What do you think that was like for Him to watch us reject the good that He had created and choose the destruction of ourselves and our planet instead?

If the goal of saving your soul could have been done in a different manner, don’t you think God would have done it differently?

The fact is, God couldn’t have done it differently. Jesus pointed out to His disciples “that He MUST (not could, would, or might, but MUST) go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and be killed and be raised on the third day.”

We don’t understand the reality of sin; a reality that brings death, the death of an unblemished sacrifice, the Lamb of God. When he first saw Jesus, John the Baptiser said, “Look, the Lamb of God who has come to take away the sins of the world.” For those steeped in a sacrificial system, these were deep and profound words. The night of the Passover in Egypt was played out again at the Passover Remembrance Celebration when God's Son was sacrificed so that we might live. Jesus came not to destroy evil (in some sense that I don’t understand evil must exist) but to defeat evil. That defeat cost the death of God the Son, as a sacrifice for our sins.

If the goal of saving your soul could have been done in a different manner, don’t you think God would have done it differently?

If I was God, and someone did to my Son, what you and I did to Jesus, heads would roll. Yet, all God wants from you is to apologise. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand what I was doing. I really didn’t. Please forgive me!” All He wants from you is to acknowledge that what He did, He had to do in order to give you the opportunity for forgiveness.

That’s all He wants but some people would rather pretend that it didn’t happen. And if it did happen, they say, it wasn’t that big a deal.

The Lord of lords, the King of kings, the Creator of the universe stepped down from His throne and out of pure love came to earth to dwell among us. Out of love He came into our lives knowing in advance that He would be abused, misunderstood, mistreated, rejected, insulted, betrayed and ultimately have humanity do our absolute worst to Him. Yet He entered into a covenant relationship with us anyway because He loves us.

If the goal of saving your soul could have been done in a different manner, don’t you think God would have done it differently?