Nuggets from An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith - The Impossible Call

Nuggets from An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith by Dave Hunt – The Impossible Call

What we are trying to say is illustrated through a man who had the most amazing testimony of anyone who ever lived. A resident of death row, he knew on the day of his execution, as footsteps came resolutely down the corridor, that he was going to die. When the door of his cell swung open, however, the jailer spoke these astonishing words: “You are being set free. Another man is dying in your place!”

Of course, I’m referring to Barabbas, the only man who ever lived who could literally testify, “Jesus died for me, in my place!” But Barabbas was not saved. Why? Simply because the death of Christ had freed him to live his own life. Yet that is often today’s self-centered understanding of the gospel: Jesus died for me so that I can live for myself, for worldly success and happiness, and go to heaven when I’m too old or too sick to enjoy earthly pleasures anymore.

Against that false impression, A. W. Tozer wrote: “Among the plastic saints of our times, Christ has to do all the dying and all we want is to hear another sermon about His dying – no cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king within the little kingdom of Mansoul and wear our tinsel crown with all the pride of a Caesar; but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility.”

People would come to Christ promising to follow Him wherever He would lead. He reply was simple: “Let Me make it very clear. I’m heading for a hill outside of Jerusalem called Calvary, where they will crucify Me. So if you intend to be true to Me to the end, take up your cross right now because that is where we’re going.”

Of course, no one did that. Nor would it have saved their souls had they died on crosses erected beside His. He had to die in their place. But after His resurrection they were changed men, no longer afraid to die for their Lord. For then they understood and believed and gladly submitted to the truth: Christ had died in their place because they deserved to die. His death was not to deliver them from death, but to take them through death and out the other side into resurrection.

At last they understood and believed. Acknowledging that God was just in condemning them to death for their rebellion against Him, they accepted the death of Christ their Savior as their very own. They had died in Him; and believing that changed everything.