A thought by Max Lucado (2012-01-02) from his book, He Chose the Nails (p. 17). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)
Have you ever done that? There is a new film coming out of the fable of Beauty and the Beast. Have you ever thought that we too many times are more like the beast than the beauty?
Over in Matthew 27 it tells of when the soldiers had Jesus and they were preparing to take Him to be killed but they first decided to have some fun with Him. And it says they “spat on Jesus”. The beast in them came out.
Max says, “Spitting isn’t intended to hurt the body— it can’t. Spitting is intended to degrade the soul, and it does. What were the soldiers doing? Were they not elevating themselves at the expense of another? They felt big by making Christ look small.” And we do that sometimes, don’t we? We do things that make us look big by making someone else look small.
Max goes on, “Maybe you’ve never spit on anyone, but have you gossiped? Slandered? Have you ever raised your hand in anger or rolled your eyes in arrogance? Have you ever blasted your high beams in someone’s rearview mirror? Ever made someone feel bad so you would feel good?
“That’s what the soldiers did to Jesus. When you and I do the same, we do it to Jesus too. ‘I assure you, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’ (Matt. 25: 40 NLT). How we treat others is how we treat Jesus.”
Later Max says, “For some reason, the One who chose the nails also chose the saliva. Along with the spear and the sponge of man, he bore the spit of man. Why? Could it be that he sees the beauty within the beast? But here the correlation with Beauty and the Beast ends. In the fable, the beauty kisses the beast. In the Bible, the Beauty does much more. He becomes the beast so the beast can become the beauty. Jesus changes places with us. We, like Adam, were under a curse, but Jesus ‘changed places with us and put himself under that curse’ (Gal. 3: 13). What if the Beauty had not come? What if the Beauty had not cared? Then we would have remained a beast. But the Beauty did come, and the Beauty did care. The sinless One took on the face of a sinner so that we sinners could take on the face of a saint.”
Max says, “Allow the spit of the soldiers to symbolize the filth in our hearts. And then observe what Jesus does with our filth. He carries it to the cross. Through the prophet he said, ‘I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting’ (Isa. 50: 6 NIV). Mingled with his blood and sweat was the essence of our sin.”
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