Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3).

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, NIV).

The two aspects, giving His life for sins and giving His life for love, are related. He loved us and He gave Himself for us, for our sins (Gal. 2:20).

Today’s devotional consists of an invitation for us to go to three places:
(1) the Garden of Gethsemane,
(2) Mount Calvary, and
(3) the tomb of Jesus.

The Garden of Gethsemane
In the garden we find a man full of sorrow. From His lips He has spoken, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Mark 14:34, NIV).

He has been moaning. Twice His companions had held Him up; otherwise, He would have fallen to the ground. He has experienced fright and anguish. He kneels down. He gets up and goes to the three disciples that He had brought to be close to Him. He returns again to pray. He gets up again and goes to the disciples, hoping for words of encouragement. He returns to prayer, and His perspiration becomes drops of blood that fall to the ground.

Mark 14:36 reads, “Father, . . . everything is possible. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” (NIV).

What was this cup? Was it physical suffering or mental anguish of betrayal, desertion, and mockery? Jesus dreaded none of these, grievous as they were. His physical and moral courage throughout His public ministry had been indomitable. It is ludicrous to suppose that He was now afraid of pain, insult, and death.

The cup that frightened Him was the cup of divine wrath that it is said should be drunk by the wicked (Ps. 75:8) or by someone who represented them. He had no sin, but He had freely assumed the sins of all humanity.

What was this cup? It was the sins of everyone who had ever existed or would exist. Your sins and my sins weighed upon Him, and for this reason He felt separated from the Father. He bore our sins in His body (1 Peter 2:24). “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21, NIV), having become “a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13, NIV). Such proximity to sin brings separation from God. God disappears and no longer responds.

The cry that Jesus gave on Calvary, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46, NIV), was carried by Jesus in His heart and caught in His throat. The infinite attraction of love that existed between Father and Son was crossed out by an equally infinite repulsion, because God hates sin. There are no parameters to describe this experience.

If the contrast in the atmosphere between a cold-air current and a hot-air current can disturb the heavens with thunder and flashes of lightning, what could have happened within the soul of Jesus, where God’s supreme holiness clashed with the supreme malice of sin? It is no wonder that the sigh came from His lips, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Matt. 26:38, NIV).

The Gethsemane experience finds its culminating point in Jesus’ phrase “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36, NIV). Who is the “I,” and who is the “you”?

There is a correlation between what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane and what happened in the Garden of Eden. If sin is a free act in which the will of the human disobeys God, then redemption could not happen without having a human return to perfect obedience to God. Paul states this clearly in Romans 5:19: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (NIV).

So that such perfect obedience can exist, it is necessary to have a subject who obeys and a subject to obey—no one obeys himself or herself. Therefore, the “I” and the “you” resound in Jesus’ phrase It is the man Jesus who obeys God, freely, for love! It is the new Adam who speaks in the name of all humankind and finally says to God, “Yes.”

In addition to benefiting the human race, there are personal lessons in Gethesemane. When you are faced with difficult obedience (think about the most difficult obedience for you), kneel beside Christ and see Him in Gethsemane. He will teach you to obey, and He will obey in you and for you.

Jesus understood the will of God and said “Yes.” How often do we know God’s will and choose to do our own will or the will of others? In the atmosphere of Gethsemane, you will always say “Yes” to God.

In The Desire of Ages Ellen White tells us that even after Christ’s “Yes” to God, the tempest was not calmed, but He was strengthened, and a heavenly peace covered His bloodstained face. The tempests in our life do not cease because we say “Yes” to God, but there will be balance and peace within us.

Mount Calvary
Let’s go to Mount Calvary together. What do we see? In John 19:17-20 we learn that “carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). Here they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle. Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.’ Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek” (NIV).

The cross stood in the center.

According to the gospel, the cross of Christ is the only ground on which God forgives sin.

There is an inevitable collision between divine perfection and human rebellion—between God as He is and us as we are. For although “God is love,” yet we have to remember that His love is “holy love,” which yearns over sinners but refuses to condone their sin. How can God express His holy love in forgiving sinners without compromising His holiness; and reveal His holiness in judging sinners without frustrating His love?

It was holy love at the cross where God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience (2 Cor. 5:18, 19). On the cross divine mercy and justice were equally expressed and eternally reconciled. God’s holy love was satisfied.

We are forgiven, “justified by his blood” and “reconciled to him [God] through the death of his Son” (Rom. 5:9, 10, NIV). Without Christ’s sacrificial death for us, salvation would have been impossible. Christ’s death brought us forgiveness, justification, and reconciliation.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (verses 8-10, NIV).

Paul does not suggest that we do anything to bring about reconciliation—it is a divine act. This is the divine model of reconciliation—the offended one takes the initiative toward reconciliation, the offended one fulfills the requirements and pays the price so that the guilty one is placed in a favorable position. We should imitate this model of divine reconciliation. Even when we are the offended one, we should take the initiative to seek reconciliation.

When God grants reconciliation to individuals they are invited to allow the grace of God to penetrate their person, progressively transforming them into the image of Christ. Paul affirms that if God saved us when we were under condemnation, now that He reconciled us to Himself, He gives us the conditions for the construction of our character—He frees us from the habit of sinning. What are these conditions?

1. Bible study
2. Prayer
3. Communion
4. Proclaiming to others what He has done for me

Vertical reconciliation also assumes a horizontal dimension in other relationships. Christ knocks down the barriers that humans raise up. The cross gives us a new identity that transcends our other identities (race, color, education, gender, economic, and social position). Christians should live in the light of this new identity. It is here that we find the only possibility of unity.

Denying our equality—theoretically or in practice—means we have not understood the message of the cross. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16, NIV). The solidarity of Jesus with humanity should be assumed by every Christian. Jesus was not someone who simply lived, died, was resurrected, and exalted but He is alive and present in your church and in the midst of humanity, proclaiming and calling individuals to live love and justice.

The Tomb of Jesus
There is another place for us to visit together. Let’s go to the tomb of Jesus! An individual dressed in long white clothing speaks to Mary Magdalene and the other women. He says that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, has already risen! He asks them to go and tell the disciples (Mark 16:5-7).

How expressive were the women’s faces, eyes, voices, and gestures as they came before the disciples! Before the women spoke, the disciples knew that something extraordinary had taken place, and a chill ran up the spines of all present.

The women all chattered at the same time. They were so excited that the apostles probably had to tell them to calm down and speak clearly. All that could be heard were unconnected exclamations and gestures, “Empty, empty, the tomb is empty! Angels, angels, we saw angels! Alive! Alive! The Master is alive!”

On Friday the disciples and followers of Jesus had been disoriented. Because of the signs during His ministry, His tragic end would be scandalous and frustrating. The spirit of the disciples is presented by Luke in the episode of the two disciples from Emmaus: “We had hoped that he was the one. . . . It is the third day since all this took place” (Luke 24:21, NIV). They had come to a stalemate in their faith. And now the news comes: He is risen!

“He truly has risen,” said the apostles to the two disciples from Emmaus, even before hearing their experience. He is risen, “really,” “truly.” (Some Eastern Christians have made this phrase their Passover greeting, “The Lord is risen,” and whoever is being greeted responds, “He is truly risen.”)

In the squares and streets they proclaim the good news (Acts 2:32, 36). They establish churches in the name of Jesus. They allow themselves to be imprisoned, beaten, and even killed in His name. Why? They themselves answer, “He is risen!”

The Resurrection demonstrates the authenticity of Jesus. Jesus Himself indicated this as a sign: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (John 2:19, NIV). The disciples and others had imagined that the Father had taken authority away from Jesus when He shouted in anguish, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” Now they saw that the Father was identified with Him, making Him Lord and Christ. “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Rom. 4:25, NIV).

Paul builds upon the Resurrection the entire edifice of faith, the process of justification and salvation (1 Cor. 15:17). With enthusiasm he states, “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith (verse 14, NIV); and in Romans 10:9: “If you believe . . . in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you

will be saved” (NIV). As in the Incar-nation we have the same body in common with Christ, in the Resurrection Jesus became a “life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45, NIV).

This Christ of Gethsemane. This Christ of Mount Calvary. This Christ of the empty tomb is coming around the last curve in the road, and soon He will arrive. This Christ, who after His resurrection entered the synagogue through closed doors, wants to enter into cultures, countries, and islands, which are also still closed! He can! He can through you—your talents, your means, your life. He wants you to look at Him, meditate on Him. He wants you to find the strength that He Himself found in communion with the Father.

A journalist, after attending a funeral in the Seventh-day Adventist church in São Paulo, Brazil, published an article in his periodical entitled “Religious Ceremony Comforts Church Members and Converts an Atheist Journalist.” He said, “Christ existed; it was I who did not exist. He descended from the cross to embrace me, forgive me, accept me.”

Today we need a new embrace from Christ. He wants to give it to you. Accept it!