The Meaning of the Cross, Day 12

Welcome to Day 12 of our series, “40 Days of the Cross.”

Each day we are taking just a few minutes to look at a word which will help us better understand the meaning of the cross. Today’s word is grace. When we are reading a story or watching a movie, we will often see a character do terrible things. That’s the bad guy. And what we want to happen is for the bad guy to get what’s coming to him! We want the bad guy punished! 

In the 1986 movie, The Mission, the bad guy is a slave trader named Mendoza in 18th century South America. He is capturing men, women, and children from the indigenous tribes in the jungle and selling them into slavery. We as the audience want him punished, maybe even killed. But in a major twist, Mendoza becomes a Christian. He asks the priest who is a missionary to the indigenous tribes for penance. Mendoza’s punishment is to drag a heavy bag of old rusty armor through the jungle, up the waterfall, to the village where he must present himself to the tribe he had persecuted. 

As Mendoza and the priests climbed the mountain to the village, the villagers saw them coming. One of the village leaders asked the priest why this man was dragging this heavy weight by himself. The priest said he was being punished for his sin. “What was his sin?” the village leader asked. The priest told him that this was the man who had kidnapped, beaten, and sold his people. The villager pulled out his machete and ran down to the former slave trader. He began to scream at Mendoza in a language Mendoza did not know. Then he took his machete, and cut the rope holding the bag which went tumbling down the mountain. The priest said to Mendoza, “He has forgiven you and released you from your burden.” Mendoza sank to the ground and began to weep. This was an act of grace: instead of getting what he deserved, he got what he needed. 

The cross was an act of grace. In this case, we were the bad guys. It was we who deserved the punishment for the sins of our words, our actions, and our thoughts. There was no penance that could be paid that would remove our sins. So Jesus took the punishment for us. He didn’t give us what we deserved; He gave us what we most needed. That is grace. That is what Jesus’ death on the cross did for us. That grace gave us atonement. We’ll talk more about atonement tomorrow. 

Dear Heavenly Father, there’s a reason we call Your grace amazing. We stand amazed that you would give us what we needed instead of what we deserved. Thank you for the cross of grace, in the name of Jesus, Your Son, amen. 
 

Now that we’ve prayed together, please take some time to pray and meditate on how the cross shows God’s grace. Thanks for reading today.

Continued tomorrow