For the next few days, I’ll be posting excerpts from Nancy Guthrie’s Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross: Experiencing the Passion and Power of Easter (Crossway). Join me as I aim to contemplate the cross this passion week.
Today’s meditation is by John Piper, from chapter 2 “He Set His Face to Go to Jerusalem” (pg. 17-18 of Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross, edited by Nancy Guthrie).
In Luke 9:51 we read, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”…When Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem, he set his face to die….
If we were to look at Jesus’ death merely as a result of a betrayer’s deceit and the Sanhedrin’s envy and Pilate’s spinelessness and the soldiers’ nails and spear, it might seem very involuntary. And the benefit of salvation that comes to us who believe from this death might be viewed as God’s way of making a virtue out of a necessity. But once you read Luke 9:51 all such thoughts vanish. Jesus was not accidentally entangled in a web of injustice. The saving benefits of his death for sinners were not an afterthought. God planned it all out of infinite love to sinners like us and appointed a time. Jesus, who was the very embodiment of his Father’s love for sinners, saw that the time had come and set his face to fulfill his mission: to die in Jerusalem for our sake. “No one takes [my life] from me [he said], but I lay it down of my own accord…” (John 10:18)….
Praise God, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem for us! May we be filled with joy in the sovereignty of our God who planned out the glory of our salvation down to its smallest detail.
Boy, am I glad Jesus had it all under control and consciously exposed himself to all of that suffering and death for me. I chicken out of plenty that I know I ought to do so often, I’m grateful I can hide in Christ by faith.
Amen, brother. What a Savior!