We hear about people who volunteer for suicide missions, most of them Muslim. It seems to be in the news almost daily. Just for the record, there have been over 24,600 deadly attacks since 9/11 carried out by followers of Islam. Not all of them involved suicide, but many of them did. But I want to talk about a different kind of suicide mission.
Occasionally there is a military mission that requires people to knowingly do what really can’t be done. They must embark on a mission that puts them beyond rescue, beyond supplies, beyond the normal bounds of safety. The mission is of such importance that no cost is too great to be paid to accomplish it. And people must put their own lives on the line knowing the difficulty of success, and the probability of death.
These types of missions don’t happen that often. The service men who carry out these missions are often the most highly trained and proficient warriors in the world. They train the specifics of a mission until they can navigate the interior of a building blind. They practice every possible unexpected difficulty their imaginations can invent.
And yet there are some missions that they know will not succeed unless everything falls in their favor, and even then success is a long shot. Their buddy is pinned down and a volunteer is needed to run into the fray to rescue them. The hand goes up, and everyone else slaps them on the back and tells them, “See you when you get back.”
Jesus accomplished a very different type of mission. He didn’t come hoping to survive. He came knowing He would die, not because He deserved to die, but because we do. So the road He walked always led to the cross. There was never any other way to accomplish our rescue. The infinite Son would have to voluntarily give up His life to pay for the incalculable price of our sin. His life for all of our lives.
And so as He hung on the cross there came the moment of surrender to death. He had surrendered to capture. He could have called the army of heaven to His rescue, but He didn’t. He surrendered to the Jewish religious leaders’ mock trial. He could have refuted every charge and silenced all His opponents, but He didn’t. He could have answered the charges before Pilate in a way that would demonstrate Pilate’s obligation to let Him go free. He could have resisted His crucifixion, struggling at every turn. He could have held out longer as those who hung beside Him did.
But at the moment of His choosing, Jesus let go of life.
Oh that we would be willing to let go of our life and begin to live His life. We cling with such great tenacity to the things that we think will make us happy, only to end up empty and wanting more. Oh that we would be willing to let go of our life and begin to live His life.
The Arnold Journey 