What Kind of Love is This?

Second Wednesday in Lent March 19, 2025

It was Christ’s love for you that brought Him to Golgotha, where He bled and died for all your sins (LSB 542:3). We are the murderers, the thieves, the adulterers, the liars, and the betrayers, but it was Jesus, who knew no sin, who took on our sins as if He had committed them Himself. He was born of a woman, born under the law (Galatians 4:4), to become liable to every charge of the law against sin. On the cross, the law accused and condemned Him as the world’s greatest and only sinner, for the entirety of sin was in His body, and the law only condemns sinners. Therefore, He fulfilled the law in His death, bringing it to its final, deadly conclusion. The law now has nothing more to say because your sins no longer belong to you. They belong to Jesus, and He defeated them. You are forgiven.

My friends, this means that the responsibility and burden of your sins do not rest on you but on Jesus! It is not your job this Lenten season to struggle with your sin and, by Good Friday, present yourself to Jesus a bit less in need of His cross when you get there. No, whether you like it or not, Jesus is dragging you to His cross to put you to death. He’s removing all your other saviors, hopes, options, and efforts to shoulder your sin so you can witness Him tortured and tried, nailed to that God-forsaken tree as the Sinner. Behold, on your loving God, rests all your sin.

Dearest Jesus, I do not want to go to Your cross. I want my dignity. I want to hold on to at least some righteousness of my own. Drag me—kicking and screaming—to the death of my old self and raise me with your forgiveness to a new life of faith that trusts You have taken and defeated my sin. And at the end of this Lenten journey, fill my heart with even greater thankfulness for the love You showed there to me on Calvary. Amen.

Pastor Jake Allstaedt

St. John’s Lutheran Church, Williston Park, NY