As Jesus entered Jerusalem, people waved palms and shouted: 'Hosanna!' - save us. Save us from what?
When Christians say that Jesus saves, usually they mean that he saves us from sin. In an earlier post I suggested that sin was basically selfishness and self-centredness, a lack of attention to others and to God. I guess most of us, whether we consider ourselves to be Christian or not, would accept that we're not perfect and often selfish. We spend most of our time with other imperfect humans, so this isn't usually seen as a huge problem (though it would be great if we could all be nice to each other for a change). But God is holy, and says to his people, 'be holy, because I am holy' (Leviticus 11.44).
Christ's death on the cross, which we will remember on Good Friday, deals with the problem of human sin. The way this works is ultimately a deep mystery. But we have a few theories. One way of understanding the cross is that Jesus bore the punishment for human sin when he died on the cross. Sometimes in the coffee shop we have some interesting scenes when two friends are having lunch and one of them tries to pay for the other. Usually the one being paid for really doesn't like it! Sometimes stealth tactics are employed - "quick, let me pay for this before my friends sees me". We've virtually had stand up rows at the till before now, when the friend has cottoned on. It doesn't seem right that someone else should pay for us. This is one element of the scandal of the cross of Christ - he has the nerve to pay so that we don't have to.
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