NASHVILLE (BP) – This weekly Bible study appears in Baptist Press in a partnership with Lifeway Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention. Through its Leadership and Adult Publishing team, Lifeway publishes Sunday School curricula and additional resources for all age groups.
This week’s Bible study is adapted from the MasterWork curriculum.
Bible Passages: Matthew 27:46
Discussion Questions:
- How did the concept of sacrifice meet God’s demands for holiness in the Old Testament? How is the sacrifice of Jesus the perfect sacrifice?
- How does Jesus’ question in Matthew 27:46 reveal His love for us?
- Do we really believe His great love and sacrifice? How should knowing this change how we live?
Food for thought:
Here we see the supreme evidence of Christ’s love for us. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). But the greatness of Christ’s love can be estimated only when we are able to measure what was involved in the “laying down” of His love.
As we have seen, it meant much more than physical death, even though that was of unspeakable shame and indescribable suffering. It meant that He took our place and was made to be sin for us. What this involved can be judged only in the light of His person (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Picture a perfectly honorable and virtuous person compelled to endure for a season association with the most vile and impure. Imagine them shut up in a den of iniquity, surrounded by the coarsest of all men and women, with no way of escape.
Can you estimate their abhorrence in the face of foul-mouthed oaths, drunken revelry and otherwise obscene surroundings? Can you form an opinion of what a pure person would suffer in their soul amid such impurity?
But the illustration falls far short, for there is no person absolutely pure. Honorable, virtuous, morally pure, yes; but pure in the sense of being sinless, spiritually pure, no.
But Christ was pure; absolutely pure. He was the Holy One. He had an infinite abhorrence of sin. He loathed it. His holy soul shrank from it. But on the cross our iniquities were all laid upon Him, and sin – that vile thing – enrapt itself around Him like a horrible serpent’s coils.
And yet, He willingly suffered for us! Why? Because He loved us: “Having loved his own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end” (John 13:1).
Masterwork
MasterWork is an ongoing Bible study curriculum based on works from a variety of renowned authors and offers pertinent, practical messages that adults will find uplifting and enriching. The list of authors and their books to be studied in upcoming months can be found at Lifeway.com/masterwork.
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