“Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him…” Mark 15:32
“We have avenged the prophet Muhammad.” That’s what the two brothers who carried out the terrorist atrocity in Paris this week shouted, having murdered 10 people at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. They felt the magazine’s cartoonists had insulted Islam. Whatever you believe the Koran teaches, they believed their god required them to avenge the name of his prophet.
The God of the Bible is very different. He doesn’t need defending from insults. He came in the person of His Son, Jesus, to be insulted. To be humiliated. He doesn’t tell people to kill others for his sake. But rather he tells us that he was killed for our sake.
Jesus didn’t have to die. This is the man who calmed a storm with a word. The most powerful man to walk the Earth. But he chose to die. To bear the punishment we deserve for the way we treat God.
In one way the terrorists in Paris were right. The punishment for insulting God, for living in His world without reference to him, is death. But God would rather take that death sentence upon himself, so that those who turn to him can be forgiven for their insults.
Peace comes from him.