Nails

Nails

Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the wonderful kindness he has poured out on us because we belong to his dearly loved Son. He is so rich in kindness that he purchased our freedom through the blood of his Son, and our sins are forgiven.…

God’s secret plan has now been revealed to us; it is a plan centered on Christ, designed long ago according to his good pleasure. And this is his plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ —everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because of Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us from the beginning, and all things happen just as he decided long ago. (Ephesians 1:4–7, 9–11)

He never should have asked me to keep that list. Honestly, I dreaded even showing it to him. He was a skilled builder, and during the construction had become more than just a former client; he’d become a friend. And he built us a great addition. But the addition had a few … well … mistakes. And until he was finished, I hadn’t seen them. But then again, until he’d finished, I hadn’t spent a lot of time looking. But once the project becomes your own, you see every flaw. “Make a list of them,” he told me. “If you say so,” I thought.

Several tiles were loose. A beam had split. The paint was chipped. The concrete had some cracks, and hadn’t been the exact color I’d hoped. These, just to name a few. As I said, the addition was nice, but the list seemed to grow.

And considering the list of the contractor’s mistakes made me think about God making a list of my mistakes. After all, hasn’t he supposed to have taken up residence in my heart? And if I see flaws in my addition, imagine what he sees in me. Ugh.

The door hinges to the prayer room have grown rusty from underuse. The stove called jealousy is overheating. The sub-floor is weighted down with too many regrets. The attic is cluttered with too many secrets. And can’t someone raise the window and chase the bitterness out of this heart of mine?

The list of our weaknesses. Would you like anyone to see yours? Would you like them to be made public? How would you feel if they were posted high so that everyone, including Christ himself, could see?

Well, they were. Yes, there’s a list of your failures. Christ has chronicled your shortcomings. And, yes, that list has been made public. But you’ve never seen it. Neither have I. Come with me to the hill of Calvary, and I’ll show you why.

Watch as the soldiers shove the Carpenter to the ground and stretch his arms against the beams. One presses a knee against a forearm and a spike against a hand. Jesus turns his face toward the nail just as the soldier lifts the hammer to strike it. But wait.

Couldn’t Jesus have stopped him? With a flex of the biceps, with a clench of the fist, he could have resisted. Isn’t this the same hand that stilled the sea? Cleansed the Temple? Summoned the dead?

But the fist doesn’t clench … and the moment isn’t aborted. The mallet rings and the skin rips and the blood begins to drip, then rush. Then the questions follow. Why? Why didn’t Jesus resist? “Because he loved us,” we reply.

And that’s true, wonderfully true. But it’s only partially true. There’s more to his reason. He saw something that made him stay. As the soldier pressed his arm, Jesus rolled his head to the side, and with his cheek resting on the wood he saw a mallet, a nail and a soldier’s hand.

But he saw something else. He saw the hand of God. Looking intently at it, it appeared to be the hand of a man. Long fingers of a woodworker. Callous palms of a carpenter. It appeared even common. It was, however, anything but. Because those fingers formed Adam out of clay, and wrote truth into tablets. With a wave, that hand toppled Babel’s tower and split the Red Sea. From that hand flew the locusts that plagued Egypt, and the raven that fed Elijah.

Is it any wonder then that the psalmist celebrated liberation by declaring: “You drove out the nations with Your hand .… It was Your right hand, Your arm, and the light of Your countenance.” (Ps. 44:2–3) The hand of God is a mighty hand.

The hands of Jesus. Hands of incarnation at his birth. Hands of liberation as he healed. Hands of inspiration as he taught. Hands of dedication as he served. And hands of salvation as he died.

The crowd at the cross concluded that the purpose of the pounding was to skewer the hands of Christ to a beam. But they were only half-right. We can’t fault them for missing the other half. They couldn’t see it. But Jesus could. And heaven could. And we can.

Through the eyes of Scripture we see what others missed but what Jesus saw. “He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross.” (Col. 2:14)

Between his hand and the wood there was a list. A long list. A list of our mistakes: our lusts and lies and greedy moments and prodigal years. A list of our sins. And dangling from the cross is an itemized catalog of your sins. The bad decisions from last year. The bad attitudes from last week. There, in broad daylight for all of heaven to see, is a list of your mistakes.

God has done with us what I was doing with the addition. He has penned a list of our faults. The list God has made, however, cannot be read. The words can’t be deciphered. The mistakes are covered. The sins are hidden. Those at the top are hidden by his hand; those down the list are covered by his blood. Your sins are “blotted out” by Jesus. “He has forgiven you all your sins: he has utterly wiped out the written evidence of broken commandments which always hung over our heads, and has completely annulled it by nailing it to the cross.” (Col. 2:14)

This is why he refused to close his fist. He saw the list. But what kept him from resisting? This warrant, this tabulation of your failures, and mine. He knew the price of those sins was death. He knew the source of those sins was you and me. And since he couldn’t bear the thought of eternity without us, he chose the nails.

The hand squeezing the handle was not a Roman infantryman. The force behind the hammer was not an angry mob. The verdict behind the death was not decided by jealous Jews. Jesus himself chose the nails.

So the hands of Jesus opened up. Had the soldier hesitated, Jesus himself would have swung the mallet. He certainly knew how; he was no stranger to driving nails into wood. As a carpenter he knew what it took. And as a Savior he knew what it meant. He knew that the purpose of the nail was to place your sins where they could be hidden by his sacrifice and covered by his blood. So the hammer fell.

And the same hand that stilled the seas stills your guilt. The same hand that cleansed the Temple cleanses your heart. The hand is the hand of God. The nail is the nail of God. And as the hands of Jesus opened for the nail, the doors of heaven opened for you.

Grace,

Randy