John 19:1-37

For Reading and Meditation:     1 John 4:17-21;5:1-12

Although the love of God is clearly laid out in the Old Testament, why did humankind have to wait so long to have the message spelled out in such clear terms as John uses: God is love? People could not see this sufficiently clearly until they had looked into the face of Jesus. In the life of Jesus is the...

For Reading and Meditation:     Acts 2:29-41

Let us pursue the question we asked yesterday: What exactly do we mean by resurrection? Some try to explain the resurrection as resuscitation - the return to life from apparent death. Those holding this view subscribe to what is called "The Swoon Theory." There are two forms of this theory. One maintains that Jesus did...

For Reading and Meditation:     Mark 15:16-39

I cannot believe that God would write a law of "saving by sacrifice" within our hearts and evade it Himself. The psalmist asks: "Does he who formed the eye not see?" (Psalm 94:9). And Browning said: "He that created love, shall He not love?" We might add: "He that created...

For Reading and Meditation:     John 19:28-37

The chief difference between other religions and the Christian faith as it relates to the matter of personal salvation is: every other religion teaches a form of self-salvation; Christianity teaches that God came in the Person of His Son to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. One Christian writer, Emil...

If there be one place where our Lord Jesus most fully becomes the joy and comfort of his people, it is where he plunged deepest into the depths of woe. Come hither, gracious souls, and behold the man in the garden of Gethsemane; behold his heart so brimming with love that he cannot hold it in-so full of sorrow that it must find a vent. Behold the bloody sweat as it distils from every pore of his body, and falls upon the ground. Behold the man as they drive the nails into his hands and feet....

He had been all night in agony, he had spent the early morning at the hall of Caiaphas, he had been hurried from Caiaphas to Pilate, from Pilate to Herod, and from Herod back again to Pilate; he had, therefore, but little strength left, and yet neither refreshment nor rest were permitted him. They were eager for his blood, and therefore led him out to die, loaded with the cross. O dolorous procession! Well may Salem's daughters weep. My soul, do thou weep also.

What learn we here as...

This is a good question because it reduces us all to size. We do not have anything that we did not receive. We received our physical and mental equipment through birth. What we look like and how brainy we are is something too far beyond our control to justify pride. It is an accident of birth.

All that we know is a result of our education. Others have poured information into our minds. Often when we think we have had an original thought, we find it in a book we first read twenty years...

John 19:1-16

John 19:17-30

An old legend said that Calvary was at the center of the earth. So it was, really, for the cross was the meeting place of two eternities - a past eternity of grace and hope, and a future eternity of faith, gratitude, love and devotion. It is the center of the earth, too, because toward it the eyes of all believers turn for pardon, comfort, light, joy, hope. As from all sections of the ancient...

John 19:30

The three hours of darkness was ending. The light was breaking. The Scripture tells us that Jesus then cried out in a loud, strong voice. It was not the cry of exhaustion and faintness; it was the shout of a victor. The cross seemed like defeat. Those who understood nothing of the meaning of the life and death of Christ, would think of Him as...