How easy it is for believers to assume, because death is inevitable to fallen man, that thus it must also be so with Jesus.
Not so - He is the creator of all life, and has all power.
But perhaps more critical to the discussion of His sacrifice is the fact that, in His humanity, He was entitled to life everlasting because He kept all the Law. God's promise was that those who DO the law shall live.
The fact that His life was free and clear is the reason He could offer it a sacrifice. Lost men's lives are not their own - they are mortgaged by the guilt of sin. Jesus having no sin, His life was His own, and He freely gave it in substitution for the lives of His people to redeem us. And unlike a lamb, Christ's obedience to death was entirely voluntary.
Christ repeatedly pointed out that His crucifixion was in obedience to His Father's will. That obedience was not on account of His fear of His Father's wrath, for He had always been of His free will obedient, and His father had never raised a hand against Him in judgment. This makes God's wrath against Him on the cross all the more heartbreaking.
At no time during His ordeal was the matter taken from His hands. His voluntary sacrifice was an act of His will from beginning to end. This right He received from His Father.
As He hung on the cross, He had the power to stop it all, but he chose not to, to finish the sacrifice for us.
The incident of His receiving the vinegar proves the continuously voluntary nature of His ordeal. That the Scripture might be fulfilled, He cried out His thirst and received the vinegar.
He did not put himself out of His misery until that last deed was accomplished.
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John Pittman Hey was born in 1961 in Jackson, Mississippi, to Godly parents who from the beginning raised him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. With child-like faith he came to Christ on his fourth birthday at his mother's knee. He received his education at church...
