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Blog Would You Drop the Bridge On Your Son?

A friend of mine told of a conversation he had with an elderly Luxembourger. The old man said something like this: “We say God loves us, but it was Jesus who died on the Cross, not God.”

Now our easy answer is that Jesus is God, but the old man was talking about God the Father’s absence on the cross. What do you think about that?

One of the most vivid Old Testament stories tells us about an old man, Abraham, who God instructed to offer his son, born miraculously in his old age. He loved this son more than his own life.

The scene shifts to the top of a mountain. Our teenage boy lies bound on an altar which is piled with wood destined to consume his body as a sacrifice. Old man Abraham raises his knife to plunge it into the youngster’s heart when God speaks from heaven and stops him. He provides an animal for the sacrifice.

What’s up with that? God had never asked for human sacrifices. He abhorred them. But, He wanted to give us a sense of what happened and what He felt at the cross. Abraham represents God the Father and Isaac represents Jesus the Son. The agony the old man felt as he raised the knife was only a fraction of the anguish that filled God the Father’s heart as He gave His Son in sacrifice for our sins.

Most parents would rather die than see one of their children die.

I used to have a convincing sermon illustration. I think it was an invented. One day I told the story to a friend.

A father during the Great Depression of the 1930s found work raising and lowering a railroad bridge that crossed the Mississippi River. When the ships came, he raised it so they could continue but he had to lower it quickly because trains passed often.

One day, he took his six-year-old son with him to work. The bridge was up as they ate lunch. Suddenly, the father realized a train was due to pass shortly. He barely had time to lower the bridge before the passenger train carrying 300 people would speed by.

He told his son to stay put as he climbed up to the controls to lower the bridge. The train rumbled towards them, but just before he pulled the lever, he heard the cries of his son. The little one had tried to follow and had fallen into the gears that lowered the bridge. With horror, the man realized that if he dropped the bridge he would crush his son … but if he didn’t, hundreds of people would plunge to a watery grave in the Mississippi.

Pain searing his heart, he let the bridge fall. Seconds later the train flashed by, the passengers unaware that father had given his son to save them.

My friend’s reaction to my story surprised me as he honestly said, “They would have fallen into the river if it had been me. There’s no way I would let the bridge fall on my son.”

I felt a bit critical because sacrifice was the point of the illustration but I asked myself the question, “Would I have crushed one of my sons or my daughter to save others?” I might have been willing to die myself, but kill one of my children to save others?

I think we all feel like that. God loved us so much that He gave His greatest treasure to save us, even when we lived in indifference or rebellion towards Him. And in a sense, God the Father was there on the Cross:

God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” (2 Cor. 5:19, NKJV)

*He was in Christ in the sense that a parent’s heart is wrapped up in his child. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:16, 17 ESV)

*He was literally in Christ by the Trinity. We don’t understand that but I believe the Father suffered in His Son.

That’s why I wonder when people say there are lots of other ways to get to God and have eternal life? If there was another way, would you have given YOUR Son? Would you have allowed him to suffer like that?

But to those who come to this loving Father through Jesus, the door opens to forgiveness, an abundant life, the privilege of His presence and so much more:

“If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:31, 32, ESV)

Perhaps the One who suffered the most at Calvary was God the Father. He knew that His Son’s suffering would open the way for a family, His family, to be born, though. All I can say is, “Thank You Father. Thank You Jesus.”
 
Thank you for this post, David. Yes, it is important, even for the faithful, to contemplate the “if there was another way, would you have”—would anyone, would God. The conclusion leads us to a walk (and others to a born again experience) with an irrepressible gratitude to God and to His Redeemer Son.
 
Thank you for this post, David. Yes, it is important, even for the faithful, to contemplate the “if there was another way, would you have”—would anyone, would God. The conclusion leads us to a walk (and others to a born again experience) with an irrepressible gratitude to God and to His Redeemer Son.
Yep.
 

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