Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021
“Do you like mysteries?” the young man asked the old man the next morning.
“I am confounded by mysteries,” he said, “especially concerning the cross. I understand that redemption took place on the cross, but why a cross?”
The young man looked straight into his eyes as if He could see right through him, which in fact He could. “Where did disobedience first take place, Joseph?”
It didn’t take long for the old man to answer. “In the Garden of Eden.” Then a word came into his mind from somewhere other than his own imagination. TREE was that word. The young man could see that the old man knew at that moment.
The old man’s face lit up like he’d just won a jackpot. “It was a tree where the fall of man took place, so it had to be a tree where the redemption took place. And that tree was the cross.”
The young man smiled and said nothing. He didn’t need to say anything.
The old man’s mind was racing now as he blurted out. “Adam was totally disobedient when he chose himself as lord instead of God. That was where the fall of all mankind took place, where all of us became disconnected and separated from God. Jesus Christ was totally obedient even to death on the cross and took upon Himself the sinful nature of Adam, and mankind became reconnected with God as He wanted us to be. That’s why He sent His Son to die on a tree (that is, the cross).”
It’s not that the old man knew redemption for the first time. He was, after all, a saved person and knew it without a doubt. He just hadn’t seen it in this light before.