Devo 2 – Looking to Golgotha

Tripp Lee, in his song Billion Years says, “Don’t dwell on the past unless it’s Golgotha.” He’s onto something that is life changing.

The proof of our imperfection can be easily seen in our batting stats. To someone who isn’t familiar with the game of baseball, they may be surprised to know that as a player who looks like a “failure” can still be really good.

In terms looking at our salvation – we are all at a loss though. If we are held up to perfection, each one of us falls drastically short. Like it says in the Bible, “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one’” (Romans 3:10). That means each of us, since we are not righteous, are sinners. And we know what the Bible says about sinners -- “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a).

As a ball player, failure can really get to us. But it is just impossible to be a perfect player. As humanity, we can start to feel the condemnation under God’s perfect law when we measure ourselves up to it. The thing is, we can never get there though. We can look back at our past and remember all the times we’ve messed up. We all know we have messed up big time. On our own, we can’t erase the past. It’s always there, and we await a day that God will judge us for that.

That’s a deep predicament we are in! But something happened at a place called Golgotha. 

“And when they [Jesus and his persecutors] came to a place called Golgotha, which means The Place of the Skull, they offered Him [Jesus] wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, He refused to drink it. When they had crucified Him [Jesus], they divided up His garments by casting lots” (Matthew 27:33-35).

Jesus, God in the flesh, a perfect lamb and sacrifice took sins away by hanging on a wooden cross made for criminals. He became death for a moment at “the skull.” He endured a punishment not for himself. He never committed a crime. He went there to exchange your sin for righteousness, when you believe in him as Lord of your life. Scripture says that “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). God didn’t come to earth to condemn us for our sin, but came to save us (John 3:17). “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

The rest of Romans 6:23 shares with us the hope, although the wages of sin is death: “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Christians have a perfect man named Jesus that stands in our place at our judgement before God. Believers don’t have to remember all their failures. They look back at Golgotha – at Jesus.