HIS BLOODY WOUNDS ARE PUNCTUATION MARKS THAT STAND BETWEEN THE CRUCIFIXION AND THE RESURRECTION. They are not periods; they are not semi-colons; they are not commas. THEY ARE QUESTION MARKS. THEY MARK A MYSTERY. 'What answer would Jesus give us in response to the evil that we did to him?' At the time we punctuated his body with question marks, we did not know what his answer would be because we did not know our God. Our God was a stranger to us. We assumed our God was like us. The reasonable expectation was that the evil that we did to him would trigger his reflex for revenge, retaliation and retribution. "An eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" Exodus 21:24. Thankfully, he did not respond to our evil in kind (Isaiah 55:8-9). He changed the tone of the conversation (1 Kings 19:11-13). His answer to the evil that we did to him was asymmetrical - radically asymmetrical Isaiah 55:8-9Psalm 8:4-8 (KJV) [What is man?]. Why? Why was his answer to the evil that we did to him asymmetrical - radically asymmetrical? Love. Our God is head over heels in love with us. His love for us survived the evil we did to him. The survival of his love for us took the symmetry out of the never ending and ever escalating cycle of evil. LOVE WAS THE DOOR THROUGH WHICH HE EXITED THE MADNESS OF EVIL. Love set him free. Love can set you free as well.
The payload of the thirty-three year Visit that the Son of God paid us at and about the city of Jerusalem in a region of our planet that we call the Middle East more than two thousand years ago was apocalypse. The Visit revealed to us the nature of God.