Passion

What do you feel passionate about? What activity demands your undivided attention? What dream occupies your thoughts and keeps you up late for nights on end?

Some people are passionate about their favorite sports team. They scrimp on other things in order to afford season passes. They bounce off the ceiling when their team wins a championship; they mope around for days when a game is lost or a player is sidelined with an injury.

Other people are passionate about causes. Whether it be the environment or civil rights or foreign policy, they attend rallies, write letters, even stand in groups holding up signs to influence public policy. If you disagree with their position, you can expect to get dragged into a long, heated debate.

People get passionate about the things that matter most deeply to them. This passion will shape how a person sets his priorities. One woman might be passionate about her job, with the result that she’s either at the office or has a cell phone glued to her ear; another might be passionate about her children, always on the run with her kids. When a man becomes passionately devoted to a new girlfriend, his buddies might start wondering where he’s disappeared to; a young man, who dreams of a career in the recording industry, will fill his family’s home with the music he is trying to master. In each case, that man or woman is driven by their passion.

On Palm Sunday, the people of Jerusalem showed their passion. Their city was occupied by the army of a foreign power. Their streets were patrolled by men in armor, carrying weapons. These men did not speak their language—or if they did, it was with a thick accent. These invaders did not fit in; they looked different, their sense of humor was barbaric, and some of the foods they liked were revolting. Jerusalem was filled with foreigners who ruthlessly crushed anyone who stood up to them, and the citizens hated it—hated it with a passion.

But recently, the streets were buzzing with news—news that offered hope. Jesus of Nazareth was on his way to the city. Jesus had been in the public eye for some time now; he had made a name for himself by performing some spectacular miracles and teaching with incredible wisdom. Many were convinced that God was with him; some wondered if Jesus might even be the Messiah God had promised to send, to free His people and to lead them.

Not only was Jesus coming to Jerusalem, but he was coming for the Passover festival. Passover celebrated the anniversary of God freeing the Israelites from slavery under the Egyptians; could it be that Jesus was coming to free the Jews from Roman occupation? Maybe, just maybe, Jesus was coming to declare himself as king, rally the people, and drive the hated foreigners out of the country!

Such thoughts stirred the passions of the people; when Jesus approached the city gates, he was met by crowds who greeted him passionately as their new king, a king sent by God to free them from political oppression. Imagine—the citizens of an occupied city publicly acclaiming one of their own as king! Didn’t they fear how the Roman forces would react? Not at all—their passion for God’s representative overwhelmed any fear in their hearts with enthusiastic joy and hope.

But this passionate reaction of the city-dwellers did not sit well with the religious establishment. The various parties that ran the temple and were responsible for religious training were alarmed. Jesus had already earned their hatred, because he dared tell the people that much of their religious education had been wrong. Jesus had accused the religious leaders of misleading the people, and the establishment was furious. How dare Jesus undermine their authority! And now, to make things worse, the citizenry were welcoming Jesus as a possible king? Intolerable! And so the religious elite experienced passion too—a passionate desire to see Jesus crushed, humiliated, and killed.

On Maundy Thursday, passion moved the religious leadership to action. Using one of the disciples as their willing tool, they managed to catch Jesus relatively unprotected and took him into custody with the public unaware of what was going on. Their passionate hatred of Jesus drove them into holding two closed door trials during the night, in clear violation of their own religious laws. They manufactured false witnesses to give credibility to these irregular proceedings. They pronounced Jesus a dangerous heretic, deserving of death.

But there was a problem. As an occupied country, they were not allowed to put anyone to death—capital punishment was solely at the discretion of the Roman governor. So they swallowed their pride and took Jesus before Pontius Pilate, a man who had hoped for a better posting in the empire than as governor of this backward, rebellious province at the edge of nowhere. There, early in the morning, they tried to convince the governor that Jesus was stirring up rebellion against Rome’s occupation and should be sentenced to death. But unlike everyone else, Pilate was not inflamed with passion; he calmly interviewed Jesus and soon determined that the Jewish teacher was no political threat.

Seeing Pilate’s lack of concern got the religious leaders worried. So they hand-picked a crowd and whipped them up into demanding Jesus’ death. Things rapidly escalated until the point that Pilate feared a riot—and a riot would be bad for his future political ambitions. And so Pilate caved in—the governor who should have been passionate about representing the law of Rome was swept away by the passionate hatred of the religious establishment. And so Jesus was condemned to a torturous, lingering death.

In all this, Jesus was quiet, reserved, dignified. Was Jesus unmoved by passion? Not at all. It is only because of Jesus’ passion that the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday took place at all. Jesus was passionate in his resolve to follow his Father’s plan, which would result in your salvation and mine. Jesus had not come to lead a rebellion against the Roman military, but he had come to bring freedom—freedom from sin, from death, and from the devil. Jesus was passionately committed to defeating Satan, breaking sin’s hold on us, and ending the curse of death. Jesus’ passion was the result of his great love for you and me. He was determined to turn us away from the path to hell and bring us safely through the gates of heaven.

And so Jesus had to suffer. He had to suffer so that we would not. God hates sin; God promises to punish sin, and the Almighty never goes back on a promise. Every day, we sin; we ignore God’s laws. We entertain terrible dark thoughts, we let opportunities to show love to others slip away unused, we misuse the resources that God has loaned to us. Every day, by our thoughts, words and deeds, we call down God’s wrath on ourselves.

So Jesus had to suffer. His passionate love for us was so great that he willingly took upon himself all the punishment that was rightly ours to bear. Jesus suffered body and soul, suffered so much that even thinking about it caused him to sweat drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. How terrible must have been that load of suffering, that it should provoke such a strong reaction from God’s own Son? How deep must Jesus’ passion for us be, that he was willing to endure such awful torment in our place?

By suffering for us, Jesus settled your account and mine; with the punishment of our sins diverted to Jesus, our criminal record has been cleared. Thanks to the suffering and death of the Savior, we have been given freedom from responsibility for our mistakes; we stand acquitted, declared innocent by the Ruler of the universe. Sin results in punishment and death; by suffering and dying in our place, Jesus can offer us the alternative of forgiveness and life.

Jesus suffered the torments of hell during those awful hours on the cross, in order to spare us from an eternity of weeping locked in Satan’s prison. Jesus submitted to death and burial so that we could be freed from our graves and live in God’s kingdom forever. Only great passion could move the Savior to go through all this; you are the object of that passion. Jesus’ love and concern for you cannot be measured in any better way than by the bloodstained cross of Calvary; there he demonstrated the full extent of his love.

What are you passionate about? What grabs your heart and won’t let go? For Jesus, the passion He felt was for you—a passion so consuming that it raised him on the cross and laid him in the tomb, all out of concern for you. How do you feel about Jesus? Is he your passion? Or is your passion given to sports, a fancy home, or good times at the bar? Jesus’ passion calls for you; will you fall to your knees beneath the cross and beg forgiveness? Will you pledge to him your undivided heart? Will you thank him for the blood he shed that can wash you clean from every stain? I pray that remembering Jesus’ suffering and death will stir up a passionate response in you.