Picture This – The Exchange

Given May 2006

A person is standing on God’s created earth dirty and dressed in rags.  They are bent over with the weight of sin and all that goes alone with it.  There are people all over the earth like this.  It seems hopeless.

God and Jesus are in Heaven looking down on the scene.  God says, “Jesus, I want to do something for them.  Satan has deceived them out of the blessings I gave them all in the Garden.”  “I need someone to go down there and make things right again.”  Jesus says, “Father, I’ll do it.”  God says, “Son, you know what that means. You’ll have to take the mess off of each of them onto yourself and die with it.”  “I know,” Jesus says, “but I love them.  I’ll go.”

So Jesus, dressed in His shining, royal robes, leaves Heaven and appears on earth standing next to the person bent over in the dirty rags.  Jesus is standing there tall and strong in stark contrast to the person bent over in their dirty, smelly rags.  The person looks up into the loving eyes of Jesus as He says, “Child, I’m here to save you but you have to do something.  Take off your rags and take my robes.”

The person doesn’t really understand but they respond with trust to this man.  As they put on the Kingly robes, they straighten up, suddenly becoming clean and whole.  They look themselves over as their joy increases realizing they are free from the weight of sin.  They look back to Jesus to thank Him and what they see stuns them!  He has put on their old dirty rags and is now bent over as they were and burdened with the weight He took from them.  They say, “Jesus!  What….”  He replies, “It’s OK, it has to be this way.  I love you.”

“For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.” 2 Corinthians 8:9.  He did this for us.  “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” 2 Corinthians 5:21.  Can you picture the exchange?