Monday: Holy Love

This is the second post of an eight-day devotional designed to help you praise Christ each day of Easter week. Thanks for joining in!

The special week leading up to Easter Sunday is often called “Holy Week.” I have a love/hate feeling towards that term. Hate because, in reality, for the Christian every week is holy week. Love, because what Jesus accomplished during that week was the most unselfish, precious, sacrificial, holy gift ever given from God to men.

On Monday, one day after He’d entered Jerusalem in triumph, Jesus went to the temple. What met His eyes was most unholy. Merchants peddling inferior animals (this in itself an insult to His Father—see Leviticus 3:6; 22:19, just two of many scriptures stipulating that animals offered to God must be without defect) at outrageous prices made a mockery of sacrificial worship. They stood to make a fortune during the busy Passover week when demand was high. People flocked to the hucksters’ tables, willing to pay the going rate for blemished stock rather than transport perfect animals from their own flocks.

Jesus was outraged. This couldn’t be! His Father deserved so much more.

In righteous anger, He charged the merchants’ tables, overturning them, scattering the profits across the floor of the courtyard. Birds intended for sacrifice flew free from their toppled cages while bleating sheep and goats ran for their lives.

Christ Jesus had left behind the glory of His Father’s presence to save mankind (Philippians 2:6-7). But He had not forgotten the holy splendor of God. In perfect love, He moved to aggressively defend that holiness—doing what most of us would’ve stepped away from rather than make a scene. His wondrous love for His Father compelled Him to act—just one of many hard acts of obedience He would offer to God during the coming days of Holy Week.

Use the words of this beautiful hymn to praise Him for His love and holiness.

“What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul?
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, that caused the Lord of bliss
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul;
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul.

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down.
When I was sinking down beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul, for my soul;
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will sing,
To God and to the Lamb I will sing.
To God and to the Lamb who is the great I AM,
while millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing.
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be,
and through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on.
And through eternity I’ll sing on.”

© Diane McLoud 2015

What Wondrous Love, American folk hymn, public domain