The Crucifixion

I discovered recently that the word assassination was invented by Shakespeare. Also recently a friend posed the following question: how important does one have to be to be assassinated rather than murdered? I heard a comment today in reference to a soldier who murdered Jesus. These loosely interconnected ideas made me wonder--was Jesus assassinated, murdered, or executed?
Assassination is politically motivated. [I am defining this myself and leaving Webster out of the picture, which is fine, because dictionaries do not tell what words mean; only how people use them, which is a different blog for a different day.] Assassinations are the killing of politically important people for political purposes. By that definition, Jesus was assassinated. The Jewish leaders wanted this blaspheming, status-quo disrupter silenced. The chief priests are quoted as saying, "If we let [Jesus] go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." (John 11:48, NASB)
Murder is the general taking of a life. Often there is a motive, sometimes it is random. Jesus was murdered. He had committed no wrong, there was no sense to His death. The chief priests had motive to eliminate Him; the Romans, not so much. The soldiers who killed Him were doing their duty.
Execution is the putting to death of a criminal. It is a punishment carried out through the government as payment for wrongdoing. Although innocent, Jesus took on our sin and our punishment. He was executed with common thieves, crucified as a common criminal.
To be executed, murdered, and assassinated is horrible. The tragedy underlying such acts is unthinkable. How much more, then the death of the Son of God? He was guiltless, yet executed for our guilt. He was murdered without cause. He was assassinated, yet His kingdom was not of this world. This is an awe-full mystery.

From Whom Comes the Armor?

I have a few favorite hymns (some which rarely get sung, but that's another story); one of which was mentioned in the devotion I was reading today. The hymn quoted is "Christ is the World's Redeemer," LSB 539, and the image which caught my attention is "The armor of His soldiers."

The hymn texts makes many statements in the first stanza stating Who Christ is--Redeemer, Lord, our trust, and so on. The word "armor" got me thinking.

The first obvious thought is armor, The Armor of God mentioned in Ephesians 6. In this passage Paul talks about how to "dress" ourselves to be able to stand against the Devil's wiles; only one piece of armor listed is used on the offense--that is the sword of the Word. The next thought is that Christ is the Word. This is how Christ is the armor of His soldiers. He is the One Who fights for us. He stands strong against the devil. The protection we wear--truth, righteousness, readiness/preparation of the gospel of peace, faith, and salvation--all of these come from Christ Himself. None of this armor do we receive from ourselves; they are all gifts Christ gives. He clothes us in the armor, and then He arms us with His Word, Himself, to stand against the wiles of the devil.

How positively sacramental! Christ clothes us with His righteousness in baptism, and arms us with Himself in his Holy Supper. All so that we can withstand every attack the devil launches at us. Christ is truly the world's Redeemer.

False Freedom and True Liberation

There are two types of liberation. One is a false liberation, one is true freedom. One restrains, one releases. Certain movements which promise freedom often have this false freedom. It is not a freedom from what truly constrains; but freedom from imagined constraint, which becomes more restraining than that from which one was seeking freedom. Take, for example, a person wishing freedom from a spouse who seeks liberation in divorce. They find only constraint, much heavier restraint, in terms of alimony, child support, starting over, and the baggage of a "previous marriage." Such is false liberation.
Those seeking freedom from the earthly existence we bear called humanness must have true freedom in Christ. Any other type is the false liberty. Substances carry the burden of dependency, legalism carries the burden of inadequacy, every other type of seeking after the wind carries with it the false hope of freedom which becomes a weight heavier than those described as his own by Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
Only true freedom comes from Christ. In our human state we are shackled--bound in sin. Christ's redeeming work on the cross has released us from our bondage and reconciled us to God. This is the only true liberation. He has done it all for us; our chains have been removed.
His forgiveness breaks down the prison walls, releases those enslaved, and seals our adoption as sons of the Father, brother of our Savior.