Why Should He Love Me So

When I was 16 years old, I visited my mother in the hospital, who had surgery to remove her oversized goiter. As I sat by her hospital bed, she complained to me that she had suffered more in her operation than Christ did on the cross. I looked at her incredibly for making such an untrue remark, because when I looked at her, I didn't see any nail prints in her hands or feet.

All I saw was a scar on her neck, where they'd gone in to extract an oversized goiter. But my mother was like most folks, I reckon, who have an oversized opinion of themselves and an ignorance to what actually took place at a place called Calvary over two thousand years ago, when they fastened the Lord of Glory to that ignoble tree. The nails they drove into his quivering, innocent flesh were hammered in there by you and me.

My filthy, wretched sins were the nails that fastened them there. And if you're honest about yourself, friend, about the truth, about your own wicked heart, you know those nails were driven into his hands and feet because of your filthy sins as well. Christ voluntarily laid down his life that day as a sacrifice for sin.

He said, no man take it from me, but I lay it down to myself. Speaking of his life, I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my father.

Christ voluntarily paid that penalty for you on Calvary's cross, friend. Anyone who loves you like that, bearing the penalty of your sin and tasting hell itself for you, makes you wonder why should he love me so. Like the old hymn states, Love sent my Savior to dine my stead.

Why should he love me so? Meekly to Calvary's cross he was led. Why should he love me so? Nails pierced his hands and his feet for my sin. Why should he love me so? He suffered sore my salvation to win.

Why should he love me so? I want us to look, friends, at Psalm 22 today, for it is one of the Messianic Psalms that refers to Christ on the cross. Here we see a vivid picture of the suffering Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. In verse 1 we read, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That cry from the cross makes me shiver down through the ages as I try to think of what he actually was going through there for me.

Psalm 22 is a prophecy of the fact that Christ would come and die. The whole psalm deals with his sufferings and death on that bloody cross. His very blood poured out from him to wash away my sins.

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains, so says the hymn. And it's true, friends. Think about what Jesus did for you on Calvary's cross.

Look at him there. Look at the thorny crown tilted on his blessed head. His face was so badly beaten by the Roman soldiers that it looked like a pound of hamburger meat.

Verse 6 begins, But I am a worm and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn. They shoot out the lip.

They shake the head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him. Seeing he, delighted in him. Look at that crowd there that day, friends, that bunch of religious hypocrites that crucified him.

Look at them in their black garments of their self-righteousness as they yell, Crucify him! Are you standing there in that gang of rebels? Listen to verse 16. For dogs have compassed me. The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me.

They've pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones. They look and stare upon me.

They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. Look at that incredible scene, friends, with the religious mob gathered there. At the very foot of that bloody spectacle of a blood-stained savior from sin is the sight of some base Roman soldier squatting there, shooting craps at the cross, gambling for his robe.

The sight of it all turns my stomach inside and out with the guilt of my sins. Stacked up there, on Christ, as he writhed and wiggled in excruciating pain beneath his weight as he hung by his hands and feet. Suspended there, his outstretched arms glimmered with his own sweat and blood.

Why? Why should he love me so? Nails pierced his hands and his feet for my sin. Why should he love me so? If you are standing there as a guilty sinner, friend, look on him and live. Look at that darkened sky as the very sun hides from all the hell being poured out on him on that cross as if all creation seems to groan in agony.

Oh, dear sinner friend, I hope you don't come away from this message today only hearing this shaky voice of this poor preacher, but my prayer is that you would hear his voice as it comes to you and all power and authority and majesty. Look upon me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else. Listen to the Christ on the cross, friend.

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.