Cut to the Heart

I have always enjoyed writing, but since I started seminary and got some help developing my writing, my interest was reborn. After I did an intro to philosophy course I also developed my thinking patterns and now can go deeper into ideas then ever before. Now I have a place to get down what I am thinking, and I hope it will be a blessing, as well as a challenge to go deeper into contemplation, especially with the Bible.

Peter, Jesus' right hand man finishes one powerful sermon and the crowds are left with a dagger in their hearts. He has shone light on the reality of what has just happened, they finally grasped the significance of their situation. And in what was probably utter shock they asked Peter and his friends, "Brothers, what shall we do?"

This moment of pure agony, the time when they actually "got it" was a moment I did not have growing up. Peter shares to the crowds of people, a number somewhere around 3000, that it was them who killed the Messiah, the one they had been waiting for, Emmanuel "God with us."
Though I was raised in the church, had a wonderful family setting incredible examples for me in holy living, I never grasped, or at least never fully grasped the significance of Jesus, sin, and everything. I had never "got it."

I find it so interesting that the people where "cut to the heart." Did your walk with Christ begin with a dramatic experience like this? I think I was 5 and in my parents bed room, and I don't know anyone who had this experience. Yet on the day of Peter's speech to the crowd, 3000 were "cut to the heart," in realization of their actions. It was them who stood in the courts of Pilate and shouted for a murderer to be released in the place of Jesus, it was them who spat and laughed at Jesus as He carried the cross through the streets. I don't know about you, but this is where I start pointing my finger, and saying "Those hard headed Jews, how could they be so foolish?"

Maybe the idea of being cut to the heart does not seem applicable to today, since none of us were in those crowds. But this realization, the dagger going all the way in, is when we open our eyes to the fact though we were not their on the day an innocent man was unjustly murdered, but our shouts were heard amongst that crowd. Our shouts were our weakness and shame, failures and shortcomings. Simply, it was because of my sin, your sin, that the final offering had to be made - Jesus.

I can honestly say that I have been cut to the heart now. Fell to my knees in the realization that I had been in that crowd shouting for the execution of the one that breathed life into me. The people that stood and heard Peter speak had been waiting their whole lives, the Jewish people as a whole had been waiting more then 700 years for the Messiah. The people stood in the crowd and finally wrapped their heads around the fact of what they had just done, and they were broken, cut to the heart.

The people in that crowd would have had an intricate knowledge of Jesus and His significance, and with out the knowledge the power of the sacrifice of Jesus will never really be grasped. I challenge you to study and learn, in the hopes that you can grasp the significance of the One who created it all, giving it all up.

This is not an idea to dwell on, simply a step in the long path of discipleship. The more we grasp the more we celebrate for who the Son sets free is free indeed!