This Jesus

What are we to make of this man, this Jesus? He said and did some pretty astonishing things.

I mean, I get that when I apologize to someone when I did them wrong, they might forgive me. They might say, "It's all good, Marty" should they feel I'm sincere. Yet Jesus says to me, "You know that guy you harmed? I forgive you. I got it covered."

What? How's that? It's really effrontery when you think about it: how can He forgive what I did to someone else? 

He lets Himself be thoroughly humiliated: mocked, scourged, hung on a tree. But why? For our salvation? How can he effect that? How can His dying save me? He must be crackers. Who can say such stuff and nonsense and actually mean it? This nobody, this carpenter's son; this guy who could have lived a life of relative ease and relative comfort who instead gets himself killed? It's silliness. Rank stupidity.

That is, unless.

Unless He is exactly what He says He is. Unless He really is the Son of God, who wants us to spend all Eternity with Him in unimaginable happiness. He'll die to show us how sure He is that that can happen. He's certain it's His death and resurrection which will accomplish that, this Jesus. 

And that's the rub. He's either precisely who He says He is or it's all ridiculous. I don't see any other explanation. Yet I know where I stand on this Easter Sunday.