How God Solves the Problem of “No Need”– by Desmond Ford

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Aug 27, 2015 3153

People like Nicodemus fail in their religion because they are not moved by love. They haven’t learned that God loves them individually. So life for them, in the sense of religion, is impossible. These people don’t know themselves.

As we see Jesus, we learn about ourselves. Because He is what we ought to be. That’s why He’s called the Son of man. Nicodemus has the problem of no love and the problem of no need.

Nicodemus needed to understand what Jesus said, that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” and later, as he saw the cross, Nicodemus came out in fullness and took the cross on his own shoulders, and defended the infant church. The problem of no love is solved at the cross.

And the problem of no need is solved at the cross, when we look at Jesus. You see Jesus on the cross, representing every one of us – stark naked. Oh, you say, “I thought there was a respectable loin cloth.” No, there wasn’t, that was the work of the medieval artist. There wasn’t a stitch of clothing on the Christ.

The Romans crucified men naked, and Jesus was crucified like this because he represented every one of us.

We don’t have a stltch of righteousness, not a stitch.

Sin not only brings guilt; it brings incapacities; and from the moment we first engage in selfishness and impurity and vanity and pride and hatred, we’re marred and everything else has been marred. We don’t have a
stitch to offer God. Jesus on the cross represents us.

That’s why His hands are dealt with so. That’s why His feet are dealt with so. That’s why His brow is crowned with thorns. There’s what we deserve.

There’s our autobiography. The frame of the cross is the desk on which we write our autobiography. His flesh is the parchment. The nails are the quill and His blood is the ink. And the crucified hands and feet and pierced brow tell the story of our life.

The problem of no sense of need is solved as we look at the cross, and there’s no other way of solving it, no other way.

– Des Ford. Rom 8:27–32. Adapted from “The Only Two Religions.”