The first aspect we saw regarding the cost of the establishment of the church is the death of Jesus the Christ!
This was no small price to pay either.
Try to imagine all that Jesus had to set aside just to come to earth and live as a man. He had to set aside the glory of deity and the approval of God and angelic beings, to live a life despised and rejected by the objects of his own creation.
It’s difficult for us to grasp how much Jesus had to set aside to take on the life of a human being from birth; but the Bible helps us to grasp that sacrifice with what may seem like a preposterous illustration. The Scriptures describe the relationship in stature between mankind and God as similar to the difference in stature between a person and a grasshopper.
Isaiah 40:21-22
21 Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? 22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
We in the human race do not like to think of ourselves as so lowly. We like to consider ourselves to be very close to the stature of God; but compared to God’s infinite power, knowledge, and presence the comparison between man and a grasshopper is more adequate.
Do you think you could muster the compassion and love to give your life in order to save the grasshopper race? They are food for some people.
Can you imagine; if you had the power and even the desire to “save” the grasshopper race; how much you would have to give up to be born and to live your life as a grasshopper. And while you were doing that all the while you would know that in the end these pitiful creatures, which could easily be stomped out of existence, will fail to recognize your purposes among them, reject you, and eventually have you put to a horrible grasshopper death?
We cannot imagine the cost that Jesus paid to leave his heavenly environment and position to take on the visage of a man. The Letter to the Philippians says it was like making himself “nothing”.
That is not to say that man is nothing or has no value; but it is to adequately portray the extent of the sacrifice that Jesus made to obey the will of the Father and provide salvation for the human race.
Then there is the cost of the sacrifice itself that Jesus made; the injustice that he faced in dying, much more in a murderous death at the hands of sinful men, is beyond our comprehension.
This one act is the greatest act of injustice the creation has ever seen because the one who died is the only one in history who didn’t warrant death in accordance with the spiritual law of God: the soul who sins will die.
The phenomenon of the church in the world today, has come at an extremely high price then, and should never be taken for granted. That high price was paid for you and me, by the Christ, the Son of the Living God.