And in that choice, Jesus enabled the great reversal. We, armed with our misguided power, fear, jealousy, religious fervor, ruthless expedience, dehumanization of others and justifying ourselves for the rightness of our violence killed the God who came to save us. It was the worst thing we could have done.
And it was the very thing God used to redeem us.
It seems to me it would take a great deal more faith to believe that it was possible for someone to write, with exacting detail, how his famous offspring would be executed a thousand years before it happened by chance than it would to take this as another piece of evidence that Jesus was who he said he was.
Think of it this way. It is possible to study hard and become an expert on the right technique for doing every meaningful exercise with free weights. But if you never pick up a free-weight and actually do the exercises all of your knowledge will be of no benefit to your muscles or health at all.
So what do you think might happen if you spend the 40 days of Lent this year expectantly praying these two verses every day? You would be asking God every day to help you know your heart and your anxious thoughts better and to help lead you out of any way you might be offending Him and into the way everlasting.
The point of grace is to give us imperfect people a foundation of love and acceptance that will enable us to grow into the people God intended us to be.