Matthew 27:38-44: in context

As Jesus hangs on the cross, the mockery rises from every side, from passersby, from the chief priests and scribes, from even the two criminals crucified beside him. The taunts circle one theme: save yourself. If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. He saved others; he cannot save himself. If he is the King of Israel, let him come down now, and we will believe. They mean it as ridicule, proof that his claims were empty, that a real Son of God would never hang there helpless. And in their sneering they say something truer than they could possibly know: he saved others; he cannot save himself.

For that taunt, meant as an insult, is the exact center of the gospel. It was true that he could not save others and save himself at the same time. The two were genuinely mutually exclusive. To come down from the cross and spare himself would have meant abandoning the very people he came to rescue; to save them, he had to refuse to save himself. He could have come down. That was precisely the temptation the mockers were pressing, and the deepest reason he stayed was not that he was unable but that he was unwilling to save himself at the cost of losing us. He saved others, and therefore, deliberately, he would not save himself.

That is a love almost too large to take in, and it asks something of me in return. He would not save himself, so that I could be saved. When I grasp that, the small refusals it asks of me look different, the times I am called to not save myself, to absorb a cost, to give up my own comfort or vindication or advantage so that someone else is served. Do I really believe that Jesus stayed on the cross rather than save himself because that was the only way to save me, and does that love move me to loosen my own tight grip on always saving myself first?