Do you know what it feels like to be embraced? To be wrapped in arms of love and held close?
Do you know what it feels like to be embraced by your Heavenly Father?
It's having wounds break open wide and knowing God is not angry with you for hurting. It's crying over something no one else can understand and knowing you are not crying alone. It's having grief rip you apart but feeling strangely comforted at the same time.
It's watching your world crumble but knowing you stand on solid ground.
It's watching a young man on his seventeenth birthday choose to be baptized. Choose to stand before his church family and proclaim his love and faith in the Lord who has embraced him. Barely six months ago, this young man lost his father. Watching his joy that Sunday, I could not stop my tears. In his loss, this young man has been embraced by his Heavenly Father.
Just guessing, but I think in that moment, his widowed mother was feeling embraced as well.
Do we have any idea how much our Savior loves us?
Do you realize that before Jesus came to earth, He had never felt pain--never even had a body that could feel pain? Did He really know how bad it would be?
What kept Him here the first time He scraped His knee or felt hungry or cold or sick?
By the time He reached Gethsemene, He knew the meaning of pain. Furthermore, He was well aware of the agony Romans liked to inflict. The Romans were deliberate and public with their torturous executions.
Jesus had seen enough and felt enough to be filled with dread at the ordeal He knew was coming. He even asked His Father, "Isn't there any other way?"
The answer, apparently was, "No," because Jesus said, "Okay, if this is how it must be, I will do it." (Major paraphrase there.)
Our "humane" Western minds cannot even begin to grasp the horrors of Jesus' day. Christianity has revolutionized the way humans treat each other, even among those who do not believe. But Rome had not yet met the Christianity about to be born. Speaking of births, we westerners think labor pain is the worst pain a human body can endure.
We're wrong.
The Gospels say Jesus actually sweat drops of blood over what He saw coming. Did you know this is actually possible? It is a very rare condition brought on by intensely high stress. The capillaries in the sweat glands break, leaving one's sweat tinted with blood. But that's just the visible side of this condition. Th invisible side is that it also makes the skin extremely sensitive. When Jesus took the stripes for our healing, He did it with no resistance to the pain.
How could He have loved us that much?
Those lashes were not just skin deep. Rumor is a Roman lashing laid bare the bones of the whipped. These lashings were so brutal that even Rome took pity at this point and decreed the convicted could not be both whipped and crucified.
Pilate ignored that law--or perhaps hoped Jesus would invoke it. Instead, "...as the sheep before its shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth."
Quivering with pain and shock from loss of blood, Jesus allowed them to put the horizontal beam of the cross across His shoulders and attempted to stagger up Calvary's hill.
Interesting piece of trivia here: the convicted did not carry their entire cross, as it would have been too heavy. Instead, the Romans left the vertical stakes in the ground at the execution site, and had their prisoners carry the horizontal cross-piece, which was not so heavy.
However, in Jesus' weakened condition even the cross-piece was too heavy. He fell, and a man named Simon was conscripted into carrying it the rest of the way. Then they nailed Jesus' hands to that horizontal piece and raised Him up for the world to see.
Our eyes want to turn away from the shame and agony of that moment.
We want it to be less.
Instead, it is more. In the midst of incomprehensible physical suffering, the pure soul of the Son of God became black with our sins. Sins His holy nature could not bear. Sins that caused His Father to turn away from Him in His darkest hour.
Have you ever done something you were so ashamed of you wanted to crawl out of your skin to get away from it? Experienced guilt so great your chest constricted in physical pain?
I have.
Like a diabetic whose sugar runs high, I'm somewhat used to it--toughened up by hundreds of little sins committed. It's part of being human.
But Jesus--He'd never felt that before. As His body screamed in agony, His soul was crushed beneath the sins I, in a healthy body, could not bear. And not just mine. Not just one person's; a life for a life as dictated by the law of Moses. No, Jesus took on the sins of every believer, past, present, and future...a nearly infinite crushing weight as agonizing to His soul as the crucifixion was to His body.
He bore this weight and agony for about six hours before His human body could take no more, and He breathed His last.
They laid Him in a tomb, rolled the biggest stone they could find over the entry, posted soldiers to make sure no one stole the body, and left Him there. For three days He suffered the punishment ordained for my sins--and yours--standing in our place, taking our shame. For three days, God's enemies rejoiced, certain they had won.
But Sunday was coming...
On Sunday morning, He burst out of that grave with His body healed, His soul pure, and our debt paid.
This is what it means to be redeemed.
This is what my seventeen-year-old friend proclaimed at his baptism. What joy to begin life freed from sin and walking with Jesus!
What joy to know you are never too old to begin!
Jesus sacrifice, as great as it was, is given to us as a free gift. All we have to do is accept it. It's never too late.
Oh my friend! Don't struggle to pay for your own sins! What could you possibly add to the sacrifice Jesus has already made? Instead, answer His plea,
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28
Do you know how much Jesus loves you?
May you find rest in His love.
Jules
