LOVE HELD HIM THERE…
I was thinking about my part in sin. What I mean is my part in the sin that caused Jesus to go to the cross. When I think about my past, when I was younger and think about the willful parts, the stubborn parts, the outrageous parts of my decisions, actions, attitudes, and words, it is easy to recognize why I deserved the punishment Jesus took on the cross.
Then, I think about right now. Yes, I’m a Christian. Yes, I am a follower of Christ. Have I gotten better about sin in general? I’d like to think so. So much of what the church has pushed for is outward change. I’ve been lucky enough to have been a part of good churches, where they’ve been passionate about the inward change of transformation that needs to happen. This does happen because of an actual relationship with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit filling, leading, speaking, and the goodness of the Father by time spent with Him alone, reading the Bible, studying under grounded, Biblical theology.
And yet if anything, awareness has grown about how sin happens. The influences, the temptations, the enemy. My own pride, self-sufficiency, vanity, desire to control my world still hampers me. My responses to sin done to me, can lead me in uneven ground as well. Sometimes I’m great, sometimes not.
Yet, when I step back, I marvel at how the Lord uses all these experiences, feelings, acknowledgements, ultimate accountability to change me. God does not waste any part of my life, because even a bad example stands for something. Jesus can take the bad, the sin, the sickness, the whatever and work all things for the good of those who love him. He knew me before I knew me. Jesus already knew everything I would be, do, say, feel, think – good, bad, or ugly and decided to love me – love you – love us anyway. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Jesus could have decided not to go to the cross, not to endure. But he did! Love for you and I held him there. How immense the Love of the Father! How incredible the Love of the Son is for us!
I remember then that all the good and bad is used then by the Lord to work in us to change, heal, restore, and more, in us. When I was about 7 years old, I was running on a wet blacktop at recess during school playing tag. I slipped on the wet asphalt and fell with another person falling on top of me because they were close behind. In a puddle of blood, a teacher saw me and scooped me up running me to the office. My mother came to retrieve me and the next thing I knew I was at the dentist’s office. Apparently when I hit the black top I bit right through my lower lip, loosened some lower teeth, etc. I was a mess!
They decided I needed stitches then and there. There was no warning. No scheduling to come back and do this procedure in a day or two. What I do remember is that my dad was there, and the dentist told him he would have to hold me down for the procedure while he stitched away.
Here I was, with a dentist over me inflicting pain, and my dad holding me there in the seat trying to let the dentist do his work to put me back together with tears streaming down my eyes because it hurt. I can still see my dad through the tears, holding me firmly but tearing up himself. He loved me enough to hold me there for my own good even though it was rough on him to see me suffer, all while knowing that it would make me better.
I imagine that love that held Jesus there, the pain of the Father felt watching his Son suffer, but knowing the glorious restoration of the Son at his resurrection and ultimate reward of eternity with those who love them in heaven!