Friday, April 15, 2022
God’s Greatest Pain
“But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed” (Isaiah 53:5 NLT).
Can you recall the moment in your life when you experienced the most pain? Maybe it was physical pain when you broke your arm or your leg or something else. We’ve all experienced moments of physical pain.
But then there’s the emotional pain we can experience when someone has hurt us. For instance, there’s the pain of rejection, betrayal, or abandonment when a husband says to his wife, “I’ve been unfaithful,” or when a wife says to her husband, “I want a divorce.” There’s emotional pain when a child says to a parent, “I don’t want to live the Christian life.”
And one of the worst kinds of pain you can experience is when someone you care about, someone whom you thought was a loyal friend, has betrayed you.
So when do you think Jesus experienced His most painful moment? Do you think it’s when the soldiers placed the crown of thorns on His head or when they beat Him with a Roman whip, most likely a cat-o’-nine tails? Do you think it’s when they placed Him on the cross and drove nails through His hands and His feet?
As horrible and horrific as all those things were, I don’t think any of them were Jesus’s most painful moment. His most painful moment was when He bore all the sins of the world upon Himself.
That’s because Jesus never sinned. He never had even one thought out of harmony with God the Father. But as He hung on the cross bearing the sins of the world, Jesus and the Father were, in effect, separated.
Jesus was forsaken of God so that we could be forgiven. He entered the darkness so that we might walk in the light. He endured sorrow and suffering for a time so that we might enjoy His presence forever.
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