“…nothing in us can absorb sin. Nothing. Even when we are the one being sinned against, we still cannot handle sin…”
–TrueFaced Thrall, McNicol, Lynch
The annual remembrance of Christ’s passion provides for me another opportunity to think about the work of the cross. I think I said it last year…how all sin is destroyed on the cross of Jesus. The sins we have committed, and the sins committed against us. The effect of sin is always the same: a broken heart. TrueFaced says it this way:
“When we sin or when someone else sins against us, we experience some automatic responses. If we do the sinning, our automatic response is called guilt. If someone else sins against us, our automatic response is called hurt. God designed these two responses to tell us that something wrong has happened, that something just got fractured and needs healing.”
Good News for the Broken
The cross of Christ does not make sense if you think you have it all together. The extravagant love of God seems wasteful. The Good News does not seem good at all until you know your own desperation before God. But we live in a sin soaked world and all of us have been brushing up against sin since we entered this world. It has broken our hearts.
The effects of sin, whether it is ours or someone elses, are the same: broken heartedness. The answer is also the same: the cross.
Hebrews 12 describes Jesus as, “the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2 ESV) Look at our responses to sin in the passage from TrueFaced: guilt or hurt. These are both good indicators that we need Jesus. But so often we hide our guilt and hurt in a vain effort to make them go away. Left unchecked, both become shame. Shame moves us from “something wrong has happened” to “I am wrong.” But Jesus despises the shame and pushes through to the cross anyway…for the joy set before Him.
Do you know what Joy was set before Jesus that He would go through everything He endured?
You.
Me.
We are His joy, and “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6:5 ESV)
God is doing a really cool work in me this season. I haven’t been keeping up with the Lenten devotion I talked about in my last post…but mostly because God had other things in mind. I guess He’s God. I guess He can do that.
Raindrops in the Ocean 