In the church, we talk a fair bit about Jesus’ death on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin, and how his death was for each and every one of us. (At least, we’re supposed to; if your church doesn’t, that’s not good.) Bill had a great little post reflecting on that over at The Thinklings a month or so ago. That’s an important truth for us to think about and talk about in understanding just how much God loves us. The only problem is that too often we stop there—we don’t realize that the truth goes even farther than that.You see, Jesus became a human being with a human body, and in that body he suffered temptation beyond anything any of us can imagine (since he never knew the lifting of temptation that comes with giving in to it), and in that body he suffered agony beyond anything any of us can comprehend—and as great as the physical torment of the crucifixion was, the spiritual torment of taking on the entire guilt for the entire weight of human sin and pain for all of recorded history was far, far greater; and having born all that pain in his body, with the scars of that pain permanently etched in his flesh, he kept it. He kept that body with its map of his suffering, and in that body he returned to the Father’s side. His incarnation was no mere temporary thing; the physical trainer from whom I took a spin class used to tell us, “You can do anything for five minutes” (when we were five minutes from the end and about ready to fall off the stationary bikes), but this was no matter of God calculating that he could, after all, bear being human for thirty years or so. This was permanent—a permanent change with permanent scars.And here’s the key: he did it for you. This is how much God loves you, that he would go to such lengths as this for you. The Son of God became human for all time, and as a human suffered wounds he will bear for all time, for you. If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that like everything else about us, our love has limits: we reach a place, if people push us too far, where we have to say, “Yes, I love you, but not that much.” Some of us can go farther than others, but none of us can keep going forever. God’s love can, and does, and has, far beyond where we could have expected. No matter how far you go from God, the Father’s love goes farther. No matter how great your sin, it has a limit, and God’s love doesn’t, and neither does the meaning of his sacrifice on the cross; no matter how great your sin, it’s covered.That’s important for us to remember in our down times, and the times when we’re wrestling with a temptation we just can’t seem to beat, because those are the times when we risk giving in to despair; those are the times that the devil comes and whispers in our ears, trying to convince us that God has given up on us, that he can’t possibly love us anymore after all we’ve done. The fact of the matter is, when you look at everything Jesus did for us, everything he went through to save us, there’s no way that anything we can do can change his mind about that; the very worst we can do is but a small part of the pain he bore for us. He didn’t come down to this earth under the illusion that we’re better than we actually are; he didn’t come down to take just some of our sin, as if there were some things that even he wouldn’t die to redeem. No, he came down here to pay the price for all our sin, to heal all our wounds and carry all our diseases; he came to raise the dead of a dying world, nothing less, and now he has gone on ahead to prepare our way. Christ has gone up with shouts of joy in order that we might follow him, that we might be invited to live forever in the eternal blessing of the love of God.
