#1 - The Majestic Love of Jesus

“For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.” - Hebrews 12:2

I don’t know about you, but I find this one of the most majestic, yet challenging verses in the scriptures to comprehend. I mean, what joy did Jesus have in enduring the cross? There was nothing joyful about the pain of being whipped and beaten, tortured and mocked. Even more, there was nothing joyful about bearing the weight of sinful humanity, having His Father turn His back on Him. His Father, His best friend, the only one who truly knew Him fully, turned His back on Him in that moment because of the sin He carried, leaving Jesus to cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). It must be, it can only be, that the joy of knowing each of us was so precious to Jesus that when He considered the cross and everything He had to endure to be with us, His greatest emotion was joy.

In his book Deeper, Dane Ortlund writes, “The living God is so glorious and kind, he cannot be known without being adored” (pg. 13). He is the one who bore our sin so we could bear His name, the one who wore the crown of thorns so we could wear His crown of righteousness. He’s the one who put on a scarlet robe (Matt 27:28) so we could wear his white robe of righteousness (Isaiah 61:10).

I simply want to encourage you, don’t lose a heart sense of the profound length to which Jesus went to save you, because he’s been to the cross, He endured all that for you, and He’d do it again and again. Allow your heart to marinate in the joyful fact that you are worth the pain of the cross, that the one who created the universe saw all you would be and do, the good, the bad, and the ultra-ugly, and decided not only that you were worth creating, but that you were worth dying for too.

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.”
- 2 Corinthians 8:9