Until the Day Breaks

For long centuries has the Cross of Christ been the most precious meditation of the saints and the myrrh of His sufferings been the powerful fragrance that lingers longest in the heart that considers Him. For me, even in these last few days, considering His Passion is the place of light and truth—the place where the shadows flee away and the light of truth prevails. The sacred sketch of His sufferings in the meditation of my heart is to me wave after wave of renewed certainty in His tenderness and confidence in the magnitude of His compassion and His affections so personal. It is not an old subject to revisit. It is a sacred mystery ever new—that will keep us in trembling wonder for the duration of the eternal ages. I find no greater meditation, no safer place to set the eyes of my heart upon than beneath the shadow of those sacred wooden beams, there gazing up upon the broken body of the One who was Himself God in the flesh—the only One that ever truly loved me. Every drop of blood that there drips down shouts a deafening song of Love untold. Every glance into the most marred holy Face wrenches my heart into a heaving of at last believing that it is true, all is true…oh my God it is true. No shadow of darkness prevails here. No arrogant accusation touches me in this place. No persuasive sneer dares a single word. Here hovering in the most holy silhouette of all time I am kept most safe and I can finally agree with the words so bold, 

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus…If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely gives us all things?…Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us fro the love of Christ?… For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8   

This Cross of Christ is my greatest truth…my sure anchor in the storm. Whenever my heart fails me, my emotions revolt in torrent within me, or my enemy assails me with lies of my undeserving or disqualification, I run swiftly to this Safest Shadow and there gaze resolutely upon Him…until only Truth remains. Oh beautiful sight, that leaves my heart so torn, that grips my soul so fiercely, that leaves my eyes as streams and my heart so defenseless and vulnerable to believe…it is true, all is true…oh my God it is true.  

Jesus’ familiarity with suffering was deeply married to His foreignness to sin. When He who was Love incarnate stood amidst the crowds of His day, He was without sin and thus without the root system of pride and arrogance. When the woman beside Him scoffed a mocking statement, He did not look at her and assume the privilege that pride assumes by writing her off or inwardly disdaining her. Rather, His heart responded in the only way that Love and humility ever respond, by bearing the degradation fully so as to receive entirely this bitter woman—without restraint. When the ones who had walked with Him for a time now turned to leave Him at His controversial statements, Jesus’ eyes did not follow them with even the smallest smugness in their gaze. For again, He did not even have such self-centeredness to draw from. Love thinks no evil and is not provoked. And thus, He loved each one fully in their desertion without even the smallest division of affection which pride so quickly exhibits.

The human heart that you and I know so well has never fared rejection well. Few things do we disdain more than the feeling of being unwanted. And thus we do much to avoid it, even creating whole systems by our personalities, our giftings, our finances—all to ensure that the old feeling of being undesired never confronts us. When we do feel that familiar sting of rejection looming in the atmosphere of our relationships, we instantly press our security-alarm button and go to work at ensuring our own preservation, our own protection, if even at the expense—and sometimes purposefully so—of another’s dignity or honor. Our instant and innate fallen response in the wake of dishonor is to press another down while forcing ourselves upward. But far from this is the response of Love. Living on the complete opposite end of the spectrum dwells the meek heart of Humility Himself.

Jesus took upon Himself the stigma of each rejection offered Him by all those around Him. He bore within His heart the sorrows of every single disgrace. Despising the shame, He endured every rejection with longsuffering and endured every degradation without escape. And always, with each of these responses, He was God revealing God to the human race—beckoning all of the generations to see and hear His every word and action and know forever that this is the God to whom we pray, to whom we seek, in whom we love.          

Intimate Not Indifferent

Jesus, God in the flesh, hears our every word, takes into His heart our every action, holds no indifference over a single second of our lives. The law of pride leaves tremendous room for detachment and disinterest from another. Yet the law of love and compassion leaves not even an inch of such distance. Lack of concern is a foreigner in the land of Love. For whether the human heart reaches to Him in desperate need or scorns Him in bitterness, to turn on that heart with arrogant rejection remains inconceivable to the nature of God. Even to the proud in heart, He refuses to counter pride with pride, arrogance with arrogance. And though He wars against the pride of man vehemently, His weapons are not conceit and haughtiness but humility, truth and righteousness (Ps. 45:4). He pursues the hardness of every heart, seeking to soften the arrogance by the tenderness of His meekness. He waits patiently in longsuffering, pleading for mankind to receive what He so freely gives to the willing heart—love undeserved.

And to those that are His, saved by His grace, of His own Body, flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone, how deeply does this truth apply! So intimate is He with every thought that fills my mind that not only is He waiting for me to receive His love, but each day He Himself actively seeks to extinguish every residue of resistance, every pocket of unbelief in my mind and heart. Not only is He so vulnerably touched by that which I think and speak and believe, He actively moves on my behalf to convert my soul to the truths of who He is. My days are designed with precision to entrap my false ideas of His heart, to snare any resistors that lie in my mind, my emotions, my deeply rooted beliefs. My heart and life could not be more personal to Him.

Every day Immanuel—God my Brother—chases after me, with heavy feet and heaving heart. He will not be denied where He finds the faintest “yes.” He will not be resisted wherever He obtains the slightest reception. He is anything but distant…anything but indifferent. He chases me down and seeks me out with unfailing pursuit so that in the end, love might reign supreme over the whole of my heart and life. When the accusations fly and claim that His heart remains at a safe distance, that His eyes do not behold every movement of my heart and life with profound care and attention, the truth of His own nature arises in objection. The God of love listens and takes to heart my every cry, beholds mindfully my every movement, and takes into His heart each one of my actions from day to day.

Jesus. Look upon Him. Despised and rejected by men, so humble is His appearance and so meek is His countenance. A Man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Look long at Him, for we are of the same hearts of the many in the multitudes that only ever hid their faces from Him. Jesus. A Man so broken, so vulnerable, so lacking in the so called dignity of self-honor. So great is His scandalous humility that only the eyes of love gaze upon Him as He truly is without looking away. Jesus knew rejection from men deeply from the day of His birth in Bethlehem to the moment of His death at Calvary. He experienced more despising from humanity in His thirty-three years of life on the earth than any other man before or since. And from that point, this rejection continued in massive momentum…from generation to generation. He truly was and still continues to be the most rejected Man to ever live. He was God the Creator who formed man for fellowship now walking among us and yet He was despised and rejected over and over and over again. He was a Man of sorrows with an immolated heart.

Perhaps the most potent part of this deep rejection lies in the fact that this most discarded Man did nothing to shield Himself from such profuse rejection. He did nothing to protect His heart from the hate, nothing to guard His person from the rage. In His sinlessness—free from pride and arrogance—He lacked the “self-centered” means found in the proud heart that so readily protects itself. The nature of compassion, that quality most attributed to Jesus, stands in direct opposition to the nature of pride. Only arrogance can forge walls and instigate “safe distances” from fellow human hearts. Only pride knows how to offer indifference and coldness to another. But Love knows no such response. Love bears all things and embraces every person in its path. Love so cherishes the individual heart that it always hears every word spoken without covering its ears, always sees every deed done without uncaringly looking away and always opens to every response offered without closing its heart.

Thus, Jesus did nothing that you or I would have so readily done to avert the crisis of the despising crowds and the betraying friends. When we would have made pride our ally by speaking condescending words to our accusers, Jesus was silent. When we would have warded off the rejections of men by rallying others to turn against our offender, Jesus refused to use His strength to belittle another. When we, at the very least, would have distanced our hearts in coldness from those despising us, His heart remained in the heat of love and never the aloofness of conceit. Jesus faced His offenders head on, allowing every wounding word to pierce Him and stripping not one sneering statement of its force.

He received into His heart every denunciation without so much as putting up one inward barrier of self-preservation to guard Himself from its blow. And this stunning mutilation of heart only multiplies when it is compounded with the truth that He knew the hearts of men from the inside out, He considered their bitter thoughts even when words weren’t spoken and actions weren’t taken. Not only was He wounded and afflicted by the spokens but by the unspokens, not only by the actions, but by the inward, hidden aggressions. He truly bore our griefs within Himself and without so much as even slightly buffering their blow; He carried our sorrows heavily upon Him all the way to the Cross.