When we think of good Friday, we often think about the image of Jesus suffering physical pain on the cross. For those of us who are believers, I think it often stirs our hearts and leads us down a path of gratitude and one tinged with sorrow and remorse. However, I wonder if you have ever spent time pondering what it was like for Jesus to not only suffer physically, but also to suffer the weight of everyone’s sins?
I am a Splankna practitioner and I work with people with past trauma and we deal with all sorts of different people with different stories that all revolve around the pain of sin and brokenness in our world. When we do the work, we ask the Lord to give us the emotional resources needed for them to remember the pain that each one of those traumas caused. When we think back over past hurts, bad decisions, sinful times in our lives and we try to recall the emotions that come with it, it can be overwhelming. Yet, we are only dealing with a small number of hurts at a time. The shame and accusation that assaults our mind, and the bitterness of wounds both our own and others we caused can consume us as we remember. But, could you imagine the emotional resources it would require to remember them all, all at once?
Perhaps you are currently in the middle of sin right now and trudging your way through the various pains that come with it. Perhaps, you are too ashamed to admit the ways you have wandered far from the Lord. If we were to pile all of it up, all at once, the weight of all our own sins and the sins against us and tried to stand under the weight of it, we would likely collapse. Every tear cried, every hurtful word spoken, every abuse we have experienced, every ounce of shame we have lived under, all the fear that comes with evil we have ever allowed into our thoughts. Could you imagine every bit of it coming at you, all at once. Every loved one you have lost and all the grief you felt, every time you were abandoned, every time you were mocked and made fun of, every time you were denied a fair chance, and treated like less than. Could you imagine if the weight of all of these things were piled on you, all at once. When we think of it all at once, it feels crushing, impossibly hard, and the reality is we couldn’t bare it all at once. The best part is that we don’t have to if we have placed our identity in the one who took it all on for us. Only He didn’t just take one at a time, He took everyone’s sin while he hung on the cross, all at once.
I have had so many clients tell me that they wished that their abusers only used physical abuse because those wounds eventually heal and don't hurt nearly as much or for as long after the abuse. Yet, the only aspect of the cross that many of us focus on is the physical pain Christ suffered. I can only imagine what 40 lashes minus one, feels like. What giant thorns pressed into your head would feel like. I can’t even imagine the pain of having my hands and feet nailed to a cross and then having the whole weight of my body be suspended by those nails. These are things that I struggle to be able to allow myself to even imagine, and yet they pale in comparison to the suffering Jesus experienced when He took on all of our sin, all at once. Everyone’s sin, all at once. Not just the people who would choose to follow Him, but even the ones who were actively murdering Him, even the ones that would hate to hear even His name mentioned. He took on the atheist sin, the mass shooters sin, the sin of Hitler. Jesus didn’t discriminate, because He loved each and every one of us. He took on everyone’s sin all at once. Take a minute to let that sink in. It is an overwhelming thought.
For those of us who have placed our faith in Jesus we will never have to carry the full weight of our sin ever, nor will we ever have to face the feeling of being forsaken by God. We don’t have to face these things, for one simple reason, Jesus already did. He sat under the weight of every bit of my sin, so that I wouldn’t have to live an eternity under it, forever separated from the love of the father. He bore my sin and yours, and it is worth pausing today to be reminded that in all the ways my sin hurt me, it hurt Him even more because He had to bear it under the weight of separation from the Father, all at once.
If you have not placed your identity in the Lord and asked Him to be your Lord and Savior, Jesus still bore the weight of all of your sin on the cross. He suffered on your behalf so that you wouldn’t have to, but He requires full surrender and submission to Him and His leadership. If you choose to deny Jesus and go your own way, it won’t change His sacrifice, but it will change yours. There will be a day when you yourself will have to sit under the weight of all of your sin, all at once, and experience the crushing separation from God. My prayer is that you don’t multiply your suffering for no reason. Jesus made a way for each of us, and it cost Him everything, and to deny Him it will also cost you everything, but you will not be resurrected as a spotless lamb. You will have to live under that weight for eternity.
My encouragement to you all is that you sit under the weight of what it would look like to experience all of your sin, all at once, and consider what your response should be to the one who boar it for you. He deserves nothing less than a heart fully surrendered and a mind eternally grateful to serve Him in return. He deserves nothing less than all of us, all at once.