Over the years God has been slowly revealing to me the full picture of the cross.
First he showed me the physical suffering that christ endured for my sake.
Then he had me on my knees balling my eyes out one night when he revealed the emotional suffering. This picture of Jesus in the garden knowing he would be crucified and in so much anguish that he sweat drops of blood. Only during extreme fear and dread can the capilleries of the sweat glands burst, mixing with blood. This is so rare because the amount of emotional torment that must be felt for this to occur is so vast that the majority of us will never know it. That verse that says the disciples were grieved when they seen the sheer state that Jesus was in hit me like a ton of bricks. I so often think of Jesus wholly as God, and although he was, he was also man. He didn't face that cross without fear, words cannot describe the agony he felt knowing what lay before him. Such fear that would cause God, the creator of everything, to say,
"My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death...Father, please take this cup of suffering away from me." (Mark 14)
But for so long I have failed to truly grasp the full extent of what the cross actually means. The truth is that the cross is not just about physical and emotional pain. There is something that Jesus experienced on that cross that only by the grace of God, I will not have to endure. He felt complete separation from God.
"My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" (Mark 15v34)
My friend Beki said something to me this week that has completely stuck with me. In that moment when Jesus was separated from God there was nothingness. He couldn't see, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't live, because the life that comes from God had left him. Our culture has belittled the true terror of hell. The amount of people that joke that they want to go to hell because it's warmer or there's parties there, when in actual fact the bible describes hell as total separation from God...forever. If God is life, then without God is death. If God is light, then without God is darkness. If God is love, joy, grace and mercy, then without God is hate, pain, sorrow and condemnation. If God is freedom, then without God is bondage, slavery, shame, doubt and fear. If God is everything, then without God is nothing.
Everything that we are, that we see or do, is God. For so long I have been praying for the unsaved people I know that God would be with them, that he would be their God, but he is! Everyday that they live, breathe, see, move, everything they do, is God in them. In Pontypridd where my friend Lois lives, there's this monument and all the way around it are the words written,
"Without God, without anything."
My heart has been completely broken for the people in Trevethin. The amount of physical and sexual abuse and neglect going on here is unbelievable. My heart has been so hardened towards these things and it has been so easy to just be blind to it because that's more comfortable, but I feel like God has completely shattered me over it. I feel like I'm grieving for the suffering that these people are going through, but the truth is that although it seems that they are without God, God is with them. Their very existence reveals the power of Christ in them. The suffering in this world is nothing compared with the suffering of being forever separated from God. I can't imagine calling out to God for all eternity and there being...nothing. This is what Jesus experienced so that we wouldn't have to: Without god, without anything. I have never felt such a call to get off my ass and tell people the gospel. How can we claim to love if we don't warn.
