All For Nothing

What do Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta, the 2022 FIFA World Cup final, and the last few days of Jesus’s life on Earth all have in common?

Drama, and lots of emotional trauma.

Matthew (along with the other 3 Gospel accounts), lays out just what Jesus endured in the scenes leading up to His death. And it was nothing short of a brutal, emotional rollercoaster.

• People who held religious and social power stood around plotting on Jesus's downfall (Matthew 26:1 - 5).

• One of His own followers, Judas, agreed to turn on Him for money (Matthew 26:14 - 16).

• He’s unfairly arrested and detained (Matthew 26:55 - 56).

• One of His closest friends, Peter, acts like he doesn't know Him — three separate times (Matthew 26:69 - 74).

• He was sentenced to death, even though the person sentencing Him knew He wasn’t guilty (Matthew 27:22 - 26).

• He was cruelly beaten with studded whips, or “flogged” (Matthew 27:26).

• And ultimately, He is crucified, hung on the cross with nails through His hands, and murdered (Matthew 27:32 - 50).

As if those ordeals weren’t bad enough in and of themselves, along the way He was also stripped of His clothes, made to wear a crown of sharp thorns, spit on, slapped, mocked — you name it.

Looking at Jesus’s story along with the fact that He is called “the Son of God,” you may be wondering something. It’s the same question left on my mind after watching France’s perplexingly lethargic performance in the first half of the World Cup final this year. It's also the same question on my mind during the relationship scenes in any given episode of Love & Hip Hop:

“Why... Just why?"

So, why did all of this happen? Why would Jesus endure these things?

If we’re honest, the mere idea of Jesus’s experiences can be hard to stomach. However, pausing to read and recount the weight of all that Jesus endured truly helps us to better understand Who He is.

Everything Jesus went through leading up to His crucifixion and death on the cross highlights just how selfless, forgiving, and patient He is. He chose to endure some of the worst of human sufferings not because He had to — certainly not because He deserved it — but because He wanted to spare you and I of being separated from God as a result of our own sins. He took on all the punishment that we deserved so that the veil could be torn (Matthew 27:51), and we could have full, undeserved intimacy with God through salvation. Through His pain, Jesus showed that He cares more about our freedom and our futures in eternity than we do ourselves. What a faithful and loving God He is.

What else did Jesus’s experiences do?

They prove the unimaginable lengths that God will go to in order to save us and be close to us.

Let’s remember that He Himself chose from before the beginning of time to eventually come down to Earth, clothed in human skin, and suffer the worst of the worst — all for our sake. The Creator of the universe gave up everything for people He knew might never give Him anything, not even our hearts.

God already knew that mankind would go against His will and commit great sins all throughout human history, driven by our own self-interest. He already knew that many people would never choose to trust His Word, the Bible, nor put their faith in Christ, despite the overwhelming evidence supporting Who He was and is. God knew that He might not ever see a return on His investment in many cases — yet He sacrificed Himself for us anyway.

If God would do that, what won’t He do for us? In the words of Romans 8:32,

“He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all — how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?”

Usually, it's easy to get discouraged when we don’t understand God's plans for our lives. However, we must accept that many times we simply won’t know when or how God is going to do things. He gave His people books upon books of prophetic Scripture about the Messiah for hundreds of years in advance, and even still, they struggled to foresee or accept the plan when He came. Who could ever predict that the same God they knew from Old Testament times would come to Earth, willingly suffer public hatred and humiliation, be maimed and murdered, then raise back to life after 3 days?

Even with all the prophecies leading up to Jesus’s time, no one saw it coming. That course of events definitely wouldn't have made it on my storyboard or sports bracket. Yet, that was the vehicle God used in order to save the world: His own suffering.

When we find ourselves experiencing suffering, loss, rejection, or unfair persecution, we can take comfort in the fact that our God did, too. Philippians 2:8 describes Jesus's chosen plight this way:

“Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.”

The Lord laid His life down because He saw us as worth dying for.

Jesus didn’t have to suffer the way He did. Afterall, who is mankind that God would be mindful of us (Psalms 8:4)? Still, He loves us so much that He chose to sacrifice everything so that we could be saved by His blood, and live knowing we're not alone in any trouble we face here on Earth. In Jesus, God gave up all of His Heavenly glory just to meet us here in our earthly humanity. Because He was willing to do this, we can be confident that He will graciously give us any and everything we need.