When Doing Right Goes Wrong

Most of us have experienced pain over a situation that we can honestly look back at and go, “Yup… knew I shouldn’t have done that!” Have you ever genuinely tried to do the right thing, though — perhaps the thing you believed God called for you to do — yet still ended up left with hurt, shame, or disgrace as a result? If so, you know how confusing and how unfair it can feel. Suffering for actively choosing to do wrong seems understandable, but attempting to do something good and then just having the rug pulled up right from under you… well, nothing about that seems right!

As disorienting and challenging as these kinds of situations are, there is a place we can find comfort through them, and that place is always in God’s Word. Let’s take a walk through Hebrews 13:11-14 and see what Scripture reveals to us about when we aim to do the right thing and still seem to suffer the consequences.

(11) The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp.

(12) And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through His own blood.

(13) Let us, then, go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace He bore.

(14) For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”

In verse 12, we read that Jesus “suffered outside the city gate,” referring to His gruesome crucifixion at Golgotha, a hill outside of the gates of Jerusalem. Verse 13 then instructs us to “go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace He bore.” Now, that doesn’t really sound like fun -- but let’s keep reading here. In verse 14, the author writes something that is sort of easy to gloss over but can, in fact, bring us life-changing hope in our own times of seemingly unfair pain and disgrace: the author says, “For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”

Ever visited a city or country far from home and found yourself in a really uncomfortable situation? Usually, no matter how bad the circumstances might feel at the time, we can convince ourselves to push past it because we know we won’t be there forever. We understand that soon enough we’ll be back home to normalcy, with all the difficulties and embarrassments from our trip now being nothing more than a crazy story we get to laugh about with our friends.

What the author of Hebrews seems to suggest to us in verses 11-14 is that we should view our lives here on Earth in a similar light. That we too, may find ourselves in undesirable, unpleasant circumstances even as we are trying to please God and move towards Jesus. We are assured by the last verse in this passage that it is actually okay to find ourselves bearing this type of disgrace here on Earth, just as Christ once bore. How come? Because this place is not an enduring city.

This means that though our pains and heartaches are very real, and may at times feel like they are going to overcome us, even the deepest hurts and disgraces we face will not last forever because this place simply will not last forever. As followers of God, we are only passing through here on our way to a city that is to come — our true home in Heaven. And there will be no pain or disgrace there.

Try and picture eternity as a beach stretching for thousands of miles along the coast of an entire continent. Compared to it, our lives on this Earth make up less than a single grain of sand! We can take heart in the fact that no matter what happens during this fraction of our existence, we are going to spend the inconceivably greater portion of it in a place full of joy, perfection, and unhindered intimacy with our loving Creator, God. Jesus sacrificed His life in order to ensure we could see this is true. Because He so loved us, He died and resurrected so we’d be able to walk through this hard life with peace — a peace that comes only from knowing we have guaranteed glory and joy waiting for us, regardless of any sufferings we face in our short time here.

Let’s circle back to verses 11-12 to see the exact method of Jesus’s sacrifice, as I believe we can further discern His deep love for us here.

When the Israelites and Levitical priests used to give sacrifices to God, they were not sacrificing their own blood and bodies — they were taking the blood/bodies of animals and using those as atonement for their sins. As verse 12 tells us, though, Jesus sacrificed His own body, to “make the people holy through His own blood.”

Being crucified definitely wasn’t Jesus’s preference; He actually agonized over it in distress while in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:34). Still, He followed where God the Father was leading Him and chose to do “the right thing” by dying on the Cross. Jesus already knew He would endure heart-wrenching hurt, shame, and disgrace by sacrificing His life for us — yet He also understood that only His pure, sinless blood would ever be enough to truly free us. He chose to act as both the High Priest interceding on our behalf to God using a sacrificial offering, and the sacrificial offering Himself. He was willing to completely give Himself up for us.

Because Jesus is God incarnate, He is and will forever be the only Person capable of doing anything like this and then just resurrecting. What’s even more mind-blowing than that, though?

Jesus is the only Person who loves us so much He’d actually agree to do this for us, even while recognizing that He would suffer greatly and we still might not love Him back afterwards.

Understanding what our Savior chose to endure for us in spite of His own anxiety and fears should help us be willing to honor Him by doing what’s right, even when it means suffering as a result of it. Nevertheless, doing so often just feels like more than we’re able to bear — and that, too, is okay. As we’re reminded in Hebrews 4:15, we do not have a High Priest Who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses. Jesus Himself prayed that God the Father would “take this cup of suffering” away from Him if possible just as we often do, especially when we feel it is undeserved.

The good news is that just like Jesus, we can trust our Heavenly Father will strengthen us to do anything He’s called us to do, and reward us for it in a manner that far outweighs any pain we endured while doing it.

In the same way Jesus once suffered to redeem us and now sits at the right hand of the throne of God for the rest of time, we too, will get to enjoy an eternity so beautiful that even our hardest, most unexpected sufferings in this world will no longer cross our minds.