Pleasant Stone Devotional Meditation: December 16

“Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, the threatened not; … Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree …” ~ 1 Peter 2:22-24a

“Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” This is not symbolism. Christ did become sin. From the moment in the Garden of Gethsemane, when He let His own will break into the will of the Father, Jesus felt the dark down-pull of sin. He carried that load of darkness and desperation in His own body to the Cross. It was still in His body as He hung there on that ugly tree bearing our sin and asking forgiveness for us!

Think of the heavy, depressing down-pull in you own heart when you are experiencing sin in your life. When you are filled with bitterness and defying God with it. Nothing goes right. There is never enough fresh air. You want to throw things and hurt people and all the time you are experiencing the nerve-cracking weight of the down-pull of sin in your heart.

Jesus felt this for the whole world from that moment of surrender to the Father’s will in the Garden. He “gave [His] back to the smiters and [His] cheeks to them that plucked off the hair” and not once did He hide His “face from shame and spitting,” But He still carried the dreadful weight. Jesus was sinless. And yet He became sin for all of us.

When we think of the crush of sin in our own hearts in our times of disobedience, we don’t dare try to think what the weight must have been in His heart. And yet, “when he was reviled, [He] reviled not again.” This is the Spirit Jesus showed as He hung on that other tree, bearing our sin in His heart. What spirit do we show as we hang ornaments on our family Christmas tree, if someone happens to “get on our nerves”?

“Christ … suffered for us, leaving us an example, that [we] should follow his steps.”