Hebrews 13:12: So Jesus also suffered outside the city. He died to make his people holy with his own blood.
Suffering is one part of life that frankly, we could live without. Or at least … we think we can. But it’s an immutable law of life that everyone – and it doesn’t matter who they are, where they were born, what their circumstances may be, rich or poor, black or white, male or female – everyone on planet Earth ends up suffering at some point. Nobody’s immune.
Not everything in life will go the way we’d planned, and more often than not, that deviation from the good plans we have for ourselves, well, it involves suffering.
One of the most common questions that I’m asked from right around the world is this: Why does God allow suffering?
I can give you the theologically correct answer, that when humanity first sinned against God through Adam and Eve, that rebellion brought suffering into the world. Because of sin, we live in a fallen world and that means suffering.
But honestly, how much does that help, when you’re really suffering? Why does God let people suffer in circumstances that seem so unfair, so brutal, so cold? Theology doesn’t have a meaningful answer to that, any more than physics can tell you exactly how many stars there are in the universe, or medicine can tell you how your incredible memory really works.
But what I can tell you, is that God didn’t even spare His own Son from suffering. God Himself suffered, when He became a man, specifically in order to be nailed to that Cross so that your sin and mine could be forgiven.
So Jesus also suffered outside the city. He died to make his people holy with his own blood. (Hebrews 13:12)
And boy, did He suffer. But it wasn’t by mistake. It wasn’t some great surprise to God. It wasn’t a case of “Whoops, what went wrong here?” God’s Plan A for Jesus His Son … was always to come to this earth, to show us who God really is, and to suffer humiliation, ridicule, torture and a brutal death.
It was always the plan – from before time began.
So when you’re wondering to yourself, “Does God really know how much this hurts?” the answer is – without any shadow of a doubt … absolutely He does. Not just because as God He knows it all, but because as God, He suffered for you.
