Jesus in the Epistles
Recently, in a study of the Gospel of Luke, I remembered words from another scripture I was certain would bring context to the idea I was about to explain to the friend I was discipling. I eagerly flipped the pages to make the connection, then sat with the message I knew the Spirit was even more eager to reveal.
That’s when Hebrews 5:7-8 smacked me in the face.
I was preparing to explain the difference between prayer and supplication, but when I read the words in Hebrews 5, I was stopped in my tracks. This was no longer about definitions or explanations; this was about Jesus’ prayers and supplications. It was about the posture of Almighty God when He fell to His knees in human form and cried out for a suffering I have no context for.
Listen to these words:
In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. —Hebrews 5:7-8
(I had to bold these words, because they were the very ones shouting at me).
I saw hard words.
I felt raw emotion.
This fully God and fully man was face-down, spread out upon the very earth He created, and He was sobbing over the death He would soon experience for me.
And I wasn’t even there.
I began to notice all the oxymorons of this scene, connecting what was in front of me with a flood of Scriptures the Holy Spirit had searched the depths of God so that I would see and hear what God had prepared for those who love Him (1 Corinthians 2:10):
The Creator of everything good and perfect (James 1:17), the One able to save us from death (which He did not design), is adorned in the same skin, bones, and blood He filled the first man with in Eden, when He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
Holy God—who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see (1 Timothy 6:16)—is praying and falling on His face with tears and loud cries, and He is heard by Himself (the same One who could stop the bleeding, but does not).
Jesus Christ, God’s beloved Son—the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3)—came from heaven and had to learn obedience while here on earth (something He never experienced before).
And as a result of the anguish of His soul, God would see this and be satisfied (Isaiah 53:11).
The quest for understanding came to a halt.
I had gone from staring at words on a page to standing in a Garden watching drops of blood fall to the ground as the One I love more than life fervently asks His Father to learn how to die for me.
And now, Easter is approaching.
I have tried to prepare my heart in a new way this year (I do the same with the coming of Christmas).
Re-reading the same devotional books from years past leaves me wanting.
Watching Season 5 of The Chosen again has brought a visual reminder of the events, but something still seems to be missing.
What I had not done was what these verses were now drawing me to: kneel and remember.
As I flipped through the chapters that precede Hebrews 5, my brain began to calculate the many verses that cause me to rest in a God who fiercely loves me.
Could I show you a few?
He took on flesh and blood, so that through His death He might render powerless the one who had the power of death (and had been using that power to enslave us in fear), so that I would not remain the devil’s slave all of my life (Hebrews 2:14-15).
I do not have a God who cannot sympathize with my weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as I have, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).
Jesus’ sacrifice satisfied God’s wrath for the sin and death that would have otherwise separated me from the Father forever (Hebrews 2:17).
I am now able to draw near to God through Jesus, since He ALWAYS lives to make intercession for me (Hebrews 7:25).
When Jesus was on His face, begging to be saved from death, we don’t actually read through verses of prayers and supplications; we only have one line: Father, if it is Yourdesire, remove this cup from Me; yet not My desire, but Yours be done (Matthew 26:39, Mark 14:36, and Luke 22:42). In Isaiah 53, the prophet tells us that Jesus would cry out to the One whose desire was to crush Him and put Him to grief, because this was in line with the Father’s good pleasure. He goes on to tell us that the Messiah would render Himself as a guilt offering (see Leviticus 5) in order to justify the many, bearing their iniquities. And He would be numbered among the transgressors.
The sinless, spotless Lamb of God would be numbered among those who have sinned.
In the Epistles
Paul puts it like this:
He who knew no sin would become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29).
He is the source of our eternal salvation.
And they sang a new song, saying,
Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.
(Revelation 5)
I resonate with Job when he responds to the magnificence of God’s words (found in Job 38-39) and says:
Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You? I lay my hand on my mouth.
