Eyes Up: 5 Days of Learning to Trust God’s Heart by Tracing His Hand Exemplo

Jesus is the One who knows what it is to be high and lifted up as the glorious God that He is. And yes, Jesus is the One who also knows what it is to be humble and brought low as an ordinary human, too. But on top of that, he’s also the One who knows what’s it’s like to be a hit-taking human on behalf of other humans.

Accusation and shame headed straight for you and for me, and Jesus stepped in to absorb it all, in our place. I’ll take on whatever her faults deserve. That’s the message of the cross, you know. Some of the blows in this life—you didn’t deserve them. That’s called suffering. But others, well, you do deserve them because you did wrong and you know it. That’s called sin. As Romans says, we’ve all sinned. And sin requires payment—a score settled before God, all our wrongs made right. And the payment for those sins? Death. Blood.

The judgment that was rightly reserved for all that sin was just waiting for us. The cross was a place you (and I, and all of us) were destined for, metaphorically speaking. And yet we didn’t have to go there or suffer there or pay for our wrongs. Jesus high-tailed it to the cross so we wouldn’t have to, so he could take the hit for us, and so our record could be clean. All that sin, paid for. All the shame associated with it, gone. How? Because he was without sin. He was the only one qualified to pay the bill on our behalf.

Friend, are you feeling the place of rest and restitution that Jesus is for you? I know you may have a heart or a life that feels shattered and I get that. But all our pieces are put back together in the presence of a Savior who says, "Sit with me, I've come to bring new life, living water, and my body broken for you."

For He’s the only One who has gone to the lengths of death to prove his love for you and pay for all the sin and the suffering that has taken a toll on your story.

There are a million more things we could lift our eyes to when it comes to Jesus, but here’s the last thing we’ll talk about now—and it’s so good. It really is the whole climactic point of the story of Jesus.

Here it is: Jesus didn’t just go through death on your behalf. He came out on the other side of death, alive.

Jesus died. And then He came back to life. Your Jesus, your God, your Christ, defeated the world’s biggest enemy. The enemy none of us has any power over in the end. And yet Jesus does.