Crucified Hearts

Jesus suffers with the suffering ones, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”. He was wounded for our transgressions and with his stripes we are healed.

He is the wounded healer who will for eternity bear the scars of loving us, serving us, “even unto death”. We will know the King in heaven by the scars that crown of thorns made, by the nail pierced hands, the long gash left by a Roman spear thrust into his side. We will know him by the wounds we gave him, the wounds he accepted at our hands.

Without suffering, his and ours, we cannot know God.

“The news about Him spread throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them.
— Matthew 4:24

“…and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.” – Isa. 53:6

Jesus still walks the dark hills with those who suffer. If that is where Jesus is, where are we? What does it mean to “be with” him who is still with those who suffer?

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
— Luke 4:18-19

Who did we imagine Jesus was when we answered his call to follow him, where did we think he was going, what did we think he was doing, what did we think he was calling us to in our fellowship with him?

Did we think that when Jesus met us in our darkest place, in our shame, in our disease, that he stopped with us?

“As they were going along the road, someone said to Him, “I will follow You wherever You go.” And Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”
— Luke 9:57-58

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
— Matthew 16:24-25

The Jesus we follow is Christ of the cross who even in his glorified body bears the scars of his service, his ministry of healing.

“Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe…Then He said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.”
— John 20:25,27

Our calling for communion with the resurrected Christ is the call to share the fellowship of his sufferings until they are made complete, for we are his body on earth, living in this war zone of sin, death, and trauma. Jesus still ministers in the darkest places of the earth in the person of his church, that place where his Spirit abides in the flesh, that body that follows him in ministry with hands to help, eyes that weep, a mouth that comforts, a heart that cares until it is broken like his.

This is the way of love, to sacrifice for the good of others, to spend and be spent as workers together with Christ.

“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.”
— Colossians 1:24

Only those who have lost all things, lost all those things that satisfy our love of adulation, our pride, our lust for pleasure, the loss of all of our idols, only these can experience the resurrection power of Christ that is revealed in the fellowship of his sufferings, suffering that comes with bearing the bruised and wounded souls of others as we help them out of the pit.

In weakness, pain, broken promises, lost dreams, unfulfilled expectations, humiliations, hopelessness and despair, we find communion with the resurrected One because he always lives to minister to those who suffer.

Or have we not read, have we not understood the call of Christ to be with him where he is?

Only those who bear the cross will wear the crown.

“Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”
— Luke 14:27

In the path we follow there is blood in the tracks. It is only in following the blood that we know the way.

“Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
— Philippians 2:1-11

“But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. 

Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same  standard to which we have attained.  Brethren, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us.

For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.
— Philippians 3:7-21