Jesus is Committed – March 22, 2024

[Jesus said] “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
John:12:27-29

Jesus is Committed

Jesus spoke these words during Holy Week. No one else knew what was coming next for Jesus, but Jesus knew. In a matter of hours, Jesus would be arrested. He would endure the indignity of a sham of a trial before the religious leaders. He would be paraded between two politicians. Soldiers would mock him, spit on him, and whip him. He would be executed like a common criminal.

But that’s not what truly troubled his soul. Jesus knew the agony that was waiting for him on that Roman cross. Worse than the crucifixion itself would be the weight of the sins of the whole world. Worse than the slow and painful suffocation would be the separation of Jesus from his Father, the punishment for sin.

It is no wonder Jesus said that his soul was troubled. But even as he could count the hours to the torment of hell he would suffer, he remained resolute. He was committed to saving God’s people and the glory it would bring his Father.

Next week, we start our Holy Week. We will travel with Jesus from Palm Sunday to Easter, with long and important stops at Holy Thursday and Good Friday. We will meditate, once again, on Jesus’ great love for sinners and the cost of our sin. As Jesus hangs from the cross, it will look anything but glorious. But it is there on the cross, an instrument of death and torture, that Jesus wins glory. It is there that Jesus does what the angels pronounced at his birth. Jesus brings, “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14).

Prayer:
Jesus, thank you for your commitment to me and the peace you’ve won between me and God. Amen.