As soon as I understood the significance of Jesus dying on the cross for me and rising again, I was thankful. I was in awe. I knew it mattered, even if I hadn’t lived a lot of life yet.
Then after some times of wandering, when I truly saw my sin and felt shame for the first time, the cross held even more value. He was willing to carry my punishment and give me a clean slate. That amazed me and still leads me to amazed, thankful, worship today.
Now as I study trauma and try to reconcile what cannot be reconciled – a good God and the rampant abuse hurting innocent people – I stand in awe of the cross of Christ and His resurrection for new reason. And I want to elaborate on that a little bit today in an effort to explain what I’m beginning to grasp!
Jesus took our sins we have committed upon Himself, and that made us righteous – justified- just as if we had never sinned.
We know this and celebrate it well.
But He also took upon His body and psyche the sins committed against us, the things done to us, and that made us capable of total restoration.
How? How does the cross and the empty tomb promise total restoration of these griefs and traumas we endure?
Just as sure as we can believe in the total righteousness He earned for us on the cross, we can believe in the total restoration He earned for us in the resurrection.
Will we sin? Yes, unfortunately. Will we undergo trauma at the hands of others? Yes, unfortunately. So, yes, we do have these realities in our lives!
But the weight and the power that the sin and the harm had has been stripped of its life altering agony, in Jesus’s name.
That weight and power was placed on Jesus INSTEAD and He overcame it. He overcame the hopelessness. He overcame the shame. He overcame the despair. He was crushed, but didn’t stay down. He made it to where what should have ended us does not have to.
Because of the cross and the empty tomb, all wrongs are given the proper wrath from God.
That wrath either falls on the sinner, who is unrepentant, or it fell on Jesus. The rightful wrath of God is no longer upon any of us who plead the blood of Jesus over our lives. We are forgiven and can walk away from the heaviness of our own sin, and we can know that those who have wronged us are being held into account, 100%. When we want God alone to be the accuser, the judge, and the executor of His wrath, we have stepped into true forgiveness and can even pray for our abusers – Lord, have mercy, because He takes sin more seriously than even we do. He can take our wrath we are holding against ourselves and others, and fully execute it rightfully. When we stop carrying wrath and unforgiveness, we are already moving toward that total restoration that is ours in Christ!
Satan can no longer keep a victim bound to their brokenness nor can he keep a sinner bound to his sin.
He was reduced to merely lying to people about being a slave to the power of sin and the power of trauma. Oh yes, they’re real. But the weight of these things, the eternal baggage, was ALL put on ONE MAN at ONE TIME, thwarting Satan’s plans to attach sin, pain, and trauma to ALL MEN at ALL TIMES.
In the resurrection, Jesus showed He was able to endure this and literally get up and walk away – restored to new life! No one in the world could do that besides Him!
But now, because He did, so can we.
Will we? That’s up to us. Satan wants us to think we can’t, but that’s a lie. Our sins and the sins done to us do not have the power we thought they did, in Jesus’s name. Just as total righteousness can be ours in Christ Jesus, so can total restoration!
While I’ll never understand why some aren’t protected from the worst of mankind’s sins, at the cross and the empty tomb I see Satan’s plans for that sin and trauma declared empty and powerless for all who will believe in Jesus. As we suffer, we have hope; as we wait for the redemption of our bodies, our souls can be well as we trust in Him, the One who has felt it all, hit the ground, and got back up again.
