It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. (Hebrews 2:10)
While most Christians are quite aware that Jesus suffered, it is easy to gloss over in the midst of our busy lives and forget the depth of God’s love and the lengths to which God will go because of it. But the amazing thing is that the God who made everything (yes, everything) has come in Jesus to make things right through Christ’s suffering.
It is this conviction that makes the Christian faith unique. While there are many ways to understand the depth of God’s love throughout the world’s religions, the Christian message is that God is willing to suffer and even die for our sake.
In our world we have various images of what perfection looks like. These images are sometimes moral (never making an unethical choice), intelligence (always knowing the right answer), beautiful (showing absolutely no physical flaws), or a host of other ways to define being “perfect.” Often we fell like we are unable to measure up to the standards of perfection we have been given and we are most aware of our imperfections.
Scripture makes the case that God’s “perfection” is best witnessed in suffering love. Jesus’ willingness to suffer for the love he has for our world was the thing that showed him to be “perfect.” And the love he offers to us in his suffering is the thing that offers us salvation and the chance to be the people God has created us to be.
So, while we are preoccupied with our imperfections in so many aspects of our lives, the question to all of us is this. In the thing that matters most to God (suffering love), how am I doing at loving in ways that reflect the love of Jesus? None of us will ever fully love like Jesus loves. But it is a good reminder to each of us that he loves all of us enough to suffer and even die for that love. We may not be perfect, but we must be pretty valuable to God!
