He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
–Isaiah 53:3
When Jesus came to earth, He was fully God, but He was also fully man. What did He do during the thirty-three years He took on human flesh?
First of all, Jesus defied expectations. The Jews were looking for a conquering warrior who would free them from the oppression of Rome. Instead, they got a suffering servant who “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).
Second, Jesus suffered. He suffered the betrayal of His friends, the insults of His enemies, and the agony of the cross. Dorothy Sayers described it this way: “For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is–limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death–He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. . . . He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death.” Jesus understands what we’re going through because He experienced the same suffering.
Finally, Jesus prioritized His relationship with God. He did so in three ways:
- Jesus prioritized His Father’s Word. In Luke 2:47, we see that He grew in His understanding of God. Memorizing and meditating on Scripture was an important part of Jesus’s life.
- Jesus prioritized His Father’s presence. Luke 5:16 says, “Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.” And Luke 4:16 tells us it was His custom to go to the synagogue each week to worship with other believers. If connecting with God was necessary for Jesus’s spiritual survival, how much more important is it for us?
- Jesus prioritized His Father’s will. In John 4:34, He said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.” Let’s be honest: For most of us, our problem is not that we don’t know what God wants us to do; it’s deciding whether we are going to do what God wants us to do. Jesus made obeying God the cornerstone of His life. If we’re Jesus’s disciples, we’re going to make obeying God our priority as well.
Today’s devotion is adapted from “What Every Christian Should Know About Jesus Christ” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2022.
Dorothy L. Sayers, Creed or Chaos? (Harcourt, Brace, 1949), 4.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.