For the Joy Set Before Him
by Jamie Steach
Defining our Value, #1
Does anybody out there struggle with value? With feeling like you aren’t good enough, or you aren’t worth it? I did, and sometimes still do. My struggle with value has affected many parts of my life, including how I view and relate to God. I think one of the saddest truths of our human experience is that if we don’t anchor our value in the right place, then we will go looking for it anywhere and everywhere that we shouldn’t. I can relate to that, too. So where is the right place to look for value? The only one with the right to define your value is God. So how do we do that? How do we let God define our worth? As someone who struggles with value, I decided to take a deep dive into the Bible to see what God has to say about it. What I’m going to share today was one of my biggest and most impactful discoveries, made through inferences between a couple short scriptures.
First up, John 16:
“19 Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me’? 20 Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. 21 A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. 22 So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. ”
Ok so, for starters, Jesus is talking to his disciples at the last supper, right before he goes to the cross. In context, Jesus is trying to tell them that they have arrived at the time where He will be taken from them, and they will experience a time of grief, but then will experience joy when they see Jesus again. He uses childbirth as an analogy for their situation, describing how a woman suffers and has pain at the appointed time, but once that time has been completed, she is filled with joy because of the result of her suffering, a child. Jesus uses this passage to encourage them, saying they are now in their time of grief, of labor, and that when their time of joy comes, when they see Him again, their joy will not be taken away. We know, of course, that the disciples still don’t quite understand what is coming, but this promise of joy that won’t be taken away is pretty cool! Anyway, now that we’ve established context and what this verse is really talking about, I want to look a little closer at verse 21, and the situation that Jesus Himself is about to go into. In this verse, Jesus says that the woman has pain because her time has come, but when the baby is born, she forgets her anguish because of the joy she feels over her new baby.
I think there is a lot of this that applies to Jesus Himself, more so than the disciples. Firstly, Jesus has the job here that is much more similar to a mother in labor than that of His disciples. In going to the cross, Jesus will experience all of the pain and suffering that comes with it. He is the one with the job of “delivering” salvation to the world through His sacrifice. He is experiencing physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual pain and suffering because His time has come.
So let’s put Jesus in the role of the delivering mother real quick. We know that His “time” is the time appointed to go to the cross, and His “pain” is obviously the suffering of the cross, but what about the second half of this analogy?
Cue scripture two, Hebrews 12:
“2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
In verse 2, we get this passage that says “For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross”. Remember the second half of our analogy? After the baby is born, the woman forgets her anguish because of her joy that a child is born. Hmm, there’s that joy concept again. The woman feels joy that her child is born, and Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before Him. So what was that joy? How do these two connect? Let me ask you another question. What is the point of the cross? How does the cross affect us? Jesus took on our sin at the cross so that we could become what? So that we could become a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), born into God’s family. So I’ll ask again, what was that joy set before Him, and how does the birth analogy fit? Did you catch it? Jesus’s joy is the joy of a child being born, just like the woman, but it’s not the joy of just any child. Jesus’s joy is the joy of HIS child being born. And who is His child? It’s YOU. YOU are the joy set before Him. Because of YOU, He endured the cross. WHOA. Mind-blowing. I had literally never looked at this scripture that way before this study, but it’s true! Don’t believe me? Read the next eight verses in Hebrews 12. What are they about? They’re about God disciplining us as His children. So I’ll say again, YOU are the child that Jesus is laboring to bring to life through the cross, and YOU are the joy set before Jesus. YOU are the reason He endured the cross, endured opposition, and YOU are the one He doesn’t want to grow weary or lose heart.
I’m sure you’re sitting there in your mind-blown thoughts, as I was, but that’s not all. We’re forgetting the last part of this birth analogy. What happens once the mother feels the joy of bringing a baby into the world? She forgets her anguish. So, what does this tell us about Jesus? I think this is more mind-blowing to me than realizing that I am the joy that was set before Jesus at the cross. If we follow this analogy, which has been spot on so far, that means that once we are born into God’s family, Jesus forgets the anguish of the cross. Wow. How is this possible? How could Jesus forget the anguish involved in something so traumatic, so horrible, and so designed for suffering? We know that God has promised to forgive us and to forget our sins (Jeremiah 31:33-34), but forgetting the anguish of the cross? That’s asking too much. But I believe that’s exactly the point. We are so stuck on our sin, on our mistakes, and on how worthless that must make us, but God deliberately uses this horrible, awful thing to both convict us and show us the depths of His love. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross. Because of the joy set before Him, He forgets the anguish of the cross. Why else would we be told that there is much rejoicing in heaven over one sinner that repents (Luke 15)? Because to Jesus, you are worth it. It’s as if Jesus is saying to us: You are the reason I went to the cross, and you are valuable enough to me that it was a joy to endure, knowing that I could have you at the end of it all. And when you accepted my sacrifice, I was so full of joy that I forgot all my suffering, because getting you was worth it.
This really blew my mind to realize. I had never truly personalized Jesus’s sacrifice in that way. My understanding of my value to God was: sure, God loves all His people, so I’m valuable as one of the group, but not nearly as much as an individual. That’s honestly the way I thought! Can you relate? But these thoughts are so different from the real picture of what Jesus says about my value, and your value, as an individual. As if the many examples of the way that Jesus interacted with and valued individuals during His life weren’t enough, God made sure to drive it home for me with this picture of the cross. God made sure that I would see that I was the reason, that you were the reason, of Jesus’s joy at the cross, and not only that, but that I was the reason, that you were the reason, that Jesus forgot His anguish which He suffered at the cross. This is how valuable you are to God. This is what Paul is talking about when he says nothing in all creation, alive or dead, could ever separate us from the love of Jesus (Romans 8:38-39). You are the joy set before Jesus, and because of this joy, He forgets the anguish He suffered at the cross when we choose to return to Him.