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You have been set free. You’re redeemed.

Our sins cause pain. The consequences of our choices stay with us – betrayal burns like a hot brand, harsh words pierce like an arrow and withheld love is a jagged cut. Gathered together they become too much to bear.

In your darkest moment, when your despair is great and your sin is overwhelming, you are transported to the place where punishment is demanded for your actions, along a dusty road in Jerusalem.

There are few travelers in sight. This is not a place to be discovered by local officials and identified as sympathetic to those being punished. But here in between criminals, the Son of God is being crucified.

He saw your distress. He saw your guilt. With no other way to help you, he brought you to this dusty road. As he hangs there on a cross, beaten nearly beyond recognition and racked in enormous pain, his gaze is locked on you.

Although his body is in agony, his soft brown eyes are filled with love. The same eyes that surveyed the universe as he spoke it into existence are now focused on you. You are looking into the eyes of your savior.

Taking your punishment, he took each lash of the whip. In your place, he was punched, ridiculed and spit on. Instead of you, he wears the thorn branches, twisted together and pressed onto his head, causing drops of blood to ooze out of his torn skin. Nails forged by your sin were driven through his hands and feet. The cross that you deserved was lifted up and dropped violently into a hole on public display as a sign of warning and humiliation. But he didn’t bring you here to watch him suffer.

You appeared on this road after the abuse and humiliation, gazing up into those perfect eyes that stare at you in love, forgiveness, and acceptance. Looking at you, he licks his dry, cracked lips and summons his remaining energy to speak in a hoarse voice. “It is finished”.

In a flash, you return to your life. Your price has been paid. He took your place. He was cursed so that you could be blessed. He was broken so that you could be made whole. He was abandoned so that you would never be alone. In his perfect love, he died for you. All your debt is paid, now and forever.

Three days later, death was destroyed when it could not contain him. The one who breathed creation into existence walked out of the tomb. Resurrected, he was restored to the right hand of God. Because of him, you were made righteous and invited to share his reward.

Accept the gift he gave you. Accept that you cannot repay him. Accept that you will fail him again. Accept that his sacrifice was not based on your worthiness. There is no longer guilt in a broken family or shame in addiction that has raged out of control. Your identity is no longer defined by your failure. It is finished.

Great things are in your future. You are a child of Jeremiah 29:11. There is hope for you and a future. However, you have trials still to come that will last for years. Your path will be troubled and difficult.

Confess the failures that caused your pain. Own your part of each broken relationship. Allow your wounds to heal, knowing the remaining scars will always be sensitive when they are touched.

The scars will not be ugly. They will tell your story of grace. As you accept them, you will learn to recognize the ways people try to conceal their own, hiding their shame from the world. Your scars will speak to them that you understand.

You will bring comfort to people who would never trust someone dressed too perfectly, whose words were too polished and whose life seemed pulled from a storybook. You will show your scars to others and be trusted because of them, like the one who received his scars for you.

The same breath that created life will flow from your mouth into a world that needs it. Your transformed life will change destinies and cause dead hearts to beat again.

Rebuke the voices that say you must do more, that you are not enough. Silence any who would say that your failures have caused too much damage, too much pain. When you have doubts, look back into those soft, brown eyes. Feel the love behind them.

You have been set free. You’re redeemed.

Jimmy McAfee