The heavy burden of sin

Have you ever wondered how Jesus could say that his yoke was gentle and his burden light considering what he endured as the flesh-born Son of God during his earthly existence?

Born the prophesied Messiah, Jesus was already being targeted for death by King Herod when he was just a baby. Herod ordered the killing of all male children in Bethlehem who were two years old or younger. As a young man, Jesus, like any other adolescent, faced all manner of temptations. When Jesus proclaimed in the Temple that he was the Anointed One of God, the people in the synagogue drove him out of the city and tried to push him off a cliff. He said he had nowhere to lay his head. He wept bitterly at the lack of faith in his beloved Jerusalem and was constantly vilified, doubted, and ridiculed by the religious leaders of his time. He was called an illegitimate child, a drunkard, a sinner, and even a demon-possessed false prophet. He lived his entire life with the awareness that he would one day be betrayed by his friends, abandoned, beaten by soldiers, and brutally crucified. Above all, he knew that it was his destiny to take upon himself all the heinous sins of humanity in order to serve as an atoning sacrifice for all humankind. Yet, despite all that he had to endure, he proclaimed: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthäus 11,30).

Jesus invites us to come to him to find rest and relief from the burden and weight of sin. A few verses earlier, Jesus says: “All things have been committed to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Matthäus 11,27).

We get a fleeting glimpse of the immense burden that Jesus promises to lift from people. Jesus reveals to us the true face of the Father's heart when we come to him in faith. He invites us into the intimate, perfect relationship that unites him alone with the Father, in which it is beyond doubt that the Father loves us and remains faithful to us with that love. "And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (Johannes 17,3)Throughout his life, Jesus repeatedly faced the challenge of resisting Satan's attacks, which manifested as temptation and distress. But even on the cross, he remained true to his divine mission of saving humanity, bearing the weight of all human guilt. Under the burden of sin, Jesus, as both God and dying man, expressed his human abandonment by crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46).

As a sign of his unwavering trust in his father, he said shortly before his death: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!" (Lukas 23,46)He thus made it clear to us that the Father had never abandoned him, not even when he bore the burden of all mankind's sins.
Jesus gives us the belief that we are united with him in his death, burial and resurrection to a new eternal life. Through this we experience true peace of mind and freedom from the yoke of the spiritual blindness that Adam brought upon us with the Fall.

Jesus explicitly stated the purpose for which he came to us: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Life to the full means that Jesus has restored to us the true understanding of God’s nature, which sin had separated us from him. Furthermore, Jesus proclaims that he is “the radiance of his Father’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” (Hebräer 1,3)The Son of God not only reflects the glory of God, but he himself is God and radiates this glory.

May you recognize with the Father, his Son in communion with the Holy Spirit, and truly experience in full that life full of love, which he has prepared for you from the beginning of the world!

by Brad Campbell