Reproach

REPROACH: An expression of rebuke or disapproval; a cause or occasion of blame, discredit or disgrace; one subjected to censure [judgment involving condemnation; the act of blaming or condemning sternly] or scorn.

 

I can feel the pain of my soul—the entirety of my person—as I read this word and its meanings. Clearly this word remains stamped upon me; it covers beauty never realized like the defacing of graffiti, and mars like the careless application of a stamp slammed down with force. Reproach. The cause of shame…The subject of disgrace…An object to be scorned…A person to be despised…The one to be blamed…I want to accept these reproaches, to rationalize why they belong to me, to justify the hands that stamped them there (even my own). I want to examine each mark to determine its validity to see if the merit behind it should allow—no, demand—that I keep it to wear as a badge of dishonor, a warning to my future ambitions. 

But You look down at me from Your hanging place, where your blood stains both the wood and the ground beneath it. You’ve already determined the merit of my markings. You’ve already sorted what has been cast upon me, what has rested upon me, what ways I am to be despised.

“I am the Lamb without blemish; My blood makes the marked ones clean; My love covers a multitude of sins and leaves the ones who receive it free. I’ll take it all— every marking, every declaration, every judgment, every disgrace, every ounce of blame…the sum of all your reproach.”

"You know my reproach,
    and my shame and my dishonor;
    my foes are all known to You.

Reproaches have broken my heart,
    so that I am in despair.
I looked for pity, but there was none,
    and for comforters, but I found none.

They gave me poison for food,
    and for My thirst they gave Me sour wine to drink."

Psalm 69:19–21

May I walk by faith, not by sight.

Shallow love

“Our problem is not our difference of opinions. It’s the shallowness of our love.” Francis Chan

I read those words today (and listened to the corresponding interview), and I have to say, my heart is weightily moved. Francis wasn’t looking around at culture and making an observation on the overarching secular scene; he was referring to the Church—evangelical Christians, people claiming the name of Christ and walking in ways that oppose His name. It makes me want to cry. Sincerely, I fight back tears as I write this.

How is it that we who claim to know what it is to be loved by the One True Living God—the God Who poured Himself out to redeem us even as we rebelled and turned our backs—how is it that our love lacks such depth? How is it that lives that claim to be touched and transformed by perfect love struggle and fail to show even the smallest portion of love to even our spiritual family? Shallow love. How can lives that have been touched by the deepest wells of love come up so utterly dry?

It’s Good Friday, nearing the end of this Holy Week; and I think the reason that this quote bowled my heart over in the way it did is because I find myself looking at a situation that is not only contradictory to reason, but troubling in its repercussions.

This day we look in our minds eye at our Savior hanging upon a cross: Innocent blood pours out of His rent body, flowing out of gaping wounds and around piercing nails; His holy, royal head hangs down upon his heavy, human chest; pressed into his smattered hair sits a crude crown of thorns—a far cry from the diadems of beauty that were made to adorn Him; His arms splay as His throat produces one last raspy sigh, “It is finished.”

Jesus was not murdered. Jesus laid down His life.

For Love’s sake.

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He didn’t do it because we were worthy, well-deserving, lovely and lovable. He didn’t even do it because we asked. He did it because He is love and because He set His heart upon humanity—ugly, broken, sinful, wicked, wandering, rebellious, lost human beings.

We must not overlook this loving God. We must not forget this act of love we claim to have received, nor the heart of the One who acted on our behalf because a life lived in the wonder of this love will not remain shallow. It will not remain shallow because it has been saturated with love from the deepest of wells in the purest of ways; a love so real and so lovely that life springs up from the smallest drop and beauty emerges at the slightest touch.

So this good Friday, in this painful lament, I exhort you, brothers and sisters in Christ: Look upon the One whom we have pierced. Let His sacrifice rend your heart; if it has not ripped you open in sorrowful repentance then you have not lingered at the foot of the cross long enough to consider the deity of this Son of Man. Let our love for one another—the agape that is suppose to reveal Jesus to a longing world—begin in the utter humility of beholding God Himself die in our stead. Humility will not leave us in the shallowness of love; it is humility that leads us into the depths and propels us into the heights.

What a Savior. May we be a people whose love reflects His.