Recently I had a fascinating conversation with someone who said something that has stuck with me over the past week. This person isn’t someone we see often but we happened to be chatting to them about how they had been and it opened up a moment I wasn’t expecting.

They began to open up about a difficult experience they had gone through a number of years before. Obviously I can’t disclose the details here but in broad strokes our friend was seeking to protect someone who had made a mistake but by doing that they unfortunately ended up wearing the consequences that the other person should have faced themselves.

They never imagined that this would have happened to them and it’s something that they have had to carry and confess to others ever since. The saddest part of the story was that the thing that they now carried was something that they personally hated and would never have done. Their kindness had caused them to carry this weight. At the end of the story they said an amazing thing that has been ringing around my head.

“there’s nothing worse than being marked with something you hate”

The sentence jumped out to me. It’s so true. When we are accused of something that we hate, the pain of that accusation burns in a way like nothing else does. We can much more easily wear things that don’t matter to us but it hits home when it’s something we are passionate about avoiding.

When my friend said this sentence my mind also went to Jesus. On the cross He was marked by the sin and shame that should have been ours to bear. Jesus, the man who had never known sin, had to wear it because we messed up. Jesus had to hang there being ridiculed by others for something He wasn’t not guilty of because of His own grace and mercy. We know what God thinks of sin, He hates it, and so for Jesus to have to be marked by not just something He hated, but by something so wretched, something so vile, something so insidious and so foreign to Him must have been unbearable. But bear it He did for me and for you.

Today I am thankful for Jesus and all He has done for me.