Jesus’ heart breaks for us. We read many times in the gospel accounts how Jesus was moved with compassion. Twice we are told He wept. This was more than shedding a tear. This was weeping. Each time we’re told of Him weeping, He was weeping over people's unbelief, not for Himself. While the unbelief of some is willful and rebellious, the unbelief of others is due to a lack of knowledge. In Luke 19:41-44, the final week before His crucifixion, we’re told Jesus wept over Jerusalem for the impending judgment that awaited them for rejecting Him as their Savior. As He looked and wept at the city from afar, He said, “If you only knew what God has done for your peace.”
And when He was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, Saying, If you had known, even you, at least in this your day, the things which belong unto your peace! but now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that your enemies shall cast a trench about you, and compass you round, and keep you in on every side, And shall lay you even with the ground, and your children within you; and they shall not leave in you one stone upon another; because you knew not the time of your visitation. (Luke 19:41-44)
God has a plan for every individual, just as He did for those He wept over back in the day. He doesn’t want us to miss it. He knows there is no chance of truly prospering in this sinful world without Him and we certainly will not escape the judgment to come. God’s plan for each of us is established before we’re born but is only revealed and experienced through Jesus Christ.
No one comes into this world right with God. That’s a fact. Everyone knows this and everyone feels far away from God at some point. Everyone. Everyone is born feeling like a stranger standing alone outside of the good things of God without hope in the world. It’s been said that there are three universal truths known by mankind. One, there is a God. Two, we are not God. Three, we are not right with Him. Jesus is God’s answer to that. Only Jesus can reveal God in Spirit and Truth, bring us near to Him, and give us peace. With Jesus, there is no holy wall for us to climb. There’s no level of goodness we must obtain in order to be right with God because Jesus makes us right. Jesus lived the righteous life we couldn’t and God credits it to us by faith. He knows the way back to God that we don’t. He paid for the sins we’ve committed and bore the wrath for everything we’ve ever done or will ever do wrong.
Jesus took on flesh and blood, came to destroy sin and death, and set us free from the bondage of the devil through His death on the cross. Jesus came to deliver us from this present evil world and to abolish once and for all the hostility from sin that stood between God and man. He came to make us new creations. One that never existed before; a new man at peace with God. He came to give us a new heart, a new spirit, and to put His Spirit within us. He came to give us His holy nature whereby all the life of God and all the goodness of God could flow into our spirit, soul, and body enabling us to escape the corruption that’s in the world. This is what it feels like to be whole. This is what Jesus comes to offer and what He was referring to when He wept and said, “If you only knew…”
The grace of God in Christ Jesus comes to us all no matter how far away from Him we are. God loves you and is in pursuit of you. Jesus is the door who gives you access to the grace of God so you can receive the help you need from God. In Him you no longer have to feel like a stranger to the good things of God but can be made a fellow citizen in the household of God in a family of faith. You can know what it feels like to be truly loved, valued, transformed, made alive, free, and at peace with God and at peace with yourself. You can know it; really know it. Not just intellectually but experientially! Jesus is the only way. He is what all of humanity needs. This is God’s salvation. It would be a shame to miss this.
“If you’ll confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead then you will be saved. With the heart you believe unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10)
“Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13)