"Love bears all things,believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
The word bear used here is the Greek “stego” meaning cover, conceal or bear with.
This properly means to place under roof, or cover over, to endure because shielded.
When clothed in the presence of the Lord, we can bear all things because His covering is holding the weight. It’s like if we are the house, and He is the roof. Nothing can “fall” on us before passing through Him first. He takes the weight out of it; he takes the impact. We are able to bear all things because we let Him bear it. He is perfectly willing and able to do this for us, and He has shown it again and again.
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds we are healed” (1 Peter 2:24). The testament of the cross is that Jesus bore our sins, all of them for all time, and if He can bear that, I am certain there is nothing else He will not bear for us. The second part of the verse is just as important. He died for us willingly without any deal for our surrender to Him. But He did die that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. We have the opportunity to die to sin and be set free from it, and we can live to righteousness. It’s a choice. We aren’t made righteous. It’s just offered.
Please do not misunderstand, our righteousness is all a work of God, but we must surrender to be made righteous by Him. Jesus’ pain was sin itself. He braved the pain of letting God deal with all sin in His own body. We share in His sufferings when we let God deal with sin in our bodies and embrace that pain for the sake of sanctification.
2 Corinthians 4:10 says that we are, “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies”. Carrying the death of Jesus in our bodies means that we are letting Jesus work the death of sin in us that we may manifest real life: Jesus. For Him to be seen, we have to die. We bear that everyday that we chose to let Him work the death of sin in us.
Galatians 6:17 says, “From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus”. I want to bear on my body the marks of Jesus. Bearing the marks of Jesus on my body is bearing the marks of love. I may never bear scars on my back from being beaten because of my love for Jesus, but I can be willingly poured out as a drink offering. I can bear in my body the marks of motherhood, or the marks of singlehood, the marks of the brokenhearted, the marks of sickness, or the marks of loss. To whatever He has called me, He will bear with me. I can bear the marks of pain and suffering in whatever from they come because I know that He bears them with me, and they serve a purpose. He covers me; He bears the weight. There is nothing I will bear alone, ever. Every mark I bear can serve to set me free to live in righteousness.
What are some burdens that you need to let God take the weight of?
How can thankfulness for His willingly bearing the burden of sin for us take some of the weight out of our burdens?
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