Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Sometimes we humans get into situations that seem to be so hopeless, so terrible, that we imagine that hell itself could not be worse. It is then that we can lose our faith, lose our grip on God; and then we really are in a hell-like condition.
Then we must remember (and we cannot remember what we have never known, so we need to learn!) that the Son of God was actually in hell itself. Peter at Pentecost spoke of "the pains of death" that were trying to hold Him at His crucifixion and in His burial, then he quotes the prayer that Jesus prayed after His victory of faith on His cross, "Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell" (Acts 2:24-27, King James Version; the word is "Hades" in Greek, "Sheol" in Hebrew; the KJV renders it correctly!).
In His incarnation, Christ had laid aside all that His previous omnipotence had been. In becoming man, He had "emptied Himself" like one drains the last drop from an upturned bottle (Phil. 2:5-7, New American Standard Version). The only residue of His divinity that remained was His character of agape, a heavenly love that chooses to go to hell in its concern for someone else so that person won't have to go to hell. That is "love"! All "the pains" that any lost person will ever feel in the last judgment, Jesus felt. The Psalmist was right--Christ's "soul [was] in Sheol," facing "corruption" (Psalm 16:10), and Peter understood it correctly.
And the point we are now considering is that when you feel that what's happening to you couldn't be worse, the News is that the Son of God is suffering its agony side by side with you, and that News is Good. He is closer even than "side by side": He is suffering as you--even to the infinite extent of what hell will be. He is intimately one with you.
Because of that, He gives you some words to believe; they are His words but they become your words the moment you choose to believe in Him: "My heart also instructs me in the night seasons. ... I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, ... You will show Me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore." That is the light that shines even in the darkness of hell. Like Jesus, you "rest in hope. For You will not leave my soul in hell" (Psalm 16:8-11).
Don't resent an experience that deepens your intimate oneness with Jesus!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: September 23, 2004.
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