All for One and One for All!

I heard something amazing in a course I did through my Parish recently. It gave me a whole new way of looking at the cross. A new appreciation for the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. You may have reached this understanding already, but for me it was a fresh insight and I want to share it with you.

We all know that Jesus Christ was crucified and that He willingly accepted His death on a cross for all of us. That's right, every single one of us! We believe that His death meant salvation and eternal life for all the world. He died for you and me and your neighbour and your friend and so forth...


But did you ever stop to think of it like this? Did you realise that Jesus Christ would have suffered the exact same fate if it were only to save you? He would have allowed the exact same suffering if only one of us were to be saved.


Think about that for a second. Forget about the fact that the gift of the cross is inclusive of you. And imagine now that the cross was exclusively for you. That means, Jesus would have been accused, stripped bare, mocked, spat upon, tortured and nailed to a cross to give life to you alone. How precious you are to Him that He would suffer that for you! He wouldn't try to halve the suffering or better yet, ask God for one/ ten millionth of the suffering he faced. But He would have allowed the exact same suffering for you, and you alone.


Now, although this isn't the reality of it and Jesus did in fact die to save all of us, inclusive of you and I, I still like to be reminded of the great depths that our saviour would go to for me. And this doesn't in any way diminish the awesome saving power of the death of the Son of God.


So, the implications of this realisation were, and still are, pretty big for me. It really made me think… How much was I willing to suffer and to give of myself to help someone? Even just one person? We always want to do big things with our lives, save the world and bring all our friends to know Jesus Christ. But sometimes, we don’t want to do the small tasks in front of us. It doesn’t always seem worth the effort. But knowing what effort Jesus would go through for you alone can change your heart and make you more generous in your gift of self.