Hebrews 12:2 reminds us that Jesus endured the cross because of the “joy that was set before him.” The prospect of honoring and obeying His Father and saving sinners like us from eternal separation and death spurred our Savior on to lay down His very life in a manner that was at once excruciating and humiliating. What a wretched world we’d find ourselves in if Christ had forgone the pain and shame of the cross for the sake of a perfectly understandable preference for the “easy road” (otherwise known as not death).
