Part Two of Three: Rejected Love

Outside of a physical death, is there a worse feeling in the world other than that of unrequited love? It is devastating, especially if you’ve known and loved the person for many, many years. If this is the case, a person can run the whole gambit of feelings and emotions. They can progress from simple shock to hurt to emptiness and periods of disorientation and feeling lost. There’s an anguish that just about smothers you until you slip into despair. It’s hard to make decisions and you eventually lose your perspective and your focus, and when you do focus, you focus on the wrong things.

Your self-esteem disappears and your self-worth de-escalates into depression. You miss that person to the point of where you’re almost suicidal and minimum, you get physically ill. There’s a tightness in your chest that doesn’t go away, and just the mention of their name or even seeing it in print can set you back for days, even weeks. You get to the point where you all but break down, if you haven’t already. Feelings and emotions escalate as you wonder about who they’re with and why they did not want to be with you and ultimately gave up on you. A person can feel abandoned and useless.

How many of us have received that Dear John letter, call, or face to face news that says, “I’m not in love with you anymore.” We have all gone through each of those emotions and more. I got to thinking about how Christ must have felt waiting for his fateful trip to Golgotha. His humanness in the Garden of Gethsemane exacerbated his stress, anguish, and depression to the point of hematohidrosis [1].

v44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. [Luke 22:44 KJV]

That is definitely stress and depression folks. By the time Christ made it to the Cross he was a total mess not only physically but emotionally. He was totally drained, stressed, and depressed and why shouldn’t He be? After all, they flogged Jesus so badly that his flesh hung down in strips on His back exposing bone and sinew [2]. The Apostle Peter had denied Him three times [3] and Judas Iscariot, an Apostle, betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver [4]. The Jews hated Him and wanted Him dead because He said that He and His Father were one [5], and because He called God His Father [6]. They were displeased with Him among other things as well [7]. Just about everywhere He went they rejected Him [8].

The Pharisees were totally dedicated to the Law of Moses and hated Him because He taught salvation by grace [9]. They also hated Him because He did not adhere to the Sabbath [10] and He confessed that God was His Father [11]. The Sadducees disliked Jesus because Jesus’s teaching of the resurrection [12]. The Romans and Greeks hated him because they were both polytheistic [13], and Christ preached that “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” [14].

Before Jesus even took the first step down the Via Dolorosa, He had to stand next to Pontius Pilate and hear all the people that He loved, yelling up at Him and Pontius, “Away with Him. Crucify Him. Crucify Him!” [15] He also had to endure the moment when He heard the people that He loved and came to die for, yelling up at Him and Pontius, “Not Him, Give us Barabbas! Give us Barabbas.” [16] The cry was overwhelming as they rejected Christ in contempt of what they felt was blasphemy and a new way other than the oral Law [17] and of Moses’s Law. If that doesn’t depress Him, a man, I don’t know what will. If that isn’t unrequited love, I don’t know what is.

Even after all of that rejection, what did Christ do? Christ wanted to experience it all for us and even refused the gall [18], which was a primitive yet somewhat effective sedative for cross recipients used for pain. This could have saved Christ from a little pain as He struggled on the Tree. Christ was not only all God, but He was also all man [19], so He felt everything, both physically and emotionally. Then, just to show you the God that we serve, what did Christ say on the Cross just before the Father came for His Spirit? Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” [20]

I am sorry to say that I fell way short of that love while under the pain of rejection and unrequited love. Way short.
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[1] Hematohidrosisis a rare condition where the blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture and exude blood through the skin. This occurs under extreme physical or emotional stress
[2] John 19:1
[3] John 18:13-27
[4] Matthew 18:1-11. Judas tries to return the 30 pieces in Matthew 27:1-10, can’t and commits suicide
[5] John 10:30
[6] John 5:18
[7] John 10:34-38
[8] Luke 17:25
[9] Mark 2:24
[10] Luke10:10-16
[11] John 10:34-38
[12] Acts 23:8
[13] James 2:19
[14] John 14:6
[15] John 18:40; Luke 23:21
[16] Luke 23:18; John 18:40
[17] The Talmud is derived from the source code of the Jewish Halakah (law). It contains the Mishnah and the Gemara. The Mishnah is the original oral law and the Gemara is the record of the rabbinic discussions following this writing down.
[18] Matthew 27:34
[19] Christ was not only all God but He was all man as well. You call that a ‘hypostatic union’ John 1:14; Hebrews 2:5-18
[20] Luke 23:34 NIV

Tags: Rejection, Pain,