“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” In almost every image of the Parable of the Lost Sheep, we see a happy and cheerful Savior carrying a lamb or a sheep in His arms or on His shoulders, the sheep looking perfectly peaceful and content. What we almost never see is a bruised and bloody and mud covered Savior, trying with all His might to hold onto a kicking and screaming sheep who does not want to be saved and is fighting with everything it's got to not be taken back to the fold. Sadly, for many of us, we so often fit into the latter category. We are so convinced that we do not need or do not deserve mercy or forgiveness that we fight like hell to get out of the arms of our Savior’s loving embrace. What we fail to understand is that our Savior’s love is unconditional. Many of us may be able to wrap our heads around the concept that, illogical as it may seem, our Savior places no limits or conditions on His love for us. But it goes deeper than that. Our Savior’s love is so unconditional that not only does He place conditions on the love He gives to us, but He will not accept or allow any conditions or limitations that we wish to place on His love. We can say that we don’t want His love but He is going to love us anyway. We can say that we are lost and do not want to be found, but He is going to find us anyway. We can say that we are damned and cannot be saved, but He will save us anyway. We can kick and bit and scream until our Savior is bruised and bloody, but He will not let go of us and He will not stop trying to bring us back to the fold. Some of us are so quick to accept that the demands of Justice cannot be gainsaid or thwarted or avoided, but we fail to consider that the demands of Mercy are just as inevitable and implacable. I am so grateful that I have a Savior who is willing to carry me and not let go as I fight against Him and bruise Him for my iniquities. I know that there are no conditions on the Savior’s end or on our end for His love for us.
