"Cheerfully Resolute"

"Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope." (Psalms 16:9) To better understand the joy that was set before Jesus as He traversed towards the cross, we should realize that what He did, He did by His own doing. Sure, it was His own people that condemned Him to be crucified, and it was the Romans that actually carried it out, but He was the one that allowed it to happen. Jesus declared this concerning His own life in John 10:18, saying, "No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of the Father". In other words; it was a charge that He had received of the Father, to lay His life down, and therefore He did so without hesitation; and because of the respect that He had for the Father's will, He did so gladly, and of His own free will. Peter also was crucified, yet he was taken where he did not want to go, which is what the Lord told him, as He described the manner of death that he would die (John 21:18). It was altogether a different death upon the cross; which is why Peter asked his executioners to place him upside-down on the cross, as to not associate his death with that of Christ's. The other point to consider from this verse, is that of His flesh; as He counted it only as the tent which carried around on this earth; a concept that we must come to understand ourselves; but that sadly, we many times fail to keep it at the forefront of our minds. Jesus not only came to die for our sins, but He came also to show us the way to live, to treat each other, and most importantly, to love! The main point that He made was that of sacrifice, and of our need to deny our own flesh; something that is really hard to do, because the flesh cries out to be satisfied in every way imaginable. Although the flesh is only temporary, compared to our eternal soul, it has such a pull for the things that bring it pleasure: comfort, food, and whatever else it has grown accustom to having, are all the things that our bodies naturally are drawn towards; and because of this, we strive to satisfy our flesh more often then we might realize. The meaning of "my flesh also shall rest in hope", is one of temporary camping, or that of a dwelling which is only a place to wait for that final resting place. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know that, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." (2 Corinthians 4:17-5:1)