Hebrews 12:2 “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
What our Lord “endured” on “the cross” was not “the joy that was set before him”; but, what He accomplished on “the cross” and His glorious estate after “the cross” was indeed a “joy” to Him. In His High Priestly Prayer on the night before His Crucifixion, looking beyond the “cross”, He prayed “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” (John 17:5). Our Lord knew what He would have to “endure” on the “cross”; the night before His Sacrifice, “he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39); He knew that He would have to grotesquely suffer the pain and “shame” of the “cross”; He also knew that He would “bare the sin of many” (Isaiah 53:12); as Peter put it, He “his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (I Peter 2:24). The pinnacle point of our God-given “faith” is the blessed truth “that Christ died for our sins” (I Corinthians 15:3), He “gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world” (Galatians 1:4), He is “the propitiation for our sins” (I John 2:2), and “now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). He came into this world to “save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21), and that He did (John 19:30). But, what the Old Testament priests did symbolically, He actually did. In the Old Testament, the priest symbolically (prophetically) communicated the sins of Israel upon the sacrifices they offered. But, our Lord was not a symbol and His death was not symbolic, He was both the High Priest and the Sacrifice, for He “gave himself for our sins”; in doing so, He “saved his people from their sins”. Paul explained it this way, God the Father “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (II Corinthians 5:21); that is, our Lord was the fulfillment of prophecy, He actually took our “sin” upon Himself and did “take” it away from us; thus, “ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin” (I John 3:5)! In taking “away our sins”, He presented all that the Father had given Him (John 6:40) in a perfectly righteous condition, fit for Eternal Heaven; that is, He freed us from the guilt and penalty of sin. As Isaiah put it, He made us “white as snow”, “white as … wool” (Isaiah 1:18)! And now, we sing “Grace Tis A Charming Sound” (Philip Doddridge) and we look forward to that glorious day in which we will hear our Lord Command, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34); for, “by” our Lord’s “stripes” we “were healed” of our sin-sick condition!