Enduring the Shameful

It’s not just young people that are bullied.

Karen Klein, a 68-year-old school bus monitor, said she had been bullied by some middle school students for a while, but it was especially vicious one day recently – and it was all caught on video.  The video was put on YouTube and it went “viral.”

In the video that is both heartbreaking and disturbing, several middle school students in Greece, NY can be seen and heard taunting Klein with statements like, “Karen, you’re fat. Dude, you’re so fat.” The insults continue to be hurled in the video in extremely graphic and offensive language.

Yet Klein did not retaliate.  She told Fox News that throughout the children’s assaults she restrained herself, and tried to pretend as though it wasn’t happening. “I have escaped a lot in my life, and I’m trying to let things go,” she said.

In a particularly harsh remark, one of the children claimed that Klein didn’t have a family because “they all killed themselves because they didn’t want to be near you.” Did the student know that Klein’s oldest son took his own life 10 years ago?

Klein stated that she endured the bullying because she doesn’t like confrontation. “I didn’t want to do anything to hurt anybody. That wouldn’t have looked good either.” *

There was Another who endured the taunts of a mocking crowd....

It was JESUS, the Son of God.  Please read Matthew 27:11-54 and 1 Peter 2:21-24.  Even as He was hanging on the cross, “the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. ‘He saved others,’ they said, ‘but he can't save himself!’” (Mark 15:31).

Actually, He COULD have called more than twelve legions of angels to deliver Him.  But He didn’t.  And He endured MORE than just the mocking insults of the angry mob; He took upon Himself the sins of the whole world of all time – including your sins and mine.

“God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that WE might become the righteousness of God IN HIM” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

We are credited with the righteousness of Christ WHEN we accept His offer of salvation on His terms!

Jesus will save those who: place their faith and trust in Him (Acts 16:30-31), turn from sin in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

Jesus endured the taunts and endured the cross so that WE might be saved from sin!

Won’t YOU accept His offer?