This is a repost/rewritten and edited version of an older post—The Plan of the Cross. (As you may notice, I’ve been taking older, mostly-unread posts and reshaping them for my Sunday Encouragement Posts during the month of November. However, I will get back to writing new ones when December comes around!)

We all know that Easter is a big part of Christianity. Actually, Easter (and Christmas) is the reason why all of us are here as Christians and humans today.

A woman named Tara-Leigh Cobble once said, “The cross was the plan even before the world was formed.” 

There was a plan for the cross before God made the world. (Genesis 1:1-2)

There are also so many things that, if they didn’t happen or the prophecies weren’t fulfilled, Jesus’s crucifixion wouldn’t have happened. Take Judas for instance. Lots of people say, “Oh Judas, why would he betray his Lord and Rabbi? He’s a bad dude, I’d never be like him.” But everything he did to Jesus was planned out.

In Psalm 41:9, David writes, “Even my closest friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.” (Psalm 41:9 ESV) This, in a way, tells how Judas betrayed Jesus. He was one of Jesus’s closest friends, (he was a disciple) and he ate the meal of the Passover (now known as Jesus’s Last Supper). He ate the bread, which Jesus said was “my body, broken for you.” Also like the Psalm, Judas ate the bread, all while lifting his heel against Jesus.

Even though Judas was kinda not amazing, (don’t say that if you had to be like a character in the Bible it’d be Judas,) everything he did, (good or bad) turned out for good. That’s what Jesus’s grace does. And if it hadn’t been for Judas’s betrayal, there might not be that grace for everyone, because the cross was the plan all along. 

Oftentimes we screw up big-time—sometimes it’s intentional and sometimes we had no idea what we did until the worst happened. But God isn’t going to let us dwell in that mistake: He’s going to give us a chance to try again, and although we made a mistake, He will use that mistake for the greater good.

God doesn’t often give us a chance to undo that mistake, but rather gives us a chance to make up for that mistake. A chance to make that wrong right, if that makes sense. Like in my post, “You Came Back“, I had made a mistake. But God—even after two years—gave me the chance to fix what I had done.

Your mistakes do not define your outcome. And God is pretty awesome for that!

Thanks for reading! I hope this was encouraging, and I hope you have a great day.
~Willow