Joe Serna served three tours in Afghanistan as a Green Beret. Judge Lou Olivera is a veteran, too, who served in the Army as an intelligence officer. But when they met, it wasn’t on base. It was in a North Carolina courtroom.

Serna had been struggling to adapt to life back home, and, after violating probation on a DWI charge, he was sentenced by Olivera to a night in jail. That may not seem like a huge deal, but it was for Serna. It brought back a horrible memory of the war in Afghanistan. Serna was driving a truck with three other soldiers, friends of his, as passengers. He had an accident and flipped the truck into a river. They were all trapped inside, and Serna recalled how the water slowly filled the vehicle, rising from his ankles to his waist, eventually to his chin. The air was filled with diesel fumes, leaving them struggling for air. One friend said, ‘I can’t feel my lips, I can’t feel my arms.’ Then he heard him gasping. Serna was the only survivor.

Locked in a cell, confined to a space without windows or a door that he could open, Serna was remembering the nightmare, and sure that he would relive it all night. Then he heard the cell door rattle behind him. It was Judge Olivera, entering the cell. He knew Serna’s history, and even though he had sentenced him to jail, he was not going to let him go through it alone. The judge spoke to the chief jailer, another veteran, and arranged it so he could spend the night with Serna. Serna later recalled that he had never seen kindness like that before in his life.

During that night, they spoke for a long time, mostly discussing their families. But Serna recalls that he felt the compassion Olivera was showing him. They developed a relationship, a friendship that endured.

Jesus comes to meet us where we are. He wants to be with us and encourage us every step of our lives. This act by Judge Olivera was incredible, but Jesus took it a step further. He wanted a relationship with us, his brothers and sisters, but He did not come simply to suffer with us. He came to suffer for us. He took our place in punishment so that we could get out of our prison and be free.

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Jesus took our sin and gave us His righteousness. He paid for our wrong so that it would not be held against us. We have taken this Good News to heart.

How can you share that love of God in Christ with someone else today?