Today is Good Friday. It’s the culmination of God’s plan of redemption. Today, Jesus will be flogged, beaten, ridiculed, spat upon, and ultimately crucified between two thieves. He will die before the other two, and He will be buried in a borrowed tomb before sunset. He has undergone multiple betrayals. He has undergone suffering that most of us will never know or understand, and it is in these final moments that His greatest lessons for us, His followers, are taught.
The thing is that as much as we contemplate what Jesus did for us on this cross, we will probably never grasp the full impact of it. Even the very fundamental basics of this work are difficult to grasp. It will take a lifetime of contemplation and revelation to even come close, and maybe that’s the point. It’s definitely why Paul prayed in Ephesians 1: 17-19: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”
So what happened on Good Friday? Why do we call it good when it’s the darkest day in history–a day when the most innocent man to ever walk the earth was killed for His righteousness, abandoned by His friends and cut off from God? What makes a day like that “good”?
ATONEMENT
Fundamentally, Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was an atonement for sins. You see, sin separated us forever from God. God is holy. Nothing that is unholy can occupy the same space as holiness. Holiness is an all-consuming fire. If we, being unholy, entered the presence of God, we would instantly be consumed by His holiness. Now many people view this as a reason to distrust God. They get an image of this huge fire that shoots out from God’s throne and consumes people left and right for no other reason than that they are human and maybe made a few mistakes. That’s what Satan wants you to think. Just as he twisted the truth in the Garden of Eden to trick Eve into violating God’s law and ushering in sin, he continues to twist the truth of who God is in order to keep us separated and at a distance from God.
You see, God didn’t choose to be holy. He can’t choose holiness. Holiness is who He is. God knows that. He knew that Adam and Eve would be unholy if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That’s why He told them not to eat from the tree. They could eat of every other tree in Eden, but not that one. They could even eat of the tree of life as often as they wanted–just not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And when you think about it in those terms, it suddenly seems ridiculous that Adam and Eve would give up abundance for a bite from that one forbidden tree. Still, they ate from it, and that meant they were cut off from God. They could no longer have a relationship with Him like they did before. It was too dangerous for them. At any moment, His holiness could consume them.
So God removed them from His presence. We look at this as punishment, when in fact, it’s a great act of love. God loved them too much to risk them being consumed. He loved them too much to leave them cut off forever. That’s why He removed them from Eden as well, and why He blocked the way to the tree of life. If Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of life now, they would be locked into this state of unrighteousness forever. There would be no opportunity for redemption. So God made sure they could not seal their fate. He made sure there was a way out.
That way out involved sacrifice. It involved the shedding of innocent blood. The law required blood to be shed for the remission of sins. Blood is a representation of life. So whose life would be valuable enough to cover over and pay for the sins of the entire world, past present and future? Whose life would hold enough power to undo all the wrong? Whose life would hold enough power to create a new life? Only God’s.
Only God’s life was valuable enough to cover over and pay for the sins of the world. Only God’s life could be exchanged to recreate the world to the way it was before sin entered. Only God’s. And so God put on flesh and dwelt among us. He experienced our condition. He knew what it was to be tempted to make the wrong choice. He knew what it was to love imperfectly and to love perfectly. He knew what it was to be hungry and thirsty and exhausted. He knew what it was to be hurt, physically and emotionally. Every possible experience of human life, God walked through as Jesus Christ. Yet, He maintained connection with the Father. He did not sin. So that He could be the ultimate sacrificial lamb.
You see, Jesus knew what God had put Him here to do. He knew that this path He was on, calling disciples and doing miracles and teaching about God, would culminate in that walk to the cross and in that crucifixion. It’s one of the reasons in His most human moment in the Garden of Gethsemane that He cried out to God asking that the cup be removed, and yet His desire to do God’s will–His love for us–was so much greater than the request being asked of Him. You see, if Jesus hadn’t hung on that cross, if He had never been punched and spit at and mocked, if He had not suffered every single lash from the Roman cat of nine tails, if He had not been nailed to the cross to die….well we would have been separated from God forever. We would never be able to be in the Father’s presence. Not ever.
Jesus loved us so much that He could not let that happen. He laid down His life so that we would have a chance to return to God’s presence and not be consumed by His holiness. Beyond that, He laid down His life so we would not just be creations of God, we would not just be worshipers of God, we would not just be servants of God…we would be God’s sons and daughters. Do you see how great the Father’s love for us? Jesus who knew no sin became sin for us. He didn’t just take our sins upon Himself….He literally became sin. He experienced ultimate and complete separation from the Father–the fate that we all were destined for. It caused Him to cry out “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”
At this moment, the price for our sin was paid in full. All the sin we would ever commit. All the sin we could ever commit. All of it. Paid in full. No more debt owed. No more separation. We were able to be “at one” with God again. We could experience at-one-ment…..atonement….through Jesus Christ.
FORGIVENESS
So Jesus’ death paid for our sins, but He also offered us forgiveness. When Jesus hung on the cross, He cried out: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus, Himself, beyond His work to pay for our sins, offered us forgiveness. Forgiveness is about relationship. You seek forgiveness because you want to keep the relationship or re-establish a relationship. God wanted relationship with us, and that meant offering us forgiveness for the things we do to damage that relationship.
In doing so, He offered us the power to forgive others. You see, when compared to the things we have done to Jesus and to God Himself as a result of our sin, there is nothing that anyone could ever do to us that would be outside the realm of forgiveness. It can all be forgiven. We can take any offense and hurt and place it under that blood at the cross. We can cover it totally with that blood. And in doing so, we remove the power of that act to damage us. It’s been said that holding on to unforgiveness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. The only person harmed is ourselves.
God didn’t want harm to come to us in any form. His love sought to protect us, even from ourselves. So He gave us the road of forgiveness, that we might offer that forgiveness which we have received to others. And by offering forgiveness to others, we keep ourselves from harm.
FREEDOM
It is for freedom that Christ set us free. Whether you believe it or not, before you made Jesus Lord of your life, you were a slave to sin. You lacked the ability to overcome sin or temptation. You might avoid the big sins in life, but at some point you were going to miss the mark. Our sin nature makes it impossible for us to be holy, but Jesus’ death allowed the Holy Spirit to come into our lives and dwell within us. As a result, we have the Holy Spirit’s ability to resist sin. We are free because of Jesus.
There is nothing that has power over us any longer. Nothing. Think of it! Jesus lived a life of true freedom. He understood who He was and what His purpose was. That is freedom, and Jesus offers that freedom to us. Now, we have the ability to understand who we are and what our purpose is because Jesus has given us spiritual sight. He has given us relationship. He has given us redemption. He has bought us back. We are no longer slaves to sin or fear or any of the other things that seek to control our lives. We are daughters and sons of God–co-heirs with Jesus. We are seated in heavenly places.
HEALING
The Bible says that “Surely He took on our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken by God, struck down and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.…” Every stripe on His back was for our healing. And not just for our spiritual healing. He offers us physical healing as well. The power necessary for our healing was released right then at the moment of Jesus’ death.
You see the work of Jesus’ on the cross was a work of restoration. He put everything back into the order that was there in the beginning. He restored all of it to the point of creation. At least, in the spiritual realm. We are still waiting for some of these things to be manifested in the physical world on a daily basis. That will happen at the second coming of Jesus, when His victory over the devil is complete and a new heaven and new earth come into existence.
Often we think of Jesus death as being at the hands of someone else. It’s been an excuse for anti-semitism and all manner of evil thoughts. We say, “the Jews killed Jesus”, or we say “the Romans killed Jesus.” But the truth is that no one killed Jesus. To be able to kill Jesus they would have had to be able to exercise authority over Him. They would have had to have the power to take something from Him–His life. But Jesus made it clear that no one had that power or authority. In John 10:18, He tells His disciples: “No one takes it (my life) from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.“
And this is why just before He dies on the cross, Jesus said “It is finished.” It is finished! All of it. All the work needed for complete and total restoration was done. There is nothing more that needs to be done on our behalf. There is no further work for God to do. It is done. All of it. Now the work is for us to receive it. God has rested from His work.
Then Jesus committed His Spirit into the hands of God and died. He gave up His life willingly. He gave up His life consciously. He laid it down. For you. For me. Unspeakable pain and suffering. For you. For me. So that it could be finished. So that we could be made new. So that we could be free from sin. So that we could have relationship. So that we could be saved. And that’s why we call this day Good Friday….not because the acts themselves were good on the surface, but because as a result of what happened we can be made new. It was for our good. All of it. Done out of God’s great love for us. So that we would never have to live separated from Him.
A Beautiful Mess 