Good Friday
Every year, Good Friday is a struggle for my mind. Why didn’t God, who can do anything, find a way to forgive our sins without his Son having to suffer. Grrr. My poor pastor husband has to teach me again and again. He responded so simply and elegantly, "It was because of God's love for us." "I know, I know it's our sin that nail Jesus to the cross!"
What could have a larger impact on us than a father sacrificing his son and the son knowing/being the father willingly suffering. It was interesting were God took me.
The night after our son's morning surgery, for horrific sciatica pain he's been in for 2 years, I was hit with awful sciatic pain. Crying out for my husband to help me try to get out of pain, I said, "Wait. If this means our son's pain has been transferred to me, I gladly take it."
That's what Jesus did. Willingly, lovingly, knowing the final outcome, He took the pain and penalty for our sin.
Then we were back to my "Couldn't it have been another way?" What my husband share was profound. He said, "Well, he could have sacrificed a planet. And animals were sacrificed before Jesus' dying on the cross, but those are all created things affected by the fall. Only God is perfect. What does Romans 8:19-22 tell us."
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor...
So what did Jesus do...
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’ With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” John 19:30
D. A. Carson wrote, "If you had asked his friends, family, and disciples on the day he died, they wouldn't have said it was a good day when all hope seemed lost; evil and death seemed to have triumphed, but their responses would've been very different three days later because the forces of evil had been defeated, death had been destroyed, and from that point on, we all have a way to be free of sin and death."
Sunday is coming!
The Song
Phil Wickham "Sunday's Coming"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJeiyCbVn6k
Zach Williams "Sunday's Coming"
