HOLY WEEK: FRIDAY

Good Friday. What a name.

When you and I wake up in the morning on Good Friday, we should remember that Jesus has been going through a series of rigged and brutal trials that will lead to His crucifixion later in this day, 2000 years ago.  He will be accused, beaten, spat upon, ridiculed and insulted – all before being stripped naked and scourged to within an inch of His physical life.

He’ll be further mocked, then condemned by the crowd.  Then, it becomes an unbearable walk to a hill outside of Jerusalem where Roman soldiers are waiting to take this grief to another level.  He’s carrying the cross beam, and He is weakened by blood loss, sleeplessness and the awareness that He’s been deserted by nearly all.  But He presses on.  There’s a purpose to this.

He lays down. His arms are stretched out. The spikes create unrelenting pain as they force their way through His, bones and sinews into the wood, where they impale Him there.  He’s lifted up on the cross, and it slides into the hole in the ground that will keep it upright.  The jarring force of this creates an excruciating (the word means “out of the cross”) existence to the very end.

Before He dies…He forgives those who put Him there.  He takes care of His mother.  He allows the sin of mankind to be placed on His shoulders. He cries out with a loud voice, “Why has Thou forsaken Me?” and “IT IS FINISHED!”

There is a purpose to this.  At that very moment, the wrath of God was satisfied.  Appeased.  The onrushing flow of judgment and condemnation of sin stemmed by the single greatest act of sacrifice the world has known.  The just for the unjust. The innocent for the guilty.

Good Friday.