Good Friday

 

 
Today, we come to the Cross of Good Friday in order to discover the true meaning of Lent in the sacrifice, suffering, and death of Jesus Christ. I pray that as we quietly and silently look and listen, we shall discover what Jesus Christ alone can do for the world. We must try to penetrate and explore the love expressed in the crucifixion of our Lord. We should try to see how our sin has brought Jesus to His Cross. At the outset, we ought to pray for the courage to confess our guilt and to subject ourselves to the punishment that Jesus metes out to us today. Our sin wants God, His Word, and His Spirit far removed from human life. So today we shall be granted our wish. Today, a day to be remembered for all time, our sin has tortured and crucified the Son of God. Sin kills the Son of God made man.

But more significantly, God allows our sin to kill His innocent Son Jesus in order that He might respond to it. Christ will respond by taking our sin and its punishment into death. He will conquer the one and redeem the other for our salvation. Sin is irrational and malicious. Christ will allow it to have one last go at Him on the Cross. There, He will slay it. Christ alone can withstand its attack whilst remaining obedient to God to reveal His truth and righteousness. St. Paul reminds us that, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us (Titus 3. 5), and, by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2. 8-9). Or as Article XI of the 39 Articles reads, We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Jesus Christ’s work alone can endure the worst that sin can do to Man. Jesus Christ alone can endure the pain while revealing also that God’s power, wisdom, and love are overcoming it.

So, we must come to the Cross today as those whose sin kills God’s Will and Way in Jesus Christ. He has said, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. (St. Luke ix. 23) He tells us that if we have a mind to come His way, we must renounce ourselves. (St. Matthew xvi. 24) Jesus intends for us to find God in Him. His light and love will offer us a path of spiritual death to all but His Father’s will in our souls. Jesus opens up those chilly horizons beyond death, when we shall be stripped of achievements, hobbies, comforts, and possessions, and left with nothing to live upon but love of God and man. (Farrer: Lord I Believe; Cowley, p. 52) 
        
Few men have ever taken Jesus seriously. Redemption and salvation, even for Christians, seem part-time jobs with occupational hazards. And yet Christ insists that Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul, or be cast away? (St. Luke ix. 24,25) Jesus asks us to see that our determination to put the happiness of our temporal lives before the call of Heavenly Joy results in our crucifixion of Him and risks damnation.
Our sin tries to eliminate God from the world. It has its reward. (St. Matthew vi. 2) But God’s Word made flesh will not allow our sin, though it tortures and kills Him, to make His suffering and death final. We may make Jesus Christ our enemy, but He forever remains true to God the Father’s desire for our salvation as our friend. He obeys God even to the point of death on the Cross because He is determined to reveal the Father’s love for us. In the face of the Devil’s temptations, He trusts God and refuses to honor and save Himself. His mission and calling are to us, overcome our sin, liberate us, and give us a chance to be one with God once again.  Thus, from beginning to end, Christ battles sin and refuses to lend it any power whatsoever. 
We love God, because he first loved us (1 John 4. 19), and in this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. (1 John 4. 9)
 
Christ submits Himself to His own law for us, the law of sin and death, because He loves us and wants to save us. That he should be punished without just cause shouldn’t startle us. His death sentence in crucifixion resulted from irrational envy, resentment, and revenge from one quarter, with compromise, cowardice, and sloth from another. Yet still, He is determined to remain constant and resolute in His obedience to the Father, to reveal God’s power in loving suffering and death. Even more, Christ will reveal to us how suffering and death are the good tools of our salvation. Here, Christ continues to sacrifice Himself for us to do the Father’s will. Christ not only suffers the effects of sin but also identifies with the weakness and frailty of every human being who struggles to remain faithful to God in the face of all forces that oppose it. 

Today, Jesus Christ has put Himself in the place of every fallen man, both he who willingly sins against God and he who has been so wounded and abused that the very thought of God seems cold comfort. Enduring all the effects of sin, He will not fight sin with sin. Rather, He will suffer gladly, refuse to blaspheme and curse God, and trust in what comes next in His mission from the Father. On the Cross, the logic of sin must run its course and be brought to death. Because He will not sin, His righteousness will persist and win our salvation. His righteousness will conquer the sins we commit against Him, which put Him on the Cross. His righteousness will conquer the sins we have suffered from others that equally tempt us to live out our lives as victims in despair. No one is left behind. Nothing can stop Christ from answering sin with righteous forgiveness that makes death into new life.

Because Jesus Christ conquers our sin today on the Cross of His Love, we have reason to hope. Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. (St. Luke xxiii. 24) Christ dies for the wicked who sin willfully and whose hearts are still hardened. Today, shalt thou be with me in Paradise. (St. Luke xxiii, 43) Christ dies also for those who find him in the last gasp of life and repent, like the good thief. Woman, behold thy son. And to his disciple, behold thy mother. (St. John xix. 26,27) Christ dies for the faithful who have never abandoned him, but whose faith cannot yet make sense of His unjust and unearned death or His loving sacrifice. The Blessed Virgin and St. John can love one another while they wait in hope for Him to unfold more of the great mystery of Godliness. My God, My God, why hast thou forsake me? (St. Mark xvi. 34) Christ dies for those who have approached the precipice of despair, He feels their agony but overcomes their temptation. I thirst. (St. John xix. 28) Hungering and thirsting after righteousness, God will quench His thirst for our salvation. No matter what battles we face, through Jesus, inwardly and spiritually, we must cleave to the one whose love saves us. It is finished. (John xix. 30) The ransom for sinners is paid in full, justice is served, and His redemptive work is complete. Satan is left powerless. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. (St. Luke xxiii. 46) Christ returns Himself as a living sacrifice to God. The Second Adam, sheltering us in His heart of hearts, returns us to God, inviting us to find in Him the way of return, through His perfect obedience, to the Father.
 
For as long as we live, we can go to the Cross of Jesus Christ and find His victory over our sins. For as long as we live, we can go to the Cross of Jesus Christ, repent, believe, and accept the invitation to participate in His death. His death is the gateway into new life. If we go to His Cross today, let us consider denying ourselves and taking up our crosses, blended with His, so that we might journey through Him home to Heaven.
Amen.
©wjsmartin