Good Friday, March 30, 2018
It is early Friday morning, March 30, 2018. Passover begins at sunset today. Passover commemorates the day when God’s judgment and wrath ‘passed over’ the Jews who had smeared the blood of a spotless lamb over the doors of their houses 1000s of years ago while the Jews were slaves, living in captivity in Egypt. On the Christian calendar, this day is called ‘Good Friday’.
I am sitting, writing these words on my laptop computer about 3:00 AM. My world is dark and silent. 2000 years ago at about this time in the morning Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Suddenly he heard the clanking of swords and the thud of boots as soldiers entered the Garden to arrest Him. In the light of the torches early on that Friday morning, Jesus began His final day on earth – a day filled with unfathomable agony, humiliation, and despair. By the end of that Friday, just before the sun set, Jesus would be dead – impaled on a cross on a hill called Golgotha, raised up high for everyone in Jerusalem to see – naked and scorned.
After Jesus was arrested He was interrogated and beaten by the guards of the Chief Priest and Pharisees. Then He was taken to Herod for more interrogation and beatings. Finally, He was taken to Pontius Pilate, the only man in Jerusalem who could condemn Jesus to death. During His interview with Pilate, who could find no reason to condemn Jesus to death, Pilate asked Him, “Are you the king of the Jews . . . What is it you have done?” Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a King. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
And then Pilate asked the question that has echoed across the ages, “What is truth?” That question is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago. Because no matter how hard humans have tried to convince themselves that there is no truth, that existence is relative – “your truth is true for you, but not necessarily true for me”, that life ultimately has no meaning and so I can live any way I choose – the futility of that Nihilistic philosophy persists and human beings continue trying to find peace and purpose through their own efforts and philosophies.
Pilate’s question strikes at the heart of the darkness in the world today, and ironically the answer stood right in front of him. “What is truth?” Truth is not a philosophy like capitalism, socialism, communism, or materialism. Truth is not some abstract notion of right and wrong. Truth is a Person and that Person was standing a few feet away from Pilate. Jesus is the “way and the truth and the life.” All truth and all life are found in Him. As we totally surrender and submit to Jesus, asking Him to be the Lord and Savior of our lives, living in obedience to His words, and filled with the Holy Spirit, we grow in truth, life, and freedom. And there is no other way.
But none of that was clear to Pilate at the time. He washed his hands of Jesus and gave Him over to the Jewish leaders to be executed. Who was this crazy guy to Pilate? He just wanted to get rid of Jesus and return to his warm bed. “Do what you want to Him. What do I care”, he thought. “But he had Jesus flogged, and handed Him over to be crucified” (Matthew 27: 26 NIV).
I have read about flogging. In days past the British Navy flogged seamen who committed crimes, and accounts of floggings are vividly described in some novels. When a sailor was punished for a serious crime he was flogged round the fleet with a whip called a ‘cat o’nine tails’. This device is probably what the Roman soldiers used to flog Jesus. It was a multi-tailed whip, about 30 inches long, with small pieces of sharp metal woven into the tails of the whip to inflict maximum pain and destruction. Jesus would have been stripped of His upper garments, lashed to a pole, and then struck repeatedly across his back with the whip.
We don’t know how many lashes Jesus received. But it is likely that after just a few lashes He would have begun to bleed profusely. When the flogging was over His skin was probably in shreds, muscles and tendons, and maybe even organs and bones, exposed. He was also beaten about the head with a heavy wooden staff, and a crown woven from the branch of a thorn bush was pushed down on His head. This was no ordinary thorn bush like I have in my backyard with thorns about ¼-inch long. These thorns were sharp as needles and about 3-inches long. They penetrated His scalp drawing more blood.
Isaiah predicted this bloody end to the life of the Messiah and explained why Jesus had to die this way:
“Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him 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 wounds we are healed (I like the Amplified Translation here. It says, “and with the stripes that wounded Him we are healed and made whole)”. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53: 4 – 6 NIV).
After this brutal flogging and beating, Jesus was made to pick up His cross (it is likely that Jesus carried only the cross-bar called the patibulum, weighing about 175 pounds) and carry it through the streets of Jerusalem along what today is known as the Via Dolorosa, or ‘The Sorrowful Way”. The exact path is not known, but the Bible tells us that Jesus carried His cross, with some help from Simon of Cyrene when He was too weak to carry it Himself. Still bleeding, in shock from loss of blood, trauma and pain, scorned, spat upon, and jeered, He stumbled through the streets of Jerusalem. Jesus, the beloved Son of God, was about to die a criminal’s death on a cross erected on the top of a hill for the entire world to see. Alone, abandoned even by His closest friends, it seemed that evil was about to win it’s greatest victory.
If you are like me, you have small crosses on the walls of your house. Some wear crosses around their necks. I understand that. The cross represents God’s grace and great love for us. But we cannot grasp the depth of this love and grace, and the seriousness of our sin until we understand more fully the brutality and horror of death on a cross. The cross was a place of agonizing death! The Roman soldiers understood death and pain. And they knew how to kill people. Death by crucifixion was a particularly slow and painful death. Most of the time, the crucified person died slowly from asphyxiation, covered with blood and filth – and every moment wracked by indescribable pain.
Once the Roman soldiers escorting Jesus reached the place where He would be crucified, they placed the cross on the ground and then laid Jesus out on the wood, His arms outstretched on the cross bar and His legs and feet on top of the vertical post. Then they inflicted on Him something that I shudder to think about – they took long nails, 5- to 7-inches in length with a square shaft 3/8 of an inch across, and without pause brutally pounded these nails through His wrists (probably not his hands. The small bones in the wrists would hold his arms up) and crossing His legs one on top of the other, through his anklebones. Thus affixed to the cross, they raised Him up, set the cross in a hole previously dug, filled in the hole with dirt, and left Jesus there, bleeding, gasping for breath, filthy, and probably naked.
And so it appeared to His disciples and other followers, His mother and brothers, the Jewish leaders, the Roman soldiers, and everyone who passed by shouting curses and taunting Him, that the ministry and life of Jesus was finished. Jesus, the Son of God, the man who loved with a supernatural love, who taught like no man before or since, who performed miracles of healing, signs and wonders, who fed 5000 with a few loaves and fishes, who calmed the raging sea, and who even raised the dead, was dying the slow, horrible death of a common criminal. When He died, separated from and abandoned by all who loved Him, separated even from His heavenly Father, weighed down as Isaiah tells us, by our sins, and on His way to spend 3 days in Hell (according to the Apostles Creed), darkness fell upon the whole land, the sun stopped shining, the curtain of the temple (the curtain separating the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies) was torn in two from top to bottom, the earth shook, the rocks split, and some dead people were raised to life.
No one knew that when Jesus died, an hour or so before the beginning of Passover, that a new Passover lamb had just been sacrificed. No one knew that in that moment when the darkness fell upon the land and the sun stopped shining that the most profound, the most significant event in human history, an event that would change life on earth forever, had just occurred. It just looked like total darkness; no light and no hope. (Really, the first of a pair of profound events that would change the course of human history — the second was the resurrection of Jesus three days later).
It was necessary for Jesus to bleed and to suffer, because only in this way could human beings be brought back into relationship with a loving God. All of Jesus’ pain, agony, and suffering had a purpose – to defeat the power of sin (and sin is a power or a force), death and darkness, and the lies in our lives; to set us free from captivity to satan and death, and to live once again in relationship with our Father. He paid the price for my sin, so that I can live with Him in the Kingdom of God now; alive, free from sin, darkness, and death; with the hope of living each day with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, and self-control in the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. His blood cleanses me from sin; and the water that flowed from His side when He was pierced by a spear, cleanses me from defilement.
I don’t understand how all of this works, but I know that Jesus took my place on the cross. He endured the suffering that was rightfully mine. I was a sinner separated from God, but by His blood I am “healed and made whole”, living in a right relationship with God, my Father. Why given all of this blood and pain is it called ‘Good Friday’? As I read in a comic strip today, “Isn’t it good when someone dies in your place?”
One more thing. I mentioned that the death of Jesus freed us from lies. Until the death of Jesus, human beings were shackled to two demonic lies – “you are not good enough” and “you can make yourself ‘good enough’ through your own efforts and in your own power.” These two lies have been the cause of untold human misery, despair, and the devastation of human hearts. The death of Jesus spoke truth into the human heart more effectively than words ever could and defeated the power of these lies. By dying for each of us – and He did die for each of us according to the Bible (“the man Jesus Christ, who gave Himself as a ransom for all men” 1 Timothy 2: 5, 6 NIV; and of course, “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son” John 3: 16)– Jesus told every human being, “You are valuable. Your life has great worth.”
How do we determine the value of anything? Good question. As my friend Bob reminded me, “The value of anything is determined by what someone is willing to pay for it.” How valuable is your life? Like anything else, the value of your life is determined by what someone is willing to pay for it. Jesus died for you. When Jesus died on the cross, shedding His blood for us, it was as if God was laying down His own life on your behalf. Our Father, God, paid His life for mine. How valuable is God’s life? That is a crazy question. Who knows? All I can say is that His life is of infinite value – beyond anything I can comprehend. So how valuable is my life if He died for me? My life is of infinite value to the only person who really matters – I am infinitely valuable to God because He paid an infinitely valuable price for me – His life for mine!! I am more than good enough – I have infinite value, and in Christ He can make me into everything God created me to be.
When I really believe that truth in my heart, and not just my mind, my life will change. That is freedom. That is rescue from captivity. And that, in part, is why Jesus had to die on the cross. But we have a part to play in this great tapestry of life and death if we want to know the life that Jesus died to give us. We must enter into His death. We must deny ourselves. We must pick up our crosses and die, everyday, to self. We must follow and obey Jesus. We must repent and be repentant. Jesus does not expect us to do these things in our own power. In fact, we cannot. That is why Jesus has given us the Holy Spirit, the counselor, to walk with us as we make daily choices (and we must choose) to live with Him and to die for Him. It is not an easy walk, but it is a walk made possible by His death on the cross and His Spirit dwelling in our hearts.
Oh – and one more thing – it is a walk made possible by His resurrection from the dead, which we will celebrate on Sunday. He is risen. He is alive. His victory is total. We too can be resurrected to new life – life now and for eternity – when we surrender and submit our lives to Him. And that is the truth.
Finally, it is easy, isn’t it, to judge the Jews in Jerusalem? It was their sin and the sins of their ancestors that sent Jesus to the cross. Right? No, it was my sin as well. God is outside of time. He sees all sins – past, present, and future (from our perspective) – all at the same time. I killed Jesus – my sin put Him on the cross.
I found a poem by Horatius Boner that sums this up:
“Twas I that shed the sacred blood;
I nailed Him to the tree;
I crucified the God of Christ;
I joined the mockery.
Of all the shouting multitude
I feel that I am one,
And in that din of voices rude I recognize my own.
Around the cross the throng I see,
Mocking the Sufferer’s groan;
Yet still my voice it seems to be,
As if I mocked alone.”
Until we understand our role in His crucifixion, we will never fully understand His grace and the depth of His love for us.
Awaiting Easter,
John