Calvary's View of Good Friday

Good Friday is coming, a day in which we commemorate the death of Jesus on the cross.  When we look at the Cross we can say this with certainty: it is evidence.  Proof.  God gives us something tangible, something real that we can emotionally identify with, something that we can wrap our minds around.  While many things may remain incomprehensible for us, when we look at the Cross we gain a clear understanding of the weight of our sin.  It is a wakeup call to us all. 

That is a challenge for us, to see sin and therefore salvation from Calvary’s view.  From all accounts of the crucifixion, we gain some critical insight about the cross.  As we put them together, we see…

1)    Silence (Mark 15:4 & 5):  “…And Pilate asked him again, saying, Answerest thou nothing? Behold how many things they witness against thee. But Jesus yet answered nothing; so that Pilate marveled.”   While the deepest meaning behind Jesus’ silence was to show his acceptance of God’s will and peace under those circumstances, His silence also reminds us that as sinners, we are without excuse.  It serves to jog our memories just as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God…There is no fear of God before their eyes.”  Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.”

2)    Suffering (Matthew 27:26 – 31):  “…Then he (Pilate) released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head.  And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him.”  The slaps, the spitting, the punches, the scourging, all were to show us in no uncertain terms that sin’s wages will be paid out in physical terms.  This is true in this life and in eternity. 

3)    Separation:

a)    This is true in regard to God (Mark 15:34):  “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  This statement reveals the intensity of that separation.  As the darkness fell upon the land in the middle of the day, He who knew no sin, became sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21).  He became a curse for us (Gal. 3:13).  According to Isaiah 53, it was the will of the Lord to crush him, to put Him to grief and make His soul an offering guilt (Isaiah 53:10).  The enmity between God and man was born by the Son of God upon the cross.

b)   It is also true in regard to man (Luke 23:48 & 49): “…And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.”  Towards the end of Christ’s struggle upon the cross, we find the soldiers gambling for his clothes (Matthew 27:35 & 36); and we also find His acquaintances (close friends) standing afar off as it says in Luke 23.  The point is this:  there may be pleasure in sin for a season, but that same sin will leave us empty and alone.

4)    Only Jesus will Satisfy:   As the Bible records it, declares “It is finished.”  His work was done.  He breathed His last and died on the cross.  He is taken down and buried in the borrowed grave of Joseph of Arimethia.  Come Sunday morning He rose from that grave with a body of flesh and bone, possessing all of the life and vitality of the Only Begotten of the Father.  And as He made Himself known to His disciples, appearing in the upper room, he stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you…” which seems as much like a greeting or salutation to us.  But it is so much more.  As Jesus was preparing His disciples for what was about to happen to Him, in John 14:27 he tells them, “…Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”  So as He stands in the upper room, having been victorious over sin on the cross, and victorious over death in the grave, His promise is the long-awaited peace of God with man.  It is the New Covenant in which the enmity caused by sin has been removed.  The peace Jesus speaks of is not the peace of the world which demands tranquility and the absence of conflict, but rather it is the nature of God’s reconciliation with man. 

That answers the question for us about the cross.  We see in a very tangible way what sin does.  But more importantly we see what God accomplished through the death of His son in order to redeem people from their sins and reconcile them to Himself.  And in that we can say “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?”