As I sit here in my living room... listening to my family as they all play a game together... I'm compelled to stop and think a minute about the fast-approaching day. Good Friday.
Why do we call it "Good" Friday? Perhaps we're referring to the gruesome death of our Savior, on a cross? I'm not sure we could call that "good"...
Perhaps it's because of the diverted wrath of God being poured out upon His Only Son, instead of upon each of our souls? I guess the only problem I have is... couldn't they have found a better word than "Good" to describe what happened on that day? I consider it to be a "good" thing when I can have chocolate ice-cream while I blog from the comfort of my couch! So, something's wrong in the wordage of our modern society...
Could it be that the word "Good" just doesn't do justice to the enormous work accomplished on the cross? Or could my usage of "Good" just be WAY too generous a word for the situation? When Paul talks about Goodness being a Fruit of the Spirit, in Galatians 5:22-23, the meaning of the word is "moral or spiritual excellence." I don't think that my chocolate ice-cream is causing moral excellence in me... I'm just saying... I could probably find a better word to use.
Again, though, I'm thinking that there MUST be a better word we could use for the day in which sin and death were fought with the sinless blood of the Lamb of God! But what word could it be? This my dilemma...
You know what, though? It's not as big a deal, as I'm making it, that we would have a word to better describe what our Savior accomplished... but rather that we would have a better (fuller) understanding of what exactly happened on that day. That we would understand our sin... that our sin was the reason that He must die. That our punishment was placed upon the shoulders of the only person who should never have needed to bear that load. That the punishment for our sins was the greatest agony that can possibly be experience, both by body and soul. The agony of suffocating, ever so slowly, drowning in your own blood... But if that weren't punishment enough for the perfect life that He lived, there was a greater, more despairing thing to come.... The agony of separation from His Father... The Father whom He had had perfect communion with since before time began.
His Father could not look upon Him because of the enormity of the sins which fell upon our Savior that day... He cried out! Not because of the pain from the whips. He Cried out, not from the weight of the crowds jeering. He Cried Out, not because of the searing pain in His most blessed wrists and feet, as cold, cruel nails dug deeper and deeper into Him... HE CRIED OUT... because His Father had forsaken Him! He cried out because His perfect communion with the Father was broken!
Do we understand this agony? I don't think that we do... I don't think a human being has ever experienced, on this side of the grave, complete separation from the God of the Universe.
Does the prospect of complete separation from God cause you to tremble? Does it cause in you an extreme desperation? If not, we must question what our hearts are truly devoted to. How much do we love our Lord? Does the idea of being separated from Him cause us to weep in despair of what our lives would be like without His light in us?
To what extent do our words and actions demonstrate the grateful love and devotion that we have for our Savior? What is our response to the Love that we've seen? Do we humbly bow and cry "Holy! Holy! Holy!"? Or do we sniff contemptuously at the blood that we have taken part in shedding, blood which has the power to redeem souls, and go about in our pursuit of worldly pleasures? Friends, I confess my guilt to the latter... I have chased meaningless things! I am guilty of allowing distractions to creep in and become more important to me than loving my Lord!!!
What is this illness??? What madness could possibly drive us beyond perfect love? What insanity could offer more pertinent things than eternal life to our souls??? Two words... Pride and Selfishness
Pride... the inability to recognize our need for someone, outside of ourselves, to save us from our predicament. Or, quite simply, the unwillingness to admit that we don't have all of the answers and that we aren't in control of our own destiny.
Selfishness... the self-absorbing cancer which plagues so many of us, today! The constant pursuit of personal goals, rather than pursuing the things of Christ!
I don't want to get too in depth, right now. But I do hope that these thoughts, mixed with an understanding of the meaning of Christ's death on our behalf, might cause us to consider our priorities more...
Who do you love? God or this World?
Who do you serve?
Who gets the majority of your time?
Who is on your mind, when you wake up and when you go to bed?
I'm convicted by the very questions that I'm asking each of us to consider! I'm guilty! I'm a sinner, saved by grace that I do not, CANNOT, deserve! I'm a work in progress... but that doesn't mean I'm exempt from growing in my love for my Savior. If we truly call Him "Lord," then we will want to know Him more, to serve Him more, to give our all for HIM!
So, Good Friday... the day that the World was given HOPE! Without Christ's death, there is law... And we cannot keep the whole Law. There is no way for us to keep the law, or the death of Christ wouldn't have been necessary. There would be less importance to the death of Christ if we were capable of saving ourselves. But that's not the case! The Law cannot be kept, in full, by a fallen soul. BUT GOD! Those precious words! Most precious because they represent intervention by the only One who could possibly bring hope. The only One outside of the fallen nature. The only One... sent His Only Son. His Only Son, after living a perfect life, sacrificed Himself for us... a people who could never repay Him! There's something to be said of sacrifice with no expectation of repayment. He loved us that much!
I feel as though I may be rambling... there are more qualified preachers who could do a much better job of helping you to understand the weight of our sins and the freedom and hope we have in Christ's victory over sin and death! I just thought I'd give my "two-cents worth."
Grace and Peace!
Questions or Comments? E-mail me at afflquestions@yahoo.com .
1 comment:
That is so true. The word “good” does not even begin to describe what happened on that Friday. It is so humbling that Christ was able to take all the pain of the cross, yet it did not cause him to cry out till he was separated from God. I think it is amazing. I want a relationship with God that is that strong; that when I am drifting away from him that I want to cry out.
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