A quote I heard recently credited the famous evangelist D.L. Moody with saying, "If you hear one day that I have died, do not believe it, for on that day I will be more alive than I have ever been."
Such is the hope we as Christians have because of the empty tomb. But we need not quickly skip over Good Friday to get to Easter Sunday. It is necessary to reflect on the death Jesus died prior to Him conquering and defeating it through the resurrection.
To aid in this, a hymn might help. One of my favorites is "In Christ Alone." The lyrics are so rich, and they tell my story as one who has found life in the death of Jesus. I enjoy singing all the stanzas, but the one below is most appropriate today on Good Friday:
In Christ alone who took on flesh
fullness of God in helpless babe.
This gift of love and righteousness
scorned by the ones he came to save:
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
the wrath of God was satisfied -
For every sin on Him was laid;
Here in the death of Christ I live.
In Christ alone who took on flesh, fullness of God in helpless babe.
As Gregory of Nazianzus stated in defending the humanity of Christ, "what is not assumed is not healed." He meant that if Christ was merely God with a human shell, and was not a human in any way like us, then His dying could not have saved us. He must be like those he came to save. Yet the mystery of Him becoming like us and taking on human form and human nature does not negate that He was still fully God. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, yet born of a virgin, His one person had two natures.
However, He was not a co-mingling of God and Man, like the mixing of blue and yellow makes green. Nor was He like Superman, constantly switching back and forth between His two natures. The hymn writer captures it well, Christ took on flesh, but was still 100% God even as a newborn baby! As the Council of Chalcedon likewise affirmed, He "was one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, made known in two natures [which exist] without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." Much more could be said, but trying to understand this certainly does beggar the mind. Note though that Christ being like us, and yet sinless, enabled Him to suitably stand in our place and take our punishment at the Cross. Which leads to the next phrase.
This gift of love and righteousness, scorned by the ones he came to save:
In Luke 19:10, Christ stated that His chief purpose in coming to the world was to seek and save the lost. So in order to be embraced by Him, you must first embrace the reality of your sinfulness. If you don't agree that you are lost, then you have no need of Him who came as Savior for the lost. Anybody can say they have accepted God, but the real question is, has God accepted you? He only accepts sinners who know they have a problem they cannot remedy themselves.
One of my professors likes to use the analogy of shooting bullets at a plate glass window. Whether you shoot at it with a powerful weapon like a bazooka, or with a BB gun, a plate glass window shatters nonetheless. This is true with our sinfulness. Whether you shot a BB gun or bazooka in terms of how bad a sinner you are, your sinfulness is still an affront to God that shatters your relationship with Him. He is unique, in a league all His own as to beauty and perfection. To sin is to be unlike Him, contrary to His goodness. When we seek to have our needs met at the expense of others and the perfect design of God, we are sinning against God. Pursuing things, even good things, in a way God did not intend is like saying to God, "my way is best, you really don't have my best interest at heart." All of us have done this. We scorn God's best by settling for Satan's counterfeits and cheap imitations. We look to the world instead of the Word for guidance and direction. The reason we do this is because we were born with a nature inherited from the first ones who rebelled in this way: Adam and Eve in the garden.
So Christ came to fix the problem, to reverse the curse on us that resulted from Adam's sin. Christ, this gift of love, who came that we might trust in His righteousness and find life, was scorned and despised while on earth. And He is mocked still to this day in fact, as one late night show host last night exhibited by likening the terminology of Christ rising on the third day to the negative side effects experienced by Viagra users. God isn't laughing. Would you save a guy that said that if you were God? I wouldn't, he does not deserve it. But God delights in rescuing sinners, as Christ thought even while on the cross to say, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do."
Till on that Cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied -
What would you think if a judge decided to set all the prisoners in Huntsville free? You'd say he's absurd first of all, and a big part of you would feel justice had been evaded. In the same way, God, the epitome and source of righteousness and justice, can't let sinful rebellion go unpunished. The punishment must fit the crime. Romans 6:23 states that the wages of sin is death, and Christ indeed received those wages for us. That His death was bloody and gruesome should in some sense also point us to the cruel and evil reality of our sinful world. Humans tortured him, and humans are still tortured by humans today. If Christ had died peacefully in His sleep, He wouldn't be fit to sympathize with those He knew would suffer for His sake at the hands of evil men empowered by Satan. What Christ went through should encourage us in our time of need, as Hebrews 4:14-16 exhorts.
But ultimately, Christ's death was bloody because our God demanded it. His righteous nature required Him to require that kind of punishment. This does not mean God is a ghoul who loves blood. He's a gracious God and He saw fit to crush His Son because this sort of redemption was the only currency His holy nature and character would accept. In showing His righteousness, Romans 3:26 says, He can now be both "just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ." His wrath has been satisfied by the unmerited horror experienced by Christ. Justice has been done, and now He is free to justify and lavish out unmerited favor on all who would accept the sacrifice Christ offered on their behalf.
For every sin on him was laid; Here in the death of Christ I live!
While it is true Christ's death infinitely and adequately covers all sins, your personal sins will still be credited to your account if you do not accept the gift God has sent in His Son. If you have accepted this gift by trusting in Christ's perfect life, and in His death on the cross in your place, and have trusted in His resurrection, rejoice on this Good Friday that death could not hold him. Hence, you with D.L. Moody can boast of greater things to come after this life is over.
If you have not, reflect on these truths and take God at His Word. He is mighty to save any sinner who acknowledges they need a saving that is found by trusting In Christ Alone.
