What Happened on Good Friday?

Ephesians 2 says 'But God, being rich in mercy...' Listen, God does not hold out on us… He did not spare His own Son, He did not withhold the second person of the Trinity. Jesus, God’s Own Son died on a cross in your place for your sin… in order that you who were dead in your trespasses and sins might have life. What does that mean?

He was falsely accused… His perfection called into question. Accused of blaspheming the name He cherished above all. Whipped without mercy so that we might receive mercy. Scorned without restraint by men in order that God’s righteous wrath would be restrained from men. He died on a cross with all the shame and antagonism and mockery associated with that in order that you need not die.

He lived a perfectly holy life among perpetually unholy people, surrounded by our sin and depravity, He personally experienced the very depths of depravity that mark our humanity. He died in the moment in history when our evil intent found it’s greatest expression and yet He remained faithful to save and to conquer sin, death and Hell. He hung on the cross, and not necessarily as many imagine on a towering cross but in a cross that was likely just off the ground, almost able to touch the Earth that He had created, looking into the eyes of those who scorned and mocked Him, of those who had cried crucify and chosen Barabbas. Dying face to face for those whose benefit He would experience the turning away of His Father’s face… My God, My God why have you forsaken me.

In our humanness we wince at every crack of the whip and every punch on the face. We recoil at the spit and are appalled at the injustice. We resent the silence of Pilate and the fickleness of the crowd. We close our eyes to try and hide the picture we get in our minds of Jesus trying to hold His body up on nail pierced feet to try and gasp for a breath.

Yet the moment of greatest pain… the instant of most compelling sorrow is that moment when the weight of our sin… the full implications of our trespasses… the extent of our unrighteous rebellion against God was placed upon the One who knew no sin, who was perfectly righteous. He experienced in that moment the outpouring of the wrath of God and the rejection of God that we deserved. He took upon Him the conclusion of a life that discovers the Biblical reality that the Holy God who created the Heavens and the Earth cannot look upon sin and consumes it in His just and holy anger. That was the great price, that was the great cost.

He is rich in mercy. Mercy is that you don’t get what you deserve. Why? Because Jesus did. He got what you deserved. He experienced the full extent of God’s wrath, He experienced the destructive power of God’s rejection and all because of the great love with which He loves us… that’s what is says next. Friends, God loves you with a great love… something we are going to think some more about on Sunday. Sinner God loves you.