Good Friday

I'm sorry I couldn't find an attribution for this on the web.  If it's your picture I apologize.  (I sort of doubt it though, it looks like it was probably painted two or three hundred years ago.)

Have you ever wondered why "Good" Friday?  I mean, this is the day the Lord was crucified.  It was a terrible day in every sense of the word.  The best, most innocent Man that ever lived was murdered in the most painful, humiliating way possible.

Our picture today says it all: the politician who just wants to get on with his life.  The woman to the right who wants to intervene but is being told "There's nothing you can do."  The soldiers, who are bored.  The onlookers, who are mildly impressed by the crowd.  And Christ, who isn't looking at any of them.

He was thinking about you.

I had a friend whose husband got indignant when he watched The Passion a few years ago.  He would, he said, have done something to stop it if he'd been alive back then.  It was all so unfair.

Right he was--it's one of the wonderful and difficult-to-understand ironies of reality that the Lord used the ultimate injustice to pay for His perfect justice.  Fair would have been my friend's husband (and me) paying for our own sins, for eternity, in hell.  We don't want fair.  We need mercy.

On our own we are no better than Pilate; on our own we are one of the mob outside the window, yelling "Crucify Him!"  Unfair?  You bet.  Thank God.

Stop it?  All creation couldn't stop it.  He had twelve legions of angels at His beck-- you think this was some kind of accident?  Nobody took His life from Him.  He laid it down.

He did it for us.

For me.  For you.  Our salvation was part of "the joy set before Him."  When we fix our eyes on Him, we can partake in that joy.

That's what makes it "Good" Friday.

Breanna

{Not for young viewers.}