Good Friday

It is Good Friday. On this day, God was crucified on the cross. We need to remember that Jesus was not a painting on a canvas or a plastic statue that you may put in your yard. Let me remind you who he is.

God, who revealed himself to Moses as Yahweh, first revealed himself as God Most High to Abram (who would later be renamed as Abraham)  even while he still lived in Ur. As you read Scripture you will find that God is holy. This means that his being is totally separate by his nature. He is pure and righteous. His holiness makes humanity repulsive to him and he warns, on more than one occasion, that no one can see the face of God and live. My point here is that God is not someone to trifle with. Just the idea of the holy should be enough to cause approach God in a earnest way.

But God is also righteous. God’s being defines righteousness. We need to realize that before the righteousness of God, we are all like criminals.

God is just, God’s law is pure and right. God as the great judge, rules over his court in which we will appear. And his justice demands that sin be rightly judged and the right penalty be handed out. And the basic penalty of rebellion is death.

God is the creator of all things, he is all powerful (almighty). God is that which nothing greater can be imagined. God is eternal, no beginning or end. And God is personal. The personal nature of God is reflected in the idea of the three in One, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who live in perfect harmony.

God as creator and judge, has given us his law both in written form and in nature. In fact, it is built into what it means to be human. God, clearly give us the moral law as creator. And God clearly judges us with the moral law as measure.

Man has rebelled against God, which is the basic meaning of sin. Our sin reveals other attributes of God. God is love and therefore has been patient with us in our rebellion. The great mystery is why a holy, pure and righteous God would be so patient with us. But his love and his patience is the story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

God showed his love for us by God becoming flesh. The second person of the Trinity became a human. He is defined as being fully Man and fully God. He is not a synthesis of the two but 100% God and 100% man.

God became flesh to bear the penalty required by the law. Our sin demands the death penalty. Someone must die. Jesus being the perfect God-Man, is infinitely capable of paying the price of the law for many. Jesus loved humanity so much that he left the perfection of heaven, took on the limitations of being human, and submitted himself to the cross so that he might be our sacrifice, our sin offering, our Passover, our victim, who bears our sin so that we bear them no more.

It is Good Friday. It is not mere words, it is an historical act when God invaded human history in order to express his love for humanity, in order that he might deliver us from our burden of sin, in order that those who come to him in faith might have eternal life with him. He submitted his self to the agony and suffering of the Cross. But far more important than the suffering of the cross, he bore our sins. He who is perfect, holy, just, righteous, love and all powerful, all knowing, and all authority, bore our sins so that we might be redeemed.

This is Good Friday.