My Thoughts on Good Friday

I woke up about 9 this morning. About the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. I thought of the apostle John, who was with Him, below the cross. What was he thinking? What emotions and thoughts were coursing through his head and heart? I imagine him wondering, “how could this have happened? We were just together last night! How? What now?” He must have been devastated. The Bible records he was there with Mary, Jesus’ mother. I can’t imagine the pain. Perhaps there were no words.

John referred to himself as the apostle that Jesus loved. Just the night before, Jesus had given the apostles a new commandment to “love one another as I have loved you.” At the foot of the cross John was beginning to understand that love. He had and was still experiencing that love. He never got over that love. I can’t imagine what it was like for him that morning to stand beneath the cross, watching his Lord die.

The gospel message is that sin, our imperfections, separated us from God. But Jesus’ sacrifice reconciled us. For those of us who believe, we can now, as it says in Hebrews, boldly approach His throne of grace. And it was His love of me, and His love of you, that carried Him to that cross.  Simply stated, the gospel message is that we are far worse off than we think, but more deeply loved than we know.

I know I have friends and a few readers who do not believe what I believe, who are skeptical of Jesus. Some who have been burned by others claiming to follow Christ. Some who have been so judged by people claiming to be Christ followers that they are deeply wounded. It’s true that there have been a lot of abuses perpetrated in Jesus’ name. His followers are imperfect. We fail. We fail to obey the commandment He gave just hours before his crucifixion to love one another. He taught that the world - you - would know we are followers of Christ by our love. In many ways we have failed. I have failed. I’m so sorry.

But do not judge Jesus because of our failures. Judge him for who He is, what He taught, how He acted. Consider His great love of you this resurrection weekend.

I leave you with these quotes to ponder.

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.”
― Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

If anyone is interested in joining me, I’ll be at the city wide Good Friday service at the Long Center at 1:30 today. I’ll also be at the Good Friday Experience at Gateway Church tonight at 8:00 PM.