Friday, April 06, 2007
WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT GOOD FRIDAY?
Many people answer the question “Who killed Jesus?” by saying it was the Jews, or the Romans, or your sins and mine that sent Him to the cross. And of course there certainly was a human element involved in the death of Jesus. But the Bible teaches that it was God's plan for Jesus to die on the cross. The human factor is best understood against the divine backdrop of God’s sovereignty, for Scripture declares that “it was the Lord’s will to crush him” (Is. 53:10).
Ponder that biblical truth for a few moments: it was the Lord’s will to crush Jesus. In the words of Acts 2:23: “This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.” The death of Jesus was not an accident or an afterthought on God’s part; rather, the atoning* death of Jesus Christ was planned by the triune God in eternity past and was carried out in history, in perfect fulfillment of God’s will.
While there are many different theories of the atonement, I believe that the atoning work of Jesus Christ is best understood in terms of substitution; that is, Christ died on the cross as the substitute for sinners. The atoning sacrifices in the Old Testament were substitutionary in nature (the blood of animals was shed on behalf of God’s covenant people) and pointed to Jesus Christ, who is the heart of the Bible and the One to whom the Old Testament Law and prophets bear witness.
Christ was the perfect sacrificial victim—the Lamb of God—who died vicariously for sinners. In the words of Isa. 53:6, “We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Christians would do well to personalize that profound biblical truth: the Lord laid on Jesus our iniquities—every lie, every theft, every injurious word, every immoral thought and deed, every act of selfishness … all of this and much, much more. Jesus, the Lamb of God, was the sin-bearer for wayward sheep. Good Friday is good because Christ died as the atoning sacrifice for sinners on that Friday long ago!
Elsewhere we are told, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Notice that Christ was made sin for us. Notice, too, the substitutionary language of 1 Pet. 3:18: “Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” Isaac Watts had substitution in mind when he wrote these words to the hymn, “Alas! And Did My Saviour Bleed”:
Alas! and did my Saviour bleed
And did my Sovereign die!
Would He devote that sacred head
For sinners such as I!
Was it for sins that I have done
He suffered on the tree?
Amazing pity! Grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!
Would He devote that sacred head
For sinners such as I!
Was it for sins that I have done
He suffered on the tree?
Amazing pity! Grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!
When considering the vast and weighty topic of the atonement, we must not lose sight of the fact that it was God’s unmerited love, “love beyond degree,” for sinners that led to the death of Christ. Let us guard against thinking about the atonement in purely theoretical terms.
Accordingly, those of us who have been transformed by God’s grace would do well to pray—as Paul prayed for the Ephesians long ago—that we might “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that [we] may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:18-19). Perhaps now would be a good time to stop and pray that powerful prayer for ourselves.
*To understand atonement, we need to start with the Old Testament. There we find that the word most often used for atonement is kaphar (כפר) and its derivatives: kaphar is the Hebrew word for “to cover.” The idea is that a person was delivered from punishment by the placing of something between their sin and God. That happened at the cross: Jesus, the sacrifical Lamb of God, took the punishment for sinners, His blood "covering" peoples' sins.
*To understand atonement, we need to start with the Old Testament. There we find that the word most often used for atonement is kaphar (כפר) and its derivatives: kaphar is the Hebrew word for “to cover.” The idea is that a person was delivered from punishment by the placing of something between their sin and God. That happened at the cross: Jesus, the sacrifical Lamb of God, took the punishment for sinners, His blood "covering" peoples' sins.
