The King Dies

Please read Matthew 27:33–53
 
Today is Good Friday, the most solemn day in the Christian year when we mark the crucifixion and death of Jesus. At a purely human level, the cross remains a shocking and sad event. The death of a young man, murdered by his powerful enemies, convicted of a crime he didn't commit, tortured to death, an idealist who paid the ultimate price for this principles of love, justice and freedom. Because of all this I hesitated to say that Christians "celebrate" Good Friday. We commemorate it and we are profoundly moved by it, but it is hard to celebrate a man's bloody and brutal murder. These are what we might call the "human interest" elements to the story and they tend to be the focus of dramatic treatments of Christ's death whether in paintings or in cinema.

Yet the Bible's focus is not so much on the human interest elements as on the theological meaning of the death of Jesus. It is in the profound spiritual truths of what Christ's death accomplished as atonement or reconciliation with God, expiation of sin, propitiation of wrath, redemption from slavery, victory over Satan, release from punishment and deliverance from death (to name just some things that the New Testament says the cross of Jesus Christ has done for us) that the death of Jesus finds its true meaning. It is because of what the cross means for broken and guilty humanity that it is transformed from the waste of a good life to the greatest use of a good life that has ever or could ever happen.

He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to heaven,
Saved by His precious blood.

The question the death of Jesus poses to you today is this: will his death have been in vain for you or not? Because the true meaning of the death of Jesus can only be fulfilled in the lives of those who are in spiritual union with him, and the benefits of what Christ has achieved on the cross are only shared with those who want them. Do you want forgiveness for your past and transformation for your future? Do you want a relationship with God through Jesus? That's what Christ is even now offering you through the cross. To accept it he only looks for you to trust and follow him in faith. This Good Friday, let the King's death change your life forever.