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Good Friday: “Forgive Them..”

 


The world is in chaos. France is in middle of protests, China and Taiwan are in potential build up, Russia and Ukraine are at war, Israel is battling in Gaza, and in America division is sown. In center of all the fear, pain, and anger there is a day that reminds us there is still something good. Good Friday looked a lot like our world today, sects at each others throats, protests, government overreach and a baying for blood. How it differs was it was God’a s blood and as the mania overtook the onlookers Jesus did not chide or chastise, He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34). That line could summarize humanity and its history, that from the Forbidden Fruit in Eden to Nuclear Proliferation mankind has  trod a path of self destruction that makes even the angels marvel. Why do we crave our “self demolition,”? (Pilate, Jesus Christ Superstar). Why do we heap abuse on our fellow man, even doing son on the Son of Man that Friday two thousand and twenty three years ago? Why is the human heart so filled with jubilation at the tearing down of one another? We so content to , “bite and devour one another.” (Galatians 5:15). 


Our condition is a unique one.  Left to our own devices, mankind will make a ruin of its race, save for the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is what is good about Good Friday, God was not pleased to leave us to our demolition, He instead made propitiation, bearing our sins, our self demolition, and appetite for gore. He settled the score of debt against us, a debt incurred from a fallen fruit eons ago with our ancestors into the future we have yet met.  Jesus turned a gore filled day on the cross into good thing, in which we no longer have to bear the weight of the transgressions of past, present, and future; but have them wiped away by His Blood. 


God took our appetite for violence, cruelty, injustice, and harm and set the stage on Good Friday to erase away our blackened nature with His own, exchanging His righteousness for our brokenness (Romans 3:22, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Philippians 3:9). While the world around seems to drift into chaos, and hopelessness tries to take root, remember that on Friday over two thousand years ago, The Creator and Savior came and let us dismantle His body, dig our angry nails into His flesh, and even mock Him with a crown of the thorns of our very thorny nature. And Jesus took our abuse and hurt, and responded quite unlike our tendency, He said “Forgive them..” Indeed on that Mercy Seat of the Cross he was prenoucing what was transpiring on a scale so great in the spiritual, metaphysical, and transcendent realms; that Jesus alone says to the Abba on our behalf, on the behalf of those who trust and believe in Him as God Incarnate, Son of God, and Lord, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Oh what good news that Good Friday rings! That God did not abandon us to oblivion, and instead has forgiven. We should rejoice on Friday, that while our world seems in a tempest, we may find rest in Jesus, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”(Matthew 11:28-30). That no matter how dark or bleak, salvation speaks, that The Son of God hung for a creation that covered itself in dung. That God thought precious the mud and clay that is man, and places His Spirit inside Him (1 Corinthians 3:16), anointing him, and declares him prince (Galatians 4:7), priest (1 Peter 2:9-10), and king (Revelation 1:6). Amen. 


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