As I write this week’s post, I’m sitting smack dab in the middle of Good Friday and Easter morning. A day when we have some lingering sadness over all that Jesus endured leading up to his crucifixion and his actual death on the cross.
But we also know, as we see everywhere on Facebook and throughout the Christian world, “Sunday’s coming!” Yes, we know how this story ends.
Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and his complete payment covering the sin that should have kept us from eventual and eternal fellowship with him is the Easter miracle that gets our greater focus.
And rightly so! After sin entered this world through the fall in the Garden of Eden, God already had a plan to set everything right in this world once again. Sin would not win. Satan would be, and already is, defeated.
As believers, we celebrate this amazing sacrifice – especially on Easter Sunday – and cling to the hope it gives us to spend that eternity with Jesus.
Countless sermons, articles, books, blogs, etc. have been written about this incredible gift that becomes front and center every Easter morning.
But that’s not the miracle I want you to consider today.
I believe this miracle is no less miraculous than the resurrection. This miracle happened on Good Friday when Jesus died on the cross. When he uttered those victorious words, “It is finished!”
But first, let’s consider what happened when this Christ child was born – another miracle we celebrate during the Christmas holiday.
Knowing that Jesus would become the ultimate perfect sacrifice, paying the penalty for our sins, meant that he would need to be 100% divine – 100% still God!
And yet he stepped into a 100% human body – one that felt every nail pounded into his innocent body – so that he could ultimately face death on our behalf.
This is the Jesus that has existed since eternity past – a concept my feeble mind cannot comprehend. There has never been a time when Jesus did not exist.
As it says in Colossians 1:16-17:
For by him [Jesus] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
So clearly Jesus is intricately involved with all creation, and has been with God, the Father, since before time began.
Here is the miracle of Good Friday that God has laid on my heart these last few days. A miracle that should not lay hidden behind that empty tomb.
This Jesus, eternal God, through whom all things were made, entered a body that could die.
We marvel at the empty tomb — and we should. But perhaps the greater miracle is that the One who created life… chose to enter death.
Honestly, this brings tears to my eyes – tears of sorrow for all Jesus left behind, temporarily, for all that he suffered on our behalf, and tears of gratitude for what that purchased for all believers.
I will absolutely celebrate Christ’s resurrection every Easter that I’m still on this earth, but, Lord, help me also grasp the reality of all Christ sacrificed leading up to that victory over sin and death.
Jesus experienced death. And then he conquered it.
What a glorious thought! May it continue to give you the peace and hope you need long after the Easter glow has passed.
[Jesus], though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,
being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:6-8
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