Pastor, speaker, and author Max Lucado sent this message out to his community a few weeks ago: “Jesus’ love doesn’t depend on what we do for Him…In the eyes of the King, you have value simply because you are.”
Today is Good Friday, the day believers remember what Jesus did for us.
Jesus’ love could not depend on what we do for Him. We’re the sinners, yet He was flogged. Jesus was stripped, bound to a post, and beaten by several Roman soldiers in turn. Jewish law set the maximum punishment at 40 blows, but the Romans were not bound by this limit. The punishment continued until the torturers were exhausted, the commanding officer decided to stop it, or the victim died. The whip used was a short wooden handle with several leather thongs attached, each with jagged pieces of bone or metal attached to the end. The body could be so torn and lacerated that the muscles, bones, veins, or even internal organs were exposed. Can you feel the lash of that whip against your back?
Could you pay that price?
Next, the Roman soldiers twisted a crown of thorns together and forced it upon Jesus’ head. Can you see the thorns as they rip through the skin of Jesus’ head, the ensuing blood gushing across His brow and face?
Could you pay that price?
Yet this torture was not enough. Jesus was mocked and ridiculed. Passersby goaded, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross,” while the chief priests, scribes and elders mocked, “He saved others; He cannot save Himself” (Matthew 27:40-42).
Then Jesus was nailed to a cross and crucified. Can you feel the nail rip through Jesus’ left hand as the Roman soldiers drive it through? Then the nail through His right hand, and finally through His feet? Isn’t this pain unimaginable?
Could you pay that price?
In complete surrender to God’s will, Jesus did what we could not. He endured the flogging and torture, the mocking and ridicule, and paid the ultimate price for our sins. Then He declared, “It is finished” (John 19:28).
What was finished? Jesus’ mission as the Son of God.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:16-17).
As a result of His death on the cross, our sin is atoned for, and we have eternal life if we choose to believe. Max Lucado sums it up like this in his book, “3:16:”
“He loved.
He gave.
We believe.
We live.”
Good Friday is a solemn day of remembrance for me, but it’s also a day filled with hope for Resurrection Day is coming! Today I pray you remember the ultimate price Jesus paid to reveal the ultimate love. He loved. He gave. I pray you believe and live!
