Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Musings for Good Friday
Musings for Good Friday
Apr 6, 2025 12:34 PM

A marvellous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonour and disgrace has e the glorious monument to death’s defeat. ~ Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word.

Job in the Old Testament called out to God begging for a mediator or advocate, begging for somebody who could understand the depth of his affliction and agony (Job 9). Such is the beauty of Christ that he came not to teach or merely talk about suffering, but to suffer for us. No longer can we say our Lord doesn’t understand us or that our own suffering is in the shadows. We worship one who has borne the entire agony and sin of humanity and felt the entire weight of separation from the Father. Through his suffering Christ knows us and is familiar with us. He calls us His own. And through his supreme agony he never ceased to call to the Father, providing us an example in our own affliction.

Jesus, who from eternity experienced perfect relationship with the Father, was separated, cursed, and made sin for us. It is certainly far more agonizing than anything we could ever experience. The country singer songwriter Hank Williams stated it well, “Sometimes I get so weary inside, but then I remember how my Jesus died.” Thomas Oden declared in The Word of Life:

No matter how mentaries we read, it is impossible for us to know – sitting in an armchair – how forsaken he was and what that meant. However deep it was, it was God-incarnate who was experiencing that forsakenness.

His atoning life pardons us from our sin and is literally our lifeblood. In an Easter sermon Martin Luther preached:

For we are called Christians because we may look at the Christ and say: Dear Lord, You took all my sins upon Yourself. You became Martin, Peter, and Paul, and thus You crushed and destroyed my sin. There (on the cross) I must and will seek my sin. You have directed me to find it there. On Good Friday I still clearly see my sin, but on the day of Easter no sin is any longer to be seen.

As we meditate on the cross and its meaning this week, we take fort that our Lord is at the right hand of the Father. We remember that perfect innocence was violently slaughtered on our behalf. Advocating for us now, humanity is imprinted with the image and person of Christ. Christ is marked forever by our transgressions. It was Luther who said the angels are envious of humanity, “They worship Christ, who has e our Brother, our flesh and blood.”

It is abundantly clear that the more we study and think about Christ and everything He plished, it is impossible to form an Easter processional on earth long and loud enough to pay tribute to the fulness of His glory. But if we truly believe, we should never balk or withdraw from sharing what God has plished in Jesus Christ. Charles Wesley put it this way in 1742:

Arise, my soul, arise; shake off thy guilty fears;

The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears:

Before the throne my surety stands,

Before the throne my surety stands,

My name is written on His hands…

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Christmas sacred and secular
“Christians obtain grace from reflecting on the miracle of the Incarnation but they have given the event called Christmas as a glorious gift to the world,” Rev. Sirico writes. “This is why this holiday can be so secular and yet remain so sacred. There is a distinction between the two but not always a battle between the two.” Read the mentary here. ...
Christians and (movie) culture
The NYT’s John Leland has an excellent article on the engagement of culturally conservative Christians and popular movies. In “New Cultural Approach for Conservative Christians: Reviews, Not Protests,” (login required) Leland writes about the shift in attitude, from one of abstention and withdrawal to critical engagement. Professor Robert Johnston of Fuller Theological Seminary says that “evangelicals as a group are ing more sophisticated in their interaction with popular culture. There’s been a recognition within the munity that movies have e...
The church as country club
Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says his research shows that “regular religious participation leads to better education, higher e and a lower chance of divorce. His results (based on data covering non-Hispanic white Americans of several Christian denominations, other faiths and none) imply that doubling church attendance raises someone’s e by almost 10%.” The article linked above gives a good overview of Gruber’s methods, and touches on some related ideas in the history of economics,...
Come, ye believers!
From the Orthros service (Tone 4) which precedes the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, celebrated by the Eastern Orthodox churches on December 25, the Nativity of Christ. Come, ye believers, let us see where Christ was born. Let us follow the star whither it goeth with the Magi, kings of the east; for there angels praise him ceaselessly, and shepherds raise their voices in a worthy song of praise, saying, Glory in the highest to the One born...
Wise generosity in the season of giving
Karen Woods, Director of Acton’s Center for Effective Compassion, reminds us to be wise as we engage in charity: Good intentions are not enough. The most significant giving season of the year is no time to relent in our vigilance to avoid the unintended consequences of hurricane recovery (or in any other social need area either). From the smallest, personal kindness extended to an individual hurricane victim, to the most generous in-kind and cash donations of corporate America, due diligence...
Wise generosity II
More evidence surfaces of the necessity of using discretion when giving charitably. Not too many readers of this blog will be surprised that the United Nations is not the most efficient entity in the world. It seems that overhead gobbled up a third of the funds the U.N. raised for tsunami relief last year. But private charities aren’t immune to problems. Fifty people have been indicted in a scandal at the Red Cross. Employees were directing Katrina-victim funds to “needy”...
Prayer of the Incarnation
O God, who didst wonderfully create, and yet more wonderfully restore, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, thy Son Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. –U.S. Book of Common Prayer, “Of the Incarnation,” (1979), p. 200 ...
First Things on the square
First Things has a new blog feature, On the Square: Observations & Contentions. The posts appear on the front page of the website, but there is an archive here and an RSS feed here. HT: The Remedy ...
The right to have a baby
In the latest issue of Touchstone, Acton senior fellow Jennifer Roback Morse examines the issues of procreation and property in contemporary society, and the seemingly growing opinion anyone can be a parent if they so choose. In “First Comes Marriage” Morse contends, “There is no right to a child, because a child is not an object to which other people have rights.” She goes on to make a clarification about meanings of “rights” language that are often conflated: We must...
A Mideast Christian primer
Before we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ this weekend, take a moment to look at some information about the state of Christianity in the Middle East, the area containing the Lord’s birthplace in Bethlehem. The BBC provides a country-by-country overview of Christians in the Mideast, as part of their ongoing series. For example, in Iraq, the home of Christians since the 2nd century, “A rise in attacks on Christians since the US-led invasion in 2003 has prompted many to...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved