Good News ~ If You Can Take It

Warning. This blog post is not for the squeamish.

These next three days ~ Good Friday through Easter Sunday ~ are rubber-meets-the-road stuff for followers of Christ. His death on the cross and subsequent resurrection are the basis on which we have been saved.

The Cross is not the cross of man, but the Cross of God, and it can never be fully comprehended through human experience. The Cross is God exhibiting His nature. It is the gate through which any and every individual can enter into oneness with God. (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest)

It's hard enough for some to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. It is hard for some to believe that He came to earth as the Son of Man, conceived and born of a virgin through divine intervention. It is hard for some to believe that He rose from the dead three days after he was buried. But it is exquisitely hard for many to believe that He had to die for our sinful nature in order for us to live.

...the world hates Me, because I testify of it that its works are evil (John 7:18)

Jesus came to reconcile us to God. He came to save us from sin that causes eternal separation from God unless we are washed clean and pure enough to stand on holy ground in front of an almighty and Holy God.

We all sin. That's the part that makes most everyone squeamish. Even worse, most everyone doesn't like to hear that all sin is vile in the eyes of God, from pride to corruption, from gossip to the taking of a life. All of us have fallen short of the Holiness of God. It is our nature.

However, the beauty of Christ is that He did the hard work on the cross so that none who believe will perish. In suffering an agonizing death, an innocent Christ paid the ultimate price for our individual and collective sin. Eternal life in the presence of the Alpha and Omega is ours for believing.

So as believers are confronted with the brutal, dehumanizing persecution and death that Jesus Christ suffered, we choose to memorialize this day as Good Friday because it is through His death and resurrection that we are saved. The love that the Lord God has for all people is so great, that He gave His only begotten Son to die for us so that we could live. That's cause for celebration. That's Good News. That's nothing to be squeamish about.