Goodness Through Tragedy: On the Death of the Christ
The Roman spear tip went through the side of
the torso piercing through the pericardium and into the heat, confirming the
condemned was truly dead. No tricks. Nothing staged. Jesus died upon the cross.
This is the grand anticlimax to the Four Gospels of the Bible wherein Israel’s
long awaited Christ was put to death upon the cross during the rule of Pontius
Pilate.
The agony of a slow death through crucifixion was
just a part of the sufferings Jesus endured.
Blood filled sweat as the Son prayed to the
Father in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Betrayed by Judas Iscariot.
Denied by Peter,
Abandoned by the rest of the Twelve,
Rejected by the religious leaders along with
many others in Jerusalem who wanted nothing to do with the sort of messiah in
the likes of Jesus of Nazareth.
Mock, beaten and scourged.
Surprisingly, this was part of God’s plan all
along.
No sooner after Peter declared Jesus to be the
Christ that the Lord began to teach the disciples “that the Son of Man must suffer
many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes
and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31, ESV). Stern rebuke
was given to Peter who rebuked the Lord for saying such a thing. Christ mission
to the cross was the way. Christ led the way. The disciples followed the way.
This was the way they were going. So, Jesus said, “If anyone would come after
me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34, ESV).
The cross was God’s way to
set things right with everything that was wrong with Israel and the rest of the
world. All of humanity since the days of Adam is fallen and apart from a right
relationship with God. Jesus’ own death would be the sacrifice which provides
the way for sinful people to enter into a right relationship with their Creator.
Even Moses and the Aaronic priesthood could never make things right with all
their sacrifices in the tabernacle and temple, but where they failed Jesus succeeded.
The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us,
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good
things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made
with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the
holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his
own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and
bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer,
sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who
through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our
conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Heb. 9:11-14).
Christian
sees the cross as the only way. It is the way of solving what is the basic
problem of this world. It is though the crucified Christ that all people reconnect
to their Creator, find their purpose, understand their place in this world, and
make sense of the present suffering. It is though the crucified Christ that all
people can learn the way to find the power and direction to bring something of
value to the world’s conversation of what is going on and how to solve the problem.
Denial of self, taking up the cross, and following Jesus is the way.
—WGN
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