Good Friday 2011

+ In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti + Amen.

Text: John 19:11
Theme: The End For Sin

Dear friends in Christ Jesus,

At Golgotha women wailed and angels wept. Many mourned Him but none came to His aid. The sun went dark and the earth shook. The face of the Father was turned away. The triumph of evil was at hand. Yet the victory of salvation was taking place. Such is the paradox of the death of the Son of God.

To relive the trauma and emotion of that first Good Friday can serve only the interest of speculation or a desire to make it relevant. But the event is in every respect unrepeatable. What concerns us is the consequence. The judgment for your sins coincides with the death of Christ. When He dies the atonement is made. When He breathes His last the price is paid; the debt is canceled. There are no further negotiations. Reconciliation is complete. The eternal fate of the believer is sealed. The countenance of God changes from wrath to favour, from judgment to acceptance.

Now the reality of time can make this truth hard to fathom because the Bible clearly says there will still be a judgment day. Yes, He will still gather all humanity before Him in public display of His justice and glory. Then there will be no uncertainty about those who are His. Then Satan’s little day is done and unbelief is brought to an end. The Bible is abundantly clear that those who believe and have shown the fruits of faith will be saved and those who have rejected God’s grace- as shown by their lack of fruits- will be consigned to hell.

Certainly the image of the judgment and the picture of Christ Himself are awe-inspiring. John gives this description in Revelation, “His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes were blazing like fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.”1 It’s an image to be reckoned with to say the least.

But the last judgment will not involve a tallying of both sides of the ledger to see whether each individual has done enough good to outweigh the bad. If there were a weighing in the balance at the judgment NONE would be saved. The Psalmist says it this way, “If You, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?”2 The scales were tipped at the crucifixion. The last judgment serves to separate out those who died in faith or who were living in faith at the time of the Second Coming from those who oppose God’s will and His ways. Good works are the fruit of faith not the cause. They are the evidence, not the source. Only God can identify faith in the heart. The outward signs only assist the rest of us. The veracity of these biblical truths is indisputable.

Still, doubt is commonplace. Satan’s tool is fear. To the human intellect and emotion death is a vast ocean of darkness and uncertainty. We should never approach it with arrogance. No human knows the secret to death. God humbled Job saying, “Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s dominion over earth...Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?”3 Physical death is the final, evil consequence of sin. And the darkness of eternal death is not only impenetrable but horrifying beyond imagination. Need we anything more to drive us to humility and repentance?

The death of Christ changes everything. Human reason cannot reckon what makes His sacrifice so scared. The Holy Spirit must teach us and grant us an unconditional faith in the prophet and Messiah of Galilee. He was not a likely leader by this world’s standards. He had no upbringing or training to make a splash in the public eye. He had no countenance for television. We would not have been naturally drawn to His image. The Scripture says rather, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.”4

Yet, we have here no spineless Redeemer. Christ is not gutless or faint-of- heart. He does no deals with Satan. He makes no negotiations with death. He does not walk on egg shells fearing to offend His opponents. He resolutely sets His face to the task. And a daunting, seemingly insurmountable task it was. He prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from Me, yet not My will, but yours be done.”5 But He did drink the cup of the Father’s wrath- for us and for our salvation.

The death of Jesus changes the game. Into His death is incorporated the eternal death each sinner deserves. In baptism we pass right through the horrors of eternal death so that at our physical death we merely realize our mortality and are freed from sin’s constraints. We are forgiven. Holy Communion is a testimony to these truths. And the more prepared we are to face death the livelier our Christian faith will be. We live in profound joy for Him who did not come down from the cross and whom the grave could not hold. Amen.

+ in nomine Jesu +

Good Friday
22 April, 2011
Reverend Darrin L. Kohrt

1 Revelation 1:14-16 2 Psalm 130:3
3 Job 38:33, 17 4 Isaiah 53:2-3
5 Luke 22:42