Imagine for a moment that you could board a time machine and put yourself among the followers of Jesus just after they discovered His tomb was suddenly and inexplicably vacated. These folks were already in fear of their lives for their allegiance to Christ. Now they were faced with an empty tomb and missing body.
They were in shock, having lost their leader, and evidently questioning whether the whole thing was a hoax.
Then, reports of Jesus sightings started pouring in, and things quickly got VERY interesting. A particularly poignant episode occurred three days after the resurrection between the risen Christ and two of His hapless followers on their way back home to Emmaus. They, too, were struggling to make sense of it all when suddenly, they were treated to an in-person appearance of their Savior.
Reflecting His ongoing astonishment at the chronic unbelief of even His closest followers, Jesus said to them:
“So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? Don’t you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into his glory? Then he started at the beginning, with the Books of Moses, and went on through all the prophets, pointing out everything in the Scriptures that referred to him.”1
While we’re not privy to the details of the above discussion, we do have the hindsight provided by the Epistles, written decades later by the apostles, to fill us in on what might have been talked about.
Head-On Collision Between Sin and God
Here are some highlights:
At some level, it sounds farfetched: God collects up every one of mankind’s sins and spiritual diseases — from Adam and Eve’s first transgression to the final sin ever committed by the last man or woman born.
Imagine the stench of it — the cumulative results of the sins and effects of sin throughout time: perpetual wars, rampant social unrest, genocide, abortion, addictions, family dissolution, child abuse/neglect, pornography/objectification, human trafficking, poverty, exploitation, occult spiritual practices, violence, mass murder, terrorism and more.
Then He fills a massive spiritual hypodermic needle with this lethal load and waits until the precise moment that Jesus Christ hung on a cross on that lonely hill 2,000 years ago. Then God plunges that terrible barb into Christ’s arm and pushes the plunger until the last drop has been transferred.
The effect is devastating and immediate. His body is infused with sin’s dreadful venom, and His countenance changes into something so appalling that people turn away.
Speaking many centuries before the time of Jesus, the Old Testament prophets described the grisly scene with the accuracy of an eyewitness:
“But I am a worm and not a man,
A reproach of men and despised by the people.
All who see me sneer at me.”2
• • •
“I am poured out like water,
And all my bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
It is melted within me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And my tongue cleaves to my jaws;
And You lay me in the dust of death.
For dogs have surrounded me;
A band of evildoers has encompassed me;
They pierced my hands and my feet.
“I can count all my bones.
They look, they stare at me;
They divide my garments among them,
And for my clothing they cast lots.”3
• • •
“But the Lord was pleased
To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
… As a result of the anguish of His soul,
He will see it and be satisfied;
By His knowledge the Righteous One,
My Servant, will justify the many,
As He will bear their iniquities.
… Because He poured out Himself to death,
And was numbered with the transgressors;
Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,
And interceded for the transgressors.”4
• • •
And finally, the last devastating blow awaited the savior. Scripture warns, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness.”5
And, sure enough, upon seeing his son Jesus as mankind’s vicarious sin bearer, God struck out with His accumulated wrath against sin, landing the blow squarely upon the head of His “only begotten son.” It killed Him.
Picture this: There are wooden barns throughout the countryside everywhere in the Midwest. Wise farmers know that lightning can strike these highly flammable structures, burning everything inside. So, they install sharply pointed lightning rods on the roofs of their barns and attach wires to the rods that conduct electricity away from the barn. In the event of a lightning strike, the resultant electrical current is conducted along the wires to the ground, where it is dissipated, sparing anyone and anything inside the barn from harm.
Jesus Christ acted as our cosmic lightning rod, attracting the white-hot fire of God’s wrath to Himself and conducting the “bolt’s” devastating effects away from us. The trouble is that Jesus died in the process. He absorbed God’s wrath (the theological term is propitiation),6 but the strike killed Him.
Here is how the Bible summarizes the outcome:
Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of His Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of His resurrection life!
Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!7
The cosmic war between man’s sins and God’s righteousness is over, Jesus has made peace by the “blood of his cross,” and we are the beneficiaries. And that’s what’s so good about Good Friday.
— D.C. Collier is a Bible teacher, discipleship mentor and writer focused on Christian apologetics. A mechanical engineer and Internet entrepreneur, he is the author of My Origin, My Destiny, a book focused on Christianity’s basic “value proposition.” Click here for more information. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
1. Luke 24:25-27 The Message (MSG)
2. Psalm 22:6-8 NASB
3. Psalm 22:14-18 NASB
4. Isaiah 53:10-12 NASB
5. Romans 1:18 NASB
6. Christ is called the “propitiation for our sins.”The Greek word is hilasmos. Christ is the propitiation because, when He became our substitute and assumed our obligations, He expiated our guilt — covered it — by the vicarious punishment He endured.
7. Romans 5:9-11 MSG