Why this Friday is "Good"?

There has never been, nor ever will be, agony like Jesus’ agony. The full wrath of God upon the sin of the whole world was experienced by Jesus on the cross. Jesus received it full force with His human emotions and body and mind. God hates anything that could separate us from Himself…Jesus bears that in His whole being to rescue us from the oppression and possession of sin.

Only God could deal with sin in its utter sinfulness. We don’t see how high & wide & deep & long our sin is. We can’t see its full ramifications. We’re used to sin, not holiness. We’re numb. Jesus wasn’t numb. The Son, with His human mind, will, emotions and body experienced the infinite wrath of the Father that alone could consume and destroy the power of sin.

The work Jesus Christ has done for you was and is complete. Any sacrifice for sin that needed to be made has been made already. Nothing can be added to it to make it more effective. His shed blood was that valuable. When you put your trust in Him, Jesus makes His home in you, uniting you to Him inextricably. His forgiveness, ongoing life-transformation, healing, deliverance, renewal, by grace is given to you as His gift. It actually doesn't matter much how you feel moment to moment.

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would live all this out in anyone who believed in Him. It is His sacrifice that has perfected you and IS perfecting you. Jesus will bring to completion what He has started in you because He loves you. His work on the cross IS finished, but His work in us is not over! His promises are sure!

The lie of our spiritual adversary, even on this Good Friday, is that God will not be enough and that we have to grab what we can while we can still see it on the table. But God is enough, more than enough, infinitely so! He has promised to never leave us and to never forsake us. He has promised to be active, practically present and working in the hearts and lives of those who have let His passion become theirs.

The meaning of our lives is not feeling like they have meaning. God has called us out of death and in to His own Life. Therefore our life has the very meaning of the life of God. It transcends circumstances, which can be so dark and painful we can see little hope. That is why there is peace, even in the face of turmoil; peace that keeps us moving forward when we think our feet will never move again, child of hope. That is why this Friday is called Good.

When the truth of the grace of God given us in Jesus Christ actually breaks over our hearts and minds, we are like the people of Israel who sang Psalm 126. "When the Lord brought us back from exile to Jerusalem, it was as if we were dreaming. We were filled with laughter and sang with joy..." The nations around them declared, "What amazing things God has done for them!"It's astounding that God in Jesus Christ has actually taken our sin away. It's gone! We are forgiven and made heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ! 

Usually when something seems to good to be true it's because it isn't true. Here, however, it is an eternal truth that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world! St. Paul states that those who are in Christ stand before God...right now... holy, blameless and beyond reproach. God is FOR US! Therefore no one can stand against us and prevail in accusation. He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all to rescue us will hold nothing back that we need for life and godliness to prevail in and through us.

That perfection given to us, God's indwelling Spirit, the very Life of Jesus, is transforming us daily. He leads, guides, corrects, convicts us of sin, cleanses us of what He convicts by the shed blood of Jesus. We are being changed from one degree of glory to another. We move from faith to faith. None of us has yet to arrive at all God has in store for us. We are all still "on pilgrimage".

What we find on the "Camino", the path, is that all we may have referenced our lives to in terms of value shrink to less than nothing compared to what we have received by grace, God's gift to us in Jesus. As St. Paul says, "We no longer put any confidence in human effort."

The way we used to evaluate our worth is completely worthless! The Lord speaks through Isaiah, "Forget about what you've known in the past. What I am about to do is utterly new, in fact it's already begun!" God is not saying to forget what He has done, but to not hold onto the way the world's expectations and demands. 

God has a new way of living in store for all who will believe. Forgetting what lies behind us looking to God for what lies ahead, we press on in the race to lay hold on what Jesus laid hold on us for in the first place. We have a heavenly call upward in Jesus Christ.

Our eyes are to become fixed on Jesus as we run the race. There is nothing worth holding onto if it hinders us running. We are able to live lives in worship to Him without reference to us but to Him. We can pour out on Him that which is most precious to us. He is worthy of our all. We don't find ourselves depleted in living this way. In fact, we find ourselves overflowing with the living water of the Holy Spirit.

We are drawing near to Holy Week and the remembering of this greater "new thing" God spoke about through Isaiah...to make rivers run in the desert...to bring everlasting life out of the death-of-deaths. Please keep putting one foot in front of the other. His power working in you is able to cause you to finish the race you've begun and to finish well. 

Please read through and pray through the Scriptures for this Sunday: Isaiah 43:10-21, Philippians 3:3-14, Psalm 126 and John 12:1-10. Let the Lord encourage you and hear Him calling you to follow Him onward.

Tim Keller writes, "The gospel devours the very motivation you have for sin. It completely saps your very need and reason to live any way you want. Anyone who insists that the gospel encourages us to sin has simply not understood it yet, nor begun to feel its power."

The Gospel reveals that real living and wholeness of life come from God's love for us and His rescue of the human race through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The essence of sin is trying to draw life, fulfillment, significance, purpose, meaning and destiny from something or someone other than God.

Sin's deceives by intimating that you can use your body, time, money, education, relationships, sexuality,etc. to find meaning, purpose and wholeness in life.

Humanity has acted on this premise, demanding of these aspects of human life & experience things they were never intended to provide. It's no surprise that such attempts ultimately leave one empty, bankrupt, broken & frustrated. The lure is then, "Well, you just have drunk deeply enough. You need another glass of the Koolaid."

The Gospel relieves me, telling me that I no longer have to do "what I want". I can live from a completely different frame of reference...no longer "self" but the God who created my "self"

He knows infinitely better what will make for true living and flourishing. I can be free from being driven by my damaged self (and we all are damaged, be honest here) and can be led by One who knows me fully and loves me unconditionally.

Grace doesn't encourage going my own way. It sets me free from drinking the poison, detoxes me and teaches me daily how to live the new life Jesus Christ gives as a gift to anyone who will believe His love.

Grace even provides the power to actually live from goodness. I quite love what Jesus is doing. I prefer the Gospel to "crawling in the dark looking for the answers."

Amazing thing about truth...

Sometimes the truth can be so amazing that we say, "Wow...I just can't believe it!" We see right in front of us the evidence of what is true, but we still say that incredibly contradictory thing. 

Someone tells you that you look especially nice, ladies, and invariably the response is, "Really?"as if the person making the compliment was intent on lying to your face. Why is it so hard to believe when good things are said to us? Someone tells a guy that they are proud of him and the same knee-jerk reaction, "Really". Compliments, encouragement, affirmation...hard to handle.

Is it the same reason that it seems hard to actually believe God loves and cares for us?

Life is full of trouble and we've been duped to think an angry, vengeful Godis behind it all.

Yes, there are consequences for sin. There are spiritual laws as well as physical laws. Sin's wage is always death-dealing, distancing us from being able to lay hold on God's blessing. Or if you jump off a roof and the Law of Gravity exerts itself. The consequence is pain.

But you need to remember that we live in a world that is broken and that we can get hit hard and knocked flat and it has nothing to do with sin. Disaster, disease, betrayal and sorrow happen that have nothing to do with your choices. 

Our ancient enemy wants us to doubt goodness and blame the entire world's sorrow on God. Somehow we know deep inside that we don't deserve good things...since we broke the world. But then find it easy to blame God and hard to believe Him when He shows us He loves us.

The fact is, your Heavenly Father loves you without condition. When we rejected Him, He did not act like a petulant human and snub us back. He came on in all His glory pursuing us to the point that He entered into our humanity and ran purposefully, headlong into our death to destroy the power of sin that breeds death so we might become New Creations...New People...Really Alive Forever...Really and Eternally Loved by God. 

The gift God holds out in His nail-scarred hands is overwhelming. It has our name on it, but we must turn from unbelief and turn to Him. He calls us by name. He knows us fully. He really loves US!