This is the hour He pours out His passion for you.
This crucifixion moment in history is an international, global, cosmic event, this heralding Jesus as king not to only one people, but as King of the world, the Cosmic King whose very Kingdom is not of this world.
He bears His cross for you, but it is you He is carrying.
Slung across His bloodied, pulpy shoulders, that cross beam weighs more than 100 pounds.
But the brokenness and sinfulness of the world, your world, crushes Him immeasurably.
That’s what Pilate had inscribed: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews,” on a placard that was customary for the condemned person to wear, stating name and nature of his crime. But that was the charge: not that He merely claimed that He was the King… but that He actually was.
Written in three languages, Aramaic, Latin, and Greek, this moment in history is an international, global, cosmic event, this heralding Jesus as king not to only one people, but as King of the world, the Cosmic King of the universe whose very Kingdom is not of this world.
Love came down — and Love laid down.
Arms flung along that cross-beam, the supernatural hands that flung stars across the canvas of whole galaxies are slam-nailed with a spike that was formed from the iron ore that He Himself created in the depths of the very planet He came to visit.
God with skin on comes to this sod, God with skin on visits this planet, God with skin on is more than theology — God with skin on stepped into literal geography to experience personal intimacy with you.
When He lays His own shredded back down on the wood, He does it not because He was forced, but because the Lamb of God willingly lays down His life, for His friends, for you, to cover your brokenness and sinfulness with His perfectness, to cover you with a robe of rightness and make you His bride.
The One who is Love, is slain by love, for love, Love-slain for you.
Arms flung along that cross-beam, the supernatural hands that flung stars across the canvas of whole galaxies are slam-nailed with a spike that was formed from the iron ore that He Himself created in the depths of the very planet that He came to visit.
And then God in the flesh lets seven-inch spikes pierce the heels of His feet, the only feet to ever have walked across teeming waves, to become the very only Way, your only daily way.
Three unadorned, ardent words. Like another three words, like this is Christ’s cosmic:
“I love you.”
And right in the center, there’s the linchpin of everything, the Passionate King: He who is centre of the universe, centred in history, centred between hope & all kinds of hell, centred between God & all of humanity, centred between restoration & all kinds of condemnation, centred between abandonment & at-one-ment.
The Apostle John’s letter need not explain or embellish the horrors of crucifixion, it simply states the most arresting story:
The created crucified their Creator.
Cicero, the Roman noble, spoke of crucifixion as unspeakable, as worse than beheading or burning: “What shall I say of crucifying…? An act so abominable it is impossible to find any word adequately to express.”
There are no words when you slay the Word.
Humanity crucifies God.
It’s not hate that drove us to crucify God. What caused the crucifixion of God is all our other flimsy loves, all our cheaper passions, all our love-affairs with all the betraying things of this world — that all stirred the passion of God to lay down His bare beating heart on the altar of that wood to woo and win us back to Him.
God surrenders to death by crucifixion to create communion.
The whole of the world is represented here in this moment, with Jesus at the centre:
On one cross, to the side, there’s needy repentant who’s saved… and on the cross on the other side, there’s the self-reliant who’s unsaved.
And right in the center, there’s the linchpin of everything, the Passionate King: He who is centre of the universe, centred in history, centred between hope and all kinds of hell, centred between God and all of humanity, centred between restoration and all kinds of condemnation, centred between abandonment and at-one-ment.
For six agonizing hours, the God who hung the sun, hung in the sun, while ravenous vultures circled and swooped and swiped at His open flesh, but love drove Him to the very nth degree and death to let nothing pluck us from His hand.
When He who gave breath couldn’t bear to heave one more searing breath, the only One who can dwell in a human heart suffers an explosive heart-attack of love for you.
He’d been the one to bend low to kiss warm breath into the lungs of humanity and now, naked and physically fastened to a wooden pole, His every heaving breath is a fireball of agony ripping through lungs, until He who gave breath can’t bear to heave one more searing breath, and the only One who can dwell in a human heart suffers an explosive heart-attack of love.
Your Lamb bleeds out… for you.
Behold, your Lamb of God, who gives Himself to takes away the sin of the world — to take away your every sin and take you.
God has always sacrificed for you. Love has always sacrificed for you.
Sacrifice in Hebrew, korban, literally means to draw nearer. The passion of God, Love Himself, has always sacrificed Himself for you, to always make a way to be nearer to you, intimate and close, to take care of you.
He took fire so you could walk free. He took violence so you could be victor. He took hell, so you could be healed. Your sin hurt Him far sharper than any spike and He let the horrors of satan take a swipe at Him so that every one of our horrific sins could be wiped clean.
Behold, your Lamb of God, who gives Himself to takes away the sin of the world — to take away your every sin and take you. God has always sacrificed for you. Love has always sacrificed for you.
This is the moment He came for: The Lamb bleeds dry on a Cross, to birth a new kind of family into being in the cosmos. His very own.
Christ let Himself be bound to the Cross, so that our hearts could be bound to His forever. This moment is the remaking of the cosmos. This moment is the remaking of the ultimate meaning of relationships. He was conceived into skin, for the passion of the Cross, to conceive a communion of passionate followers to be with Him always, the body of Christ, the family of God, with an Abba Father, with our brother, Christ, with our very own Comforter, the Spirit, with a family of brothers and sisters, kin, around the globe, and all through history.
This is what makes this singular day in history not only good, but unequivocally the best:
At the Cross, He offers to cover all your shame and covers you with a new family name: Christian.
Because of the Cross, you get the gift of a new family and the gift of being found not guilty.
Through the Cross, He takes all your brokenness and erases all your deepest aloneness.
Back at the moment of His very first miracle, at the marriage feast of Cana, He had turned to His mother and whispered, “Woman, what have you to do with me? My hour is not yet come” (John 2:4).
And then, throughout the rest of the Gospel of John, his mother Mary is a quiet, humble follower, faithfully, though namelessly, following Jesus in the company of other disciples — until this moment. Until this moment when she shudders now in the gruesome horror of Golgotha — when His hour has actually come.
He shed His blood to make you His blood. You get to never be abandoned because He abandoned everything to be with you, and His atonement on the Cross was for at-one-ment with you.
And when Jesus sees His mother who swaddled Him as a naked babe, now witnessing Him crucified as a naked man, He whispers it between cracked and bloodied lips,
“Woman, behold, your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!”
From His earthly beginning, to here at His earthly end, Jesus doesn’t call her Mother — she who loves Him the most intimately, is ultimately known simply as a follower in the family He is loving to death, to give new life, a follower who said right from the Son of God’s very first miracle, “Whatever He tells you, do it” (John 2:5).
And now He gives her, His mother, to another disciple, and gives that disciple to her, as her son, and He blesses them as a family of followers that goes beyond blood kinship, because He went beyond and gave His blood to graft them into His very body.
He shed His blood to make you His blood.
You get kinship, because of His crucified Kingship.
You get to live forever in a new kind of family of love, because the Son of God loved you to death.
The veil in the temple tears from top to bottom, because the heights of Heaven couldn’t contain His divine love for you. And now, in this moment, you get to walk straight into the deepest Love you’ve ever known.
You get to never be abandoned because He abandoned everything to be with you, and His atonement on the Cross was for at-one-ment with you.
Isn’t this more than not merely Good Friday, but Best Friday, because what could best being loved to death and back to like this?
How could anyone keep a love like His to themselves when He gave all of Himself, how could anyone be shamed to share a love like this when He took all of our shame, how could anyone hesitate to hold back the good news on Good Friday, when He let go of everything to hold us for forever?
The passion of your pashal lamb for you forever seals it with a tender kiss: You will now never be passed by, and, because of His Love, the angel of death and blame and shame will pass over you forever.
And Jesus cried, “It is finished, it is done, it is complete“…
because His love for you is forever complete.
And the Lamb of God takes His last breath on the Cross for you and the veil in the temple tears from top to bottom, because the heights of Heaven couldn’t contain His divine love for you.
And now, this moment…. you get to walk straight into the deepest Love you’ve ever known.
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