When Jesus died on the cross the mercy of God did not become any greater. It could not become any greater, for it was already infinite. We get the odd notion that God is showing mercy because Jesus died. No–Jesus died because God is showing mercy. It was the mercy of God that gave us Calvary, not Calvary that gave us mercy. If God had not been merciful there would have been no incarnation, no babe in the manger, no man on a cross and no open tomb.
Good Friday
Richard J. Foster
Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God’s great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it.
Author Unknown
It is not for us now to rush ahead to Easter. Rather, it is necessary for us once again to undertake the surrender to Jesus of all of our false expectations and selfish hopes. It is necessary for us to watch as our sin burdens him and bears down on his head like a crown of thorns. It is necessary for us to see him die as the Lamb of God who absorbs the sin of the world and bears it away. It is necessary for us to suffer patiently the dark night of sorrow and death, if we are to enter the brilliant new light of Easter and receive the eternal life offered to us in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Peter Abelard
Our redemption through the suffering of Christ is that deeper love within us which not only frees us from slavery to sin, but also secures for us the true liberty of the children of God, in order that we might do all things out of love rather than out of fear – love for him that has shown us such grace that no greater can be found.
Edwin Peterman
The only way you can be delivered from that sin is to have your false expectations destroyed, once and for all. And that is precisely what happened between Palm Sunday and Good Friday. Jesus drew the false, sinful expectations of the world unto himself, absorbed them, and bore them on the cross. His death was the death of all of our false expectations, and therefore his death was the death of sin itself. The false piety of Palm Sunday is crucified on Good Friday and buried that night, in order that true faith in God might be created on Easter through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Billy Graham
God proved His love on the Cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, ‘I love you.’
John R. W. Stott
As we face the cross, then, we can say to ourselves both, “I did it, my sins sent him there,” and “He did it, his love took him there.”
Gene Edwards
Consider Jesus. As you are crucified, watch Him handle His crucifixion. Your Lord bequeathed to you an example of the high art of being crucified. Behold how He reacted to betrayal, to lies, to false witnesses. Jesus Christ absorbed these pains, even as they added the shamefulness of being crucified in public. Humiliated, degraded, defamed, tortured and then murdered. That day he raised acceptance of the cross into an art form. He learned to accept all things from the hand of His Father.
Richard J Foster
Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God’s great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it.
Kris Vallotton
When Jesus died on the cross, the soldiers placed a crown of thorns on His head. Why thorns? God wanted to make it clear that the curse over mankind in the Garden of Eden was broken by Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. No longer would our efforts be doomed from the start; no longer would we work hard, yet not reap the benefits of our labor. From the time of our redemption on, it would be true that “whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.”