Journey Through Holy WeekSample

From Death to Life

You’re watching Jesus on the cross. His body is severely bruised and He can barely breathe. But as the day draws to an end, He pushes Himself up in order to cry out: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

And then, He dies. In Jesus’ last moments, His Father —the reason Jesus willingly went to the cross—leaves His Son.

Why?

Once a year, the Jews took part in the Day of Atonement. On this day, the High Priest sacrificed a perfect goat and sprinkled its blood on the Most Holy Place (the place in the temple where God dwelled) to cleanse Israel of all their sins.

Afterward, the priest took a living goat and metaphorically placed all of Israel’s sins on its head. Then, the goat would get released into the wilderness, taking Israel’s sins away with it.

“The life of the body is in its blood. …It is the blood, given in exchange for a life, that makes purification possible.”

Leviticus 17:11 NLT

The shed blood of a perfect animal identified the Israelites as pure, which allowed God to forgive and dwell with them. But the sacrifices never permanently made people right with God. They just symbolized Israel’s continual separation from Him.

That’s why God sent them a permanent solution in the form of His Son. It’s because He loved the world that Jesus sacrificed His life for ours. His blood was given in exchange for our lives, and so the moment we accept Jesus as our Savior, we are forgiven and cleansed from our mistakes.

This makes us alive with Jesus because the “life of the body is found in its blood”—and the global Church is Jesus’ body.

Jesus became the final sacrifice of atonement by taking on all of humanity’s sins onto Himself. He allowed Himself to be separated from His Father so that we would never have to be separated from our Holy Father.

So today, spend some time reflecting on what Jesus’ death on the cross means for you. What next step do you need to take to draw close to God right now?