Holy Week Devotional 2022Sample

The most famous of all the Psalms is Psalm 23. This psalm is famous for many reasons, particularly because it describes God as the great shepherd of our souls. Despite the fact that we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we need not fear any evil because God is with us. God is the shepherd who makes us “lie down in green pastures” and guides us to “still waters” (Psa. 23:2). With his rod—his scepter—and his staff—a shepherd’s crook, David says, “you comfort me” (Psa. 23:4). Because God is in control, we can find rest and comfort even in the most dangerous places. Even there, God ensures that we are cared for; he is the one who prepares a table “in the presence of my enemies” (Psa. 23:5). Despite the fact that enemies gather around us, we have a place at the table of the King. When the Lord referred to himself as the good shepherd, he was bringing all of these images to mind. The very God about whom this psalm was written is the Lord Jesus who has come to live among his people.

As our shepherd, Christ leads us—he goes before us—into the valley. One of the great comforts we can find, particularly when we face dangers that seem too much for us to bear or too deadly to overcome, is that Jesus does not stand at a distance. On the contrary, he is the one who walks before us everywhere we go. Every step of the way, we only ever go where Jesus himself has gone.

For all of us, whether we know the Lord or not, the greatest of all unknown dangers is death itself. I’d venture that many of us, at one time or another, may find ourselves anxiously meditating on death, with a niggling fear we can’t quite shake that it might not be “sunshine and roses” on the other side. Death is not like other doors we might walk through, where we could hold someone else’s hand and make the journey together. It is a great blessing to die with our hands held by loved ones, but the fact remains: we meet death by ourselves and we don’t get to bring anyone else along for that particular journey.

From eternity, Jesus has been the beloved Son of the Father. He did not speak any of his own words, but only what the Father told him to say. In the midst of hostile crowds, surrounded by enemies, again and again the Father spoke from heaven, declaring that Jesus is his “beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 17:5) and elsewhere that he would glorify himself as his Son through his death (John 12:28). Jesus knows the Father and “we have seen his glory as of the Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). At the moment of his death, the Lord shows us the way through the fear of death saying, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

For all of us that are in Christ, we have been fully adopted into the household of God, but not merely as add ons. We are those who have been united to Christ. We are “in Christ.” For this reason, we aren’t regarded merely as second or third born children. In Christ, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:6). In Christ, the Father loves us as if we were his firstborn. Indeed, the life we live is no longer our own: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

Though we are made of dust and subject to doubts and fear, Christ is the shepherd who goes before us. The church father Irenaeus says it this way, “He did not reject human nature or exalt himself above it. [Becoming] an infant among infants, he sanctified infants; becoming a child among children, he sanctified those having this age… becoming a young adult among young adults, he was an example for young adults and sanctified them to the Lord… Lastly, he came even to death so that he might be ‘the Firstborn from the dead,’ himself ‘holding primacy in all things’ (Col. 1:18), the Author of life, prior to all and going before all.”

When we pass through the threshold of death, it will not be an end, nor should we face it with fear. The Author of life and the Lord of glory has gone before us in all things, securing our path along the way. Because Christ has gone before us, offering up his Spirit to his faithful Father, death has now become the doorway to eternal life and never-ending peace.