Passion: The Last Moments of Jesus' LifeНамуна

If ever there was a horrible Friday, it’s the Friday we call Good Friday.

Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase – or even seen the movie –The Passion of the Christ.

Like many words over time, “passion” has evolved in connotation and weakened in meaning. The central origin implies far more than enthusiasm or desire. It is the extent and price you will suffer for something or someone. The word “passion” came alive – and is still alive – around the world because a man named Jesus came and was willing to suffer as no man had ever suffered.

All for love.

All for you.

Not in some muted, watered-down, religious, technically-He-loves-the-whole-world-so-I-guess-I’m-lumped-into-that sort of love.

No. You.

God. Loves.You.

Specifically. Fiercely. Uniquely. Ardently.

What we just saw on the Cross is the display of the power of love—God’s unconditional goodness, mercy, compassion, and affection toward you.

Try to sit in that for a minute. Swallow it. Receive it.

“God so loved the world….”

God so loved you, that He…

Don’t know if you’ve ever had a case of the “so loves” with a spouse or child. But that’s God with you. It’s hard to receive. That’s why Paul got on his knees years later and begged God to open his friends’ eyes to just how vast, high, long, and deep Christ’s love for them is. That they would have a revelation. That they would get it that:

“There is no greater love than this: that a person would lay down his life for his friends.” - John 15:13 NIV

“God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” - Romans 5:8 NIV

We could sit at the foot of the Cross together for eternity and have our minds continually blown by a thousand different things. Insights we never saw. Another prophecy was fulfilled. Another dazzling dimension of Jesus.

But today, if we don’t see anything else, how about this - His eyes looking into yours - from the Cross.

In those eyes, the pain. The pain of everything you have been through, everything you’ve done. The shame that has come because of what you’ve done. Or what’s been done to you.

Everything in you will want to look away. And for a good reason. It is the universe’s greatest shame that small, sinful men and women took the holy, glorious Creator of every galaxy and treated Him with contempt. Lifted Him onto wooden beams to torture Him. It is painful to see His naked body gasping for breath and bleeding, His face unrecognizable from thorns and beating blood.

But most painful is to look in those eyes and to know it wasn’t His sin that put Him there. It was our sin that put Him there. And yet, in a weird way, maybe most painful of all, those eyes don’t look back at you with anger and hate. They look at you through pools of endless love. They look at you and whisper into the deepest, darkest places of your heart –

“You have unending value.”

“Your story isn’t over.”

“You can be forgiven and changed.”

“Today is proof that the worst moments and worst things ever done can be soil for the most beautiful things to come.”

Today, hear God’s voice deep down inside you – “regardless of everything you’ve ever done, I still love you.”

The Cross is proof.

The Cross forever stands in the garden of our minds as evidence that God is in control. That God has a plan. That God still forgives.

That God is love.

REFLECTION QUESTION

Why is it so hard to believe Jesus loves us so?