When I was a little girl, I hoped Jesus wouldn’t return for a while.
At least not until after I could drive. And graduate. And get married. And have babies. Life was too good to want anything cut short. I wanted salvation from hell — but not really from sin, and especially not from the world it so corrupted.
I assume this is the case for anyone with untested, childlike faith. It’s only natural. The bad news that we’re all sinners who deserve death in hell, and the good news that Jesus died to pay the debt for all who repent and believe in Him, are simple enough truths for kids to grasp. Indeed, Jesus commanded his adult followers to let the little children come to Him.
But it isn’t just spiritual death that results from sin. It’s death, period. And until you come face to face with this kind of death and the other gruesome effects of sin, such as pain, decay, violence, and spiritual warfare, it’s hard to truly understand what you’ve been saved from and saved for.
That’s what’s on my mind this Good Friday.
We’ve all seen things we aren’t supposed to. Children left suddenly without their parents. Parents burying their children. Car accidents. Medical accidents. Workplace accidents. Lost battles with cancer. The effects of suicide. Mass shootings and terrorism. Accidental overdose. Senseless violence. Miscarriage. These things startle us not just because they’re scary or evil or unexpected, but because we were never meant to experience them in the first place. They feel contrary to God’s design — because they are.
In the beginning, everything was “good” because a good God made it that way. Man was fashioned to live in harmony with God and woman and creature. There was no sickness, no death, and no pain, only beauty, life, and light.
But sin quickly entered and, with it, death and decay. In Paul’s telling, “[J]ust as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”
As a child, life felt a lot more like Eden. As an adult, it can seem more like hell. But on Good Friday, we’re reminded that the holy Son of God experienced the effects of sin on this Earth too. Not only that, but He willingly took my sin — and, if you repent and believe in Him, your sin — upon Himself. Forsaken by His own Father, He bore God’s full wrath for sin on the cross. Here’s Paul again: “God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” The Apostle John breaks it down even more:
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
That’s why a day all about death can be “good”; it’s the only death that could reconcile man to God once and for all. But the best part about Good Friday is that it’s followed by Resurrection Sunday. Death didn’t get the final word in the life of Jesus, and it doesn’t get the final word for all who believe in Him for salvation.
So today, as you gaze upon the cross of Christ and ponder His shed blood, take heart that the death we were never designed to experience has been ultimately defeated. “It is finished.” We know how the story ends. The tomb will be empty soon.
