I Am Alive

They call it, "Good Friday," but I don't know why.  The man who triumphantly proclaimed ... "I am alive" ... must have thought otherwise.  It certainly wasn't a good day for Him.  I want to revisit this so-called Friday when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane and is betrayed, arrested, and tried.  From there it only gets worse for Him. 

Start with the Roman army who were not known for compassion but rather brutality, and they were good at it.  Jesus was just another Jew to them, so starting to make sport of Him, they spit in His face, beat Him with their fists, and even ripped out part of His beard, which most of the Jewish men grew.
 
And then there was the scourging that He received at the hand of Pilate.  The beating itself brought Jesus almost to the point of death as Pilate made an effort to try and satisfy the Jews lust for blood.  And blood is what they got.  A Roman scourging was ordinarily very severe, and not limited to the forty stripes the Jews usually gave.

Some scholars are of the opinion that Pilate himself scourged Jesus with his own hands, because the Apostle John wrote … "Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him."  (John 19:1) 

The punishment of scourging was horrible.  The victim would have been bound with chains to a low pillar, stripped naked and beaten with a flagellum, a whip with leather thongs tipped with lead balls and sharp spikes called … scorpions …  appropriately named because of their painful sting.  Jesus would have been a bloody mess after having His back torn open from the metal ripping and tearing His flesh. 

But this was just the beginning on this, "Good Friday."  There was nothing good about it.  They mocked Him as the King of the Jews by placing a crown on His head that was made of sharp thorns one to two inches long.  Placing it on His head isn't the correct word … it was forcibly jammed into His scalp, sliding, scraping along the skull under the skin, most likely penetrating down the forehead to His eyebrows.
  
In minutes His head started swelling from the bleeding under the skin, darkening the already bloody facial tissue making Him unrecognizable even to His mother and Mary Magdalene, both of whom stayed by the cross to be as close to Him as they were allowed.  All of His disciples, except for John had forsaken Him and fled out of fear.  Even God the Father turned His back on Jesus.

As a mother watching all the events as they unfolded through the night and next day, imagine what Mary must have felt as she sees her son taken and nailed to the cross.  The pain in her soul, the anguish, the gnawing agony and emotional torture on her whole being … did she know this was coming when she watched Jesus play as a child?  Three decades earlier she followed God's will and gave birth to the Son of God … but this?

Mary has been called ... "The Mother of God" ... and rightly so I guess because she gave birth to Jesus, who was God in flesh.  Just as God cannot cease to be Holy, Jesus did not cease to be God when He took upon the form of a man … for God cannot be less than what He is.

It has also been said that God died on the cross … but God cannot die … although Jesus the man did.  Those three hours on the cross, hours of excruciating pain and torment; if that wasn't enough, God placed every sickness, every disease, every sin of man, past, present and future, upon Jesus while He hung on the cross. 
  
When Jesus gave up His spirit like we all will someday, His dead body became cold and stiff just like any other man.  After His body was taken down from the cross, He was buried in a borrowed tomb.  Why borrowed?  Because He wouldn't need it very long. 

Resurrection day was coming in three days.  The first Easter morning.  The heavy stone that covered the tomb had been rolled away to show the world that Jesus came forth just as He said He would.

Good Friday is an important day for the Christian church.  But it would be just another tragic day of someone's death ... if not for Easter ... resurrection Sunday.  If Jesus had not walked out of that tomb, good Friday would be meaningless ... having no significance or purpose.  Jesus would have died for nothing.

The greatest three words any man has ever spoken, came from the lips of Jesus when He said in Revelation 1:18 ... "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore ..."

"I Am Alive"                                                                




Comments will be posted by moderator.