This is Good Friday, but it wasn’t good for Jesus. It was
indescribably terrible, when He who knew no sin became sin.Last night I was reading the story of Jesus’ Upper Room ministry to His disciples. Right before He washed their feet (including, of course, Judas’), John said this: Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist (John 13:3-4, my emphasis).
What? All things were given into His hands? Did the “all
things” include His own impending torture, death, and separation from the Father by being
identified with the filthy sin of all God’s elect?
Yes, it did. Jesus said of the laying down of His life: No one
takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay
it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received
from my Father (John 10:18).
The worst thing imaginable happened. The best Man who ever
lived, the only truly innocent man, was
charged and convicted by false testimony of crimes He never committed. The
kindest, most loving, Man our race will ever know was cruelly humiliated and
tortured, and then slowly put to death.
Somehow, in ways I cannot untangle, the worst thing that
ever happened was the best thing that ever happened.
I know people who have had the “worst thing” actually happen
to them. Loved ones die, awful disease afflicts, women are
brutalized, evil people abuse little children.
Our God really is in charge of all things, yet without being
the author of sin. Scripture says that the worst things that happens are still
held in the hands of Jesus. I don’t fully understand, but it helps that those hands have nail prints in them.
Christ's worst thing became Good Friday. It became the complete payment for the sins of His own, and opened heaven to people like me who were sliding to hell.
I believe that in His timing, wisdom and love, the worst things that happen to us will become best under His kind and all-powerful hands. Hallelujah, what a Savior!
