The PassionNäide

I remember this feeling standing outside a fancy restaurant as a teenager: well-dressed people, velvet ropes, and a sense that this place wasn't for me. We live with barriers everywhere: locked doors that keep us from opportunities, distances between friends that prevent real connection, and that persistent sense that the divine feels frustratingly out of reach.

The religious leaders watching Jesus die understood barriers all too well. For centuries, a thick curtain hung in the temple, symbolically delineating God’s presence in the Most Holy Place from the rest of the world. Death meant finality - bodies went into tombs and stayed there. And this bleeding, broken man hanging on a cross? Surely this couldn't be God's Son. The barriers between heaven and earth were defined. However, in this moment of apparent defeat, we see that through the cross, God tears down barriers.

The massive temple curtain - was torn in two from top to bottom - not by human hands, but by God Himself. Tombs were cracked open, and saints who had died were raised to life. Perhaps most remarkably, the Roman centurion - a man trained to see death as routine who had overseen countless executions - was compelled to acknowledge what others had missed: "Surely he was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:54, ESV)

In that moment, everything changed. The curtain that had separated humanity from God's presence lay in tatters. Death revealed itself not as an ending but as a conquered enemy. Even a pagan soldier recognised what Jesus had accomplished.

This is the promise of the Gospel: God is not distant, sealed behind some cosmic curtain. He is Immanuel - God with us, intimately involved in your life and active in the world. Death is no longer the end but a doorway into eternal life, and you too can live with the centurion's confident declaration echoing in your heart: Jesus Christ is truly and surely the Son of God.

The barriers are gone. You are His beloved child. Your place is secure in Him.

Today, ponder this: Where have you constructed barriers in your walk with God that Jesus has already torn down?