It All Points to JesusSample

Friday, April 18

Darkness

By Marney McNall

Editorial Manager

“I and the Father are one.”
John 10:30 (ESV)

From noon on, darkness came over the land. On that first Good Friday, darkness took many forms. It coated the sky; it came in the form of wickedness, as the Enemy threw every weapon that he had at Jesus to try to make him fail in his mission to save humanity. But far worse was the darkness that would eventually shut Jesus off from the light.

When Jesus was crucified, he suffered excruciating pain on many levels. We often think of the physical because it’s the most obvious—how he was scourged to the point his skin was flayed open, how he was nailed through his hands and feet to hang and slowly suffocate, the weight of his own body making it harder and harder to refill his lungs.

The Enemy made sure Jesus also suffered the mental and emotional pain of betrayal, of being mocked, of being abandoned, of being placed between two thieves, a mockery of sorts of the Trinity he has always been a part of. He even had to witness the anguish in his own mother’s eyes as she stood at the foot of the cross, watching him die.

Yet, with all that, there was something far harder for him to endure. In the surrounding darkness, around three o’clock, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As hard as it was for him to breathe, this must have taken the last breaths from his lungs. His sudden cry shows the extreme agony he was in.

The weight of the sin of the world had fallen on Jesus, separating him from God for the first time—ever. Not only in his human life of thirty-three years but for the first time in his entire existence as part of the triune God, the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. “I and the Father are one,” he told the Jews that past winter in the Temple (John 10:30). But as he paid the price for our sins, Jesus was shut off from the light and delivered into total darkness, utterly separated and alone. He chose to take this punishment, so we wouldn’t have to—so that we wouldn’t experience eternal separation from God.

“It is finished” (John 19:30) were Jesus’ last words before he died and released his Spirit. But those words give us tremendous hope. Through the horrific separation he experienced, he bridged the gap between God and humanity. He fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, the Savior who would save his people. God was not cruel in sending Jesus to save humanity. In the mystery of the Trinity, what hurts one, hurts all. God sent himself to save us.

Reflect

Jesus suffered tremendously to offer us this incredible gift of reconciliation. Have you accepted it?