Two verses before John 3:16, the best known verse of the Bible, Jesus says he will be like the snake Moses lifted up (John 3:14). Jesus alludes here to the Old Testament story where the Israelites were bitten by snakes because of their disobedience. God tells Moses to make a bronze snake, put it up on a pole and everyone who looks at it will be saved.
Good Friday is a day to look at Jesus on the cross. As I did last year, I ask myself how can I look for very long at the torture, the brutality, the hideousness of it all? Must I look? Isn’t it enough to be thankful for how much Jesus loved me in suffering this gruesome death? The answer is no, not for those who seriously follow Christ.
We must look for two reasons. Firstly, to see the depths of unfathomable love and secondly, to see the depths of human violence and sin that we might be truly penitent i.e. have godly sorrow.
Having said that, we must see more than just the earthly spectacle of the cross. We must see into the invisible realm as well. Jesus, I believe, gives us a hint concerning how. When Jesus first meets one of his twelve disciples, he tells Nathaniel he will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon Jesus himself (John 1:51).
What can angels ascending and descending upon Jesus possibly mean? Jesus told Nathaniel he would see that when heaven was opened. Well, where was heaven opened to us? At the cross. There, the barriers of evil and sin were done away with. Never-ending communication between heaven and earth became a possibility.
So although we see gut-wrenching pain and evil on Good Friday, we also see angelic beauty and heavenly love that draws us up the ladder into itself.
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