Good Friday

For the past couple of weeks in preparation for Easter, I have been reading Frederick Leahy's "The Cross He Bore". The book consists of 13 meditations on the suffering of Christ beginning in Gethsemane and ending with the outer darkness. Many times while I was reading this book, I was overcome with gratitude and a desire to worship. I don't think that any of us can fully comprehend the magnitude of the sacrifice that Christ made. I tend to focus more on the physical suffering that he experienced with the floggings, the crown of thorns and the crucifixion. As horrible and awful at they were, the spiritual suffering that he endured was much more painful and sorrowful to him than his physical suffering.

Jesus repeatedly refers to himself drinking from the cup. "Shall I not drink of the cup that the Father has given me?" (John 18:11). The cup he is refering to is the cup of God's wrath for the punishment of sin. The wrath of God is not a subject that we hear about very often, but it is very real. I heard R.C. Sproul say recently that there is an idea in our culture and in our churches that God's love swallows His wrath. This is not the case. We have a holy God and because he is holy he cannot and will not ignore sin. In Jonathan Edward's famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", he compares the wrath of God to water that is stored up behind a dam that is about to burst. He also uses the imagery of a bow and arrow with the arrow bent and ready to be released. It is only because of God's grace and mercy that He holds back his wrath. But he will not hold it back forever.

In the second chapter of Leahy's book he says:

"Here in Gethsemane, we see the sinless, finite humanity of Christ in deep and terrible distress. Calvin said that Christ had horror at the prospect of death because 'he had before his eyes the dreadful tribunal of God, and the judge himself armed with inconceivable vengeance; and because of our sins, the load of which was laid upon him, pressed him down with their enormous weight..."

He drank the cup of wrath that should have been ours and will be for those who have not trusted in Christ for their salvation.

"Now he gives to his people 'the cup of salvation' (Psa 116:13). These two cups, one so bitter, the other so sweet, stand side by side: the one cup necessitated the other. One cup was emptied that the other might be filled to overflowing. The first cup guaranteed the second. Both cups are precious and bear the hallmark of sovereign grace. ' What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD (Psa. 116:12,13).