Good Friday

There’s a hill near where my parents live that stands up out of the plain.  It’s probably an old volcanic cone.  An old family trust owns it and from time out of mind there have been three crosses on the top and the local Catholics hike up there on Good Friday.  This year my father and a few of his cronies in the ward are going to join them.

Like this

Good Friday as the traditional name for the day of the Savior’s death is a bit ironically  named given the traditions surrounding the day.  In medieval Christendom, all Fridays were considered to be dark and unlucky because of Good Friday.  They didn’t eat meat on Fridays, as a form of mourning fast.    In their church services the candles were snuffed out.  The processions were woeful.

Which was and is entirely appropriate.  The rhythm of mourning on Friday and rejoicing on Sunday is right and natural.  We are joining the early apostles and saints in their sense of defeat after defeat on Friday, with the wholly unexpected shattering victory on Sunday.  Even with our knowledge that Christ’s agony and cross were essential to his work, you can’t easily think of death and torture as good.

But there is an important sense in which today’s Friday is  Good Friday.  There is an extremely important sense in which on this day Christ won victory after victory and Sunday is not an  unexpected reversal but the climax win of a Man who has won and won and won again.

Today Christ defeated sin.  He defeated his fears.  He perfected his work.  He triumphed in the Garden.  He beat Hell in the spirit.

Then again on the cross.  He beat Hell in the flesh.

He trod the winepress alone and overcame.

Let me point out just a couple of the ways He triumphed–these aren’t the most important things that can be said about the atonement but they are often overlooked.

1.  He overcame fear.  When Christ prays that if it were possible the cup be taken from him, He is experiencing as He ought full mortal fear.  Then He adds “thy will be done” and moves forward.  Right there he has experienced to the fullness one of the greatest human weaknesses–no one has ever had as much to fear as Jesus did–and beat it.
2. Though He has 12 legions of angels at His beck and call, He let himself be led like a lamb to the slaughter.  One of the great human temptations is to trade away actual power for the immediate experience of having power or the trappings of power.  We call this unrighteous dominion.  Christ had a greater contrast than any other son of Adam has ever had between the power He could have had in that moment versus the powerlessness He let Himself experience, and He won that fight this Friday.  One of the perennial human temptations is to reach a local optimum–to climb to the top of some lesser hill–and then stagnate/damnate because true progress requires going back down and giving up the height you have already reached.  We all fall prey to this.  On Friday, Christ did not.  He could have been–and was–a god with legions of angels at his command.  It is a great thing to be.  Instead He chose to be–and was–the Savior and Ruler of all.  That is a greater thing.  That is the greatest thing.  On the cross He was lifted up in every sense.  Behold your God.  You see Him, bleeding, suffering, His body breaking down, helpless, almost dead, dying, dead–and what you see is total mastery.  This crown of thorns is the crown of the universe.  These wounds are regalia.  This cross is the throne.  This it the King.

JG Good Friday Links

The 116 Lost Pages, Laban, and Christ

The Strange Doctrine of the Double Atonement: Why Both the Garden and the Cross?

Nuts and Bolts of the Atonement (For nerds only.  Reminder that the Atonement is real, you can just experience it, and experience is better than explanation)