Jon-Mical pitched yesterday against a very good team from Youngstown, Ohio. He pitched well, going 6 1/3 innings, giving up 5 hits and 2 walks, with 2 strikeouts. We won 11-4. And I suffered through most of the game. There is a unique form of suffering that grandparents endure at ballgames or band concerts. It is empathetic suffering. We take the pain on behalf of our grands. Every missed pitch, every wrong note, every forgotten line, or dropped baton, is felt by grandparents watching their grandkids perform. Not because we are disappointed in them, or expect some sort of perfection from them, but because any pain that they feel, we experience in our own hearts. Jon-Mical really wanted to finish the game, but with just 2 outs left, and after having thrown 99 pitches, he was done. His coach took him out. We were winning 11-2. I knew he did an amazing job. But I could see the pain on his face, and I just felt for him. Yet, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
Today is Good Friday. We began Lent 6 weeks ago, anticipating this day. We start Lent, many of us, by taking on some form of suffering. Usually nothing terribly dramatic, but some small reminder of pain; giving up a favorite TV show, not drinking iced tea, in my case, writing a blog every day. (I don’t know if that is my pain or yours.) The interesting thing is that our voluntary suffering ends, not on Easter, but on Good Friday, the day that we remember the unmeasurable and unfathomable pain that Jesus voluntarily took on for our sakes. The reading for today is Isaiah 53. Verse 5 says, “He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed.” We watch from the bleachers, stand on the sidelines, and go through our Lenten sacrifices to try to empathize, on a minuscule scale, with what He took on for us.
The amazing difference is this. The suffering that Jesus experienced was not empathetic; it was literal, personal, actual. He felt every whiplash, every thorn, every nail in His human flesh. And it was vicarious. The vicarious part of the Passion of Christ was the punishment. What He took on for us by accepting the pain and agony of Good Friday was the price for sin, the result of the Fall of Adam and Eve in the garden, and the result of the sin in my own heart (yesterday when that umpire called a ball on one of the best 3-2 curveballs any high school kid has ever thrown). Jesus suffered, not to take away my suffering, but to take away my sin.
There are a few ways that we can look at that.
One important idea is called Penal Substitution. Jesus took the punishment for sin in our place, satisfying God’s justice. Just like the animal would be sacrificed in the Old Testament to satisfy the price that had to be paid for the sins of the Israelites, Jesus had to die on the cross in our place so that we would not have to. Good Friday highlights the cross as the place where Christ bears the penalty of sin. The darkness, the cry “It is finished” (John 19:30), and the torn veil all point to a completed payment and restored access to God. The verse that we quoted earlier says, Isaiah 53:5 – “He was pierced for our transgressions…” 1 Peter 2:24 says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.”
Another view of the suffering of Jesus is called Christus Victor. Jesus defeated the powers of sin, death, and Satan through His death and resurrection. It is not so much that sin is a debt that has to be paid as it is an enemy that has to be overcome. From the beginning, when the serpent tempted Eve to eat the apple, there was a cosmic battle taking place between Good and Evil. Though it appears to be a moment of defeat, Good Friday is actually the decisive battle where Christ confronts evil head-on. The cross becomes the turning point in the cosmic victory that is fully revealed in the resurrection. Three verses come to my mind.
Colossians 2:15 – “He disarmed the rulers and authorities…”
Hebrews 2:14 – “That through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death…”
Corinthians 15:55–57 – “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
The final, more modern view of the purpose of Good Friday is Moral Influence. The idea is that what really needed to happen was for our eyes to be opened to the fact, as Pastor Eddie Turner used to say, “God good, devil bad.” Jesus’ sacrificial love revealed God’s heart and inspires us to repent and live in love. Jesus told His disciples in advance, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13). Paul explained later in Romans 5:8, “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Good Friday displays the depth of God’s love in a way that moves hearts. The cross becomes not only something done for us, but something that calls us to transformation—“take up your cross and follow me” (Luke 9:23).
Here’s a simple way to remember these ideas (they are called theories):
- Substitution – Jesus dies instead of us
- Victory – Jesus defeats our enemies
- Influence – Jesus changes our hearts
And which one is right? Well, if you know me, you know my answer is all of them. Each theory captures a different facet of the same diamond. Good Friday holds them together: justice satisfied, evil defeated, and love revealed. The pain that Jesus volunteered to take on, and that we try to empathetically experience in Lent, addresses every angle of our fallenness and God’s incredible grace. In fact, it not only addresses God’s grace, but it IS God’s grace. Richard Rohr uses the phrase “necessary suffering.” We would not be recipients of God’s plan of salvation without the suffering of Christ, and we cannot fully know it without some suffering of our own. And of course, the best news of all is Easter, which means suffering will end. So Paul says, “But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (I Corinthians 15:57). And the hymn writer says, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Lent ends. Good Friday comes and goes. Suffering stops. Easter changes everything. Someday, when we all get to heaven, umpires will have 20/20 vision and call only strikes when my grandson is pitching.
Thanks for being a part of these 45 Days of Lent. If you missed some (or want to know more about Jon-Mical’s pitching), go to branchesblog.com. Also, the first Extending Branches podcast will drop this Tuesday, and as usual, watch for MondayMatters, a 6-7 minute vlog, every Monday. All of these things can be connected to at branchesblog.com or on my Facebook page. Subscribe to get notices of new stuff.