Picture your most treasured relationship and think about how much you love this person.
Imagine you’ve known this spouse, family member, or friend for 50 years, and you’ve never had any notable relational conflict.
Imagine all the precious time spent with this person and the fond memories you’ve made during your 50 years of life together.
Imagine this relationship being severed abruptly, your loved one rejecting you and blaming you for things you never did.
Can you imagine the deep, inexplicable pain this relational devastation would cause you?
Now, fathom a relationship that has lasted for all of eternity pastwhich has never experienced even the slightest disruption in perfect love, harmony and relational intimacy.
Fathom that both of these persons had endured heinous crimes for thousands of years, committed by people whom they loved but had rejected and despised them.
Fathom one of these persons agreed to be held accountable foreverything these people committed against them.
Fathom the convicted had never been guilty of the slightestcrime or wrongdoing – ever.
Fathom the only way to justly deal with these crimes requiredthe other offended person to punish and reject the other.
Fathom the offended having to unleash their wrath and condemnation upon their beloved for the crimes of people who despised them.
Fathom these innocents enduring the ultimate soul-devastating price of a severed relationship on behalf of their enemies.
Hopefully this very imperfect, incomplete comparative analogysheds a little light on the magnitude of what God the Father and God the Son endured on that Friday long ago. We often focus on the physical pain and mockery by men that Jesus endured, and we often neglect both the pain God the Father endured in punishing his perfect Son, and the agony Jesus endured as the condemned. Jesus’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his crucifixion was over the “cup” he would have to endure. He asked the Father if there was a way this “cup” could pass from him. What is this “cup,” precisely? The cup of God’s wrath was known to Jews, used several times in the Old Testament (Isa 51:17,22; Jer 25:15), as well as described in Revelation 14:10 and 16:19, as an analogy for the wrath of God that would be poured out to deal with sins.
Perhaps this adds new depth to your understanding of the great sacrifice the Father and Son endured on your behalf? Regardless, don’t let this opportunity pass to thank Him for the depths to which God went to deal with your sin and mine, so that we might also know a relationship in which someone loves us perfectly, unconditionally and unceasingly. As Jesus told us during one of his last recorded prayers before enduring the cross(found in John 17), the Father loves us, just as he loves Jesus. Christian, God has dealt with your sin, he holds no condemnation over you – you are free because of his Good Friday sacrifice!
