HOW TO TAKE ON THE NATURE OF CHRIST

Good Friday commemorates the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was the day when He was nailed to the cross. You may wonder why that Friday was called ‘’Good’’ Friday. According to the Bible, ‘’Christ died that He might bring us to God.’’ (1 Peter 3: 18) God became Man in Jesus Christ and made the final sacrifice at the cross for redeeming mankind from the power of sin. It was also an act of reconciling sinful man with a holy God.

The Passion of Christ, the popular film, might convey a bit of the gruesome physical suffering Jesus underwent on the Cross; but His emotional suffering, while being accused of blasphemy and treason, two charges leveled by the Jewish authorities, can not be overstated. He died the death of a criminal between two other thieves who hung on a cross on either side.

The greatest man that ever lived was murdered while he was only 33. He had healed the sick, raised the dead, made the blind to see, fed thousands of people and taught men such lofty ideals as the world had never been taught. No man had spoken like Him. He was a friend to those whose lives were strained by sin. He spoke of the love of God to sinful men. It was the religious leaders who plotted his murder. No one stood by Him. All these happened in accordance with the prophecy. And from the Cross He prayed for the enemies who had crucified Him saying: ‘’Father forgive them for they know not what they do!’’(23:34)

The Messiah suffered and died and rose again on the third day. Since then, his disciples had been preaching the message of repentance and forgiveness of sins throughout the globe, beginning in Jerusalem.

The talk of ‘’sin’’ and the call for repentance have never been popular. It is equally strange that the Cross, which is a cruel instrument of torture and a symbol of suffering, should become the symbol of a religion.

This is not part of human wisdom. As theologian Reinhold Biebuhr wrote in his book, The Kingdom of God in America, ‘’We want a God without wrath who took man without sin into a kingdom without justice through the ministrations of a Christ without Cross.’’

The cross stands as a mystery. In the words of an eminent evangelist Ravi Zachariah, the cross is foreign to everything we exalt—self over principle, power over meekness, the quick fix over the long haul, cover up over confession, escapism over confrontation, comfort over sacrifice, feeling over commitment, legality over justice, the body over the spirit, anger over forgiveness, man over God.

Crucifixion in a man is intended to end the dominion of self and exaltation of the spirit so that the person takes on the nature of Christ, putting to death, his old sinful nature.

Christ’s Cross, according to John Henry Cardinal Newman, ``has put its due value upon everything which we see, upon all fortunes, all advantages, all ranks, all dignities, all pleasures; upon the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. It has set a price on the excitements, the rivalries, the hopes, the fears, the desires, the efforts, the triumphs of mortal man…It has taught us how to live, how to use the world, what to expect, what to desire, what to hope.’’

We forget so easily that in the spiritual life there must be the darkness of the night before there can be the radiance of the dawn. Before the life of resurrection can be known, there must be the death that ends the dominion of self. It is a serious but a blessed decision, this willingness to say, "I will follow Him no matter what the cost. I will take the cross no matter how it comes!"

Of course, Jesus knew from the very beginning that He had come to this earth to die for the sins of humanity. He also knew that He would make this sacrifice on a Roman cross.

‘’If living a good moral life would get us to heaven, then Jesus would have never died on the cross for us. But He did die, because there was and is no other way. He had to pay the price for our sin,’’ argued Thomas A Kempis, a theologian of the thirteenth century.

And then there is only one fitting response to God’s love. As a hymn writer puts it: ``Love so amazing, love so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.’’