Living the Cross Centered Life (3)

It's hard to think of a better book to have been reading in the month leading up to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday than Living the Cross Centered Life. We should always be meditating on this stuff, and yet, anniversaries, memorials, and celebrations are wonderful reminders for us to focus and pay attention because this is important. Because today is Good Friday, I am going to hopscotch my way through the book, highlighting a few passages that just deserve to be highlighted any day of the year, but on Good Friday especially.

A holy God can respond only in furious wrath to sin; how much more so when the sin is persistent, intrinsic evil! How could He ever forgive, pardon, save, and be reconciled with those who are entrenched and enslaved in such blatant hostility toward Him? (63)

Because of God's amazingly gracious heart toward those who thoroughly deserve only His wrath, He both planned for and provided this mediator to resolve the divine dilemma. In the mystery of His mercy, God--the innocent, offended party--offers up His own Son to death, to satisfy His righteous wrath and save the guilty party from it. (70)

With whom do you most identify in the events of this dark day? I identify most with the angry mob screaming, "Crucify Him!" Unless you see yourself standing there with the shrieking crowd, full of hostility and hatred for the holy and innocent Lamb of God, you don't really understand the nature and depth of your sin or the necessity of the cross.(86-87)

When we begin to grasp that we joined that mockery--that we are to blame for the Savior's death--we start to understand the seriousness of our sin.(88)

Easter cards are pretty and are nice to send to people. But the cross doesn't grow out of a cluster of spring flowers tied together with ribbon. Let's not skip the horror and bloodshed and guilt of Friday, or we'll totally miss the resurrection-bringing joy of Sunday.


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