Why Do We Call This "Good" Friday?

[I originally wrote and posted this in 2008. But it seems worth repeating on this Good Friday.]

"Why do we call this 'Good' Friday?"

That's what an inquisitive second-grader asked me once.

It's a sensible question. The day we commemorate as Good Friday, after all, brought multiple tragedies.

Good Friday, which this year falls on April 22, is when Christians all over the world remember the day when Jesus of Nazareth, the One we believe was the Messiah (that is, the Christ, God's Anointed King of kings) was crucified.

The Bible says that Jesus' death on a cross resulted from the rejection of the entire world, at least the entire world as known by Jesus' first-century followers: the people of God (the Judeans) and everybody else (the Gentiles), represented by the preeminent power of the day, the Roman Empire.

The prologue to the Gospel of John reminds us that Jesus was more than a human being. He was God enfleshed. Yet the whole world rejected Jesus. "He was in the world," John writes, "and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own [the world He made], and his own people [Jews and Gentiles] did not accept him." (John 1:10-11)

The day we call Good Friday then, wasn't only tragic because the sinless God and Savior of the world died a horrible death. It was also tragic because a human race in need of salvation rejected God's outstretched hand, spurned the love of God, turned away from God Himself.

But there is an even deeper layer of tragedy to the day. God the Father, the first Person of the Trinity, perfect and sinless, was separated from Jesus in those horrible hours when Jesus hung on the cross.

Why? Paul writes in the New Testament, "For our sake he [God the Father] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin..." (Second Corinthians 5:21). Jesus, in spite of His sinlessness, bore the weight of our sin. He embodied the sins of us all, taking our rightful punishment for sin. (Romans 6:23 tells us that "the wages of sin is death.")

God, in His holiness, cannot abide the mere sight of sin and on the cross, Jesus bore the total weight of all human alienation from God, all human distrust of God, and every misdeed, small and large, that's ever been committed or ever will be committed by the whole human race. God the Father simply couldn't look at Jesus on the cross because, utterly sinless though Jesus was, He voluntarily embodied our sin and took our punishment for it there.

There is a reason that Jesus did all this, which I'll address momentarily. But that reality can't in any way erase the awful agony Jesus endured, feeling utterly abandoned by the Father as He died on the cross. No more poignant words have ever been uttered on this planet than those Jesus cried out near the end of His earthly life, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46)

So, if Good Friday remembers that Jesus was rejected by the whole world and abandoned by God the Father, what could possibly be good about it?

That goes back to the reason that Jesus had for going to the cross. You see, the world thought in killing off Jesus, it was done with Him. Some of the more perceptive people who wanted Jesus dead understood that He was God and so thought that in killing Him, they were getting rid of God and God's rightful authority over their lives (our lives, too). (Jesus told a parable showing that this was the motive of many who sought His death, here.)

In short, they thought that Good Friday was all about what they did to Jesus. The subject of their sentences about Jesus' crucifixion would have been themselves. "We crucified Jesus," they would claim. Herod, the puppet king of Judea, known to have been a particularly violent, sadistic, and loathsome character, might have said, "I ordered Jesus' abuse. He was under my control." Pilate, the Roman governor, would have told anyone who would listen, "I exercised my power and had Jesus crucified."

But, in fact, the events of Good Friday unfolded precisely as God wanted them to happen. Jesus came into the world to die for us. That was always the plan.

This is something that the wise men from the East seemed to know even when Jesus was a baby. Among the gifts they brought was myrrh, an aromatic resin used to anoint the dead, hardly a fitting present for a baby when you think about it, a bit like giving a gift certificate from a casket factory at a baby shower.

After He began His ministry, Jesus made it clear that He was intent on going to a cross to His disciples. You may remember what happened the first time Jesus talked about this:

...Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” (Matthew 16:21-23)

In the night before His crucifixion, Jesus was brought to Pilate for questioning. But Jesus refused to answer. That resulted in this exchange between the two of them:

Pilate therefore said to him, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above... (John 19:10-11)

Jesus says of His life:

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. (John 10:18)

We call this day Good Friday because on the first one some two-thousand years ago, Jesus fulfilled God's plan. He took our punishment for sin and later, rose from death so that all who repent of sin and entrust their lives to Him will live forever.

So, the wages of sin is death, "but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23)

Good Friday is good because, just as it was the route through which Jesus moved to Easter, it's also the route through which all who believe in Him share in His Easter victory! It's because of what Jesus did on Good Friday for us, followed by God the Father raising Him from the dead, that you and I can confess our belief in the "forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting." Amen!

Passover and the Lamb of God, Who Takes Away the Sin of the World

Significant for Christians' upcoming celebrations of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter--and significant for us at Saint Matthew, where as part of our reading of the Old Testament book of Numbers for Read the Bible in a Year--is that, on the Jewish calendar, Passover, the feast Jesus and the disciples celebrated when He instituted Holy Communion, began at sundown this evening.

In Numbers 9:1-5, we're told:

The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying: ²Let the Israelites keep the passover at its appointed time. ³On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight, you shall keep it at its appointed time; according to all its statutes and all its regulations you shall keep it. ⁴So Moses told the Israelites that they should keep the passover. ⁵They kept the passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, in the wilderness of Sinai. Just as the Lord had commanded Moses, so the Israelites did. 

Passover begins on the 14th day of Nisan. Nisan is the first month of the Jewish calendar. By the reckoning of this calendar, new days begin at sundown. Today is the 14th of Nisan, 5771. 

Passover, of course, remembers the events recorded in Exodus 12. There, we're told of what happened when God sent a tenth and final plague to Egypt designed to gain the freedom of His chosen people--the Hebrews or the Israelites--from slavery. They had been slaves in Egypt for 430 years. The tenth plague came when God sent the angel of death to bring the deaths of all the first-born in Egypt.

The Israelites were spared though because, as God instructed them through Moses, they had previously smeared the blood of unblemished lambs on the doorposts of their dwellings. The lambs were offered to God in place of the firstborn Israelites. When the angel of death encountered the blood of the lambs, it passed over, ensuring that the first-born in those dwellings didn't die.

Blood, of course, carries life. In the Bible's account of the first murder, when Cain killed his brother Abel, God said that the blood of Abel cried out.

On the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur on the Jewish calendar, in Temple times, an unblemished lamb was offered as sacrifice signaling repentance and bringing reconciliation (atonement) with God, on behalf of the people. Its blood covered the sins the people committed fin the preceding year. As part of the rite on this day, the priest sprinkled the blood of the sacrificed lamb on the people. The blood of the lamb, in effect, called out to God and God passed over their sins. The significance of this can be seen when we consider the statement of a devout Jew who came to follow Jesus as Messiah, Lord, and God, the apostle Paul writing in Romans 6:23, "The wages of sin is death." By God's gracious intervention, the ancient Israelites were spared the proper "wages" for sin; God allowed the unblemished lamb to take the place of His people.

We Christians believe that just as the blood of unblemished lambs on the doorposts of the Hebrew dwellings in Egypt caused the angel of death to pass over God's people, leading ultimately to the Hebrews' liberation from slavery, the blood of Christ, covering the sins of repentant believers in Him, brings freedom from sin and death. 

Jesus is, as John the Baptizer put it, "the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world." And this sacrifice needn't be made repeatedly, as was true of the lambs of Yom Kippur. Jesus' sacrifice is effective once and for all. As the New Testament book of Hebrews puts it, Christ, the highest of priests, sacrificed Himself, so that all who repent and believe in Him are forgiven their sins, ever reconciled to God, and given everlasting life with God.


Paul puts the connection between the Jewish Passover and the Christian commemorations of Good Friday and Easter succinctly when he says:

Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed...(1 Corinthians 5:7, TNIV)

[Please also read Ephesians 2:11-13. Without faith in Jesus Christ, we stand outside a relationship with God. But we are brought near "by the blood of Christ."]

Jesus Brings Comfort AND the Demand for Allegiance to Him

In studying the text for this coming Sunday's sermon, Matthew 3:1-12, just read this from New Testament scholar, N.T. "Tom" Wright:

Jesus'...mission was quite different from what people sometimes imagine; the comfort and healing of his kingdom-message was balanced by the stern and solemn warning that when God comes back he demands absolute allegiance.

Many people, including many pastors and theologians, seem to want the Jesus of comfort and healing, but not the Jesus Who demands are absolute allegiance. Truth is, like the rest of the human race, I'd rather that Jesus didn't demand my allegiance. I would rather that He not demand my utter acquiescence to His Lordship and His will.

It reminds me of a joke I heard Mel Brooks tell once on The Tonight Show. According to Brooks, God originally gave fifteen, not ten, commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. When the Israelites saw that, they immediately claimed that was too many commandments. So, Moses went back to the top of the mountain to renegotiate with God. When Moses came back, the Israelites asked, "Well?" "I've got some good news and some bad news for you," Moses told them. "The good news is, I got God down to ten commandments. The bad news is that the no-adultery one is still in there."*

Jesus has come, as the New Testament reminds us, to free us from the condemnation of God's Law, as embodied in the Ten Commandments. None of us is capable of keeping God's commands and, if it weren't for Jesus, we would all stand condemned and bound for hell. "The wages of sin is death," is how the apostle Paul puts it in the New Testament book of Romans. But Jesus, God in the flesh, took the punishment for our sins. He calls us to repent and believe in Him and so be spared the punishment we deserve.

Yet Jesus also insists God's commandments are not to be ignored:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-19)

The good news is that Jesus, the perfectly obedient representative of the human race, destroyed the power of God's law to condemn all who trust in Him. The bad news--or at least, what we may see as bad news if we choose to hold onto some sins that God commands us to turn away from--is that, in response to this enormous gift, we're not just to give our total allegiance to Jesus. We also are, out of our gratitude, to seek to live obedient lives. (God gives the Holy Spirit to help us in this quest. But that's another story.)

The problem for those of us who want some of Jesus, but not all of Jesus, is that Jesus can't be divided. I can't let His comfort, healing or grace into my life without letting that other part of Him--the God in the flesh Who commands me to follow Him alone and obey the commands of God--into my life as well.

The forgiveness, life, and blessings that come as free gifts--examples of what the New Testament, in its original Greek, calls charitas, grace--are absolutely free. We can do nothing to earn them.

But if we want to take them from Christ's hand, it will entail laying aside every other allegiance we have, whether to ourselves, our families, our jobs, our possessions, our countries, or anything else.

Each of these things will have their places in our personal priorities, their importance often changing depending on circumstances. But Jesus says that, if we're to have His comfort and life, none of them may take first place.

Consider this speech where Jesus' insistence on "absolute allegiance" to Him is given in "stern and solemn" tones:

Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. (Luke 14:25-33)

Jesus is not here commending the emotion of hatred. In Semitic languages like Aramaic, which Jesus spoke in everyday conversation, hate was a comparative word, a priority word. He is saying, "Unless you love Me more than you love your mother and father, husband or wife, etc., you can't be part of My kingdom." Those words are "stern and solemn" enough. But He is not commanding us to hate our relatives! (Or anybody else, for that matter.)

Some will wonder whether Jesus isn't exhibiting some kind of megalomania here, demanding allegiance to Him. Jesus once said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6). If Jesus is the only means through which the power of sin and death over our lives can be destroyed, it's hardly an act of arrogance on Jesus' part to insist on our allegiance to Him alone. If the only way for a drowning man to get to shore is to hold onto the lifeguard, you would hardly call the lifeguard arrogant for saying so to the thrashing victim.

Our problem, of course, is that we're control freaks. We want the Jesus Who will love us as we are, but we're not as keen to have the Jesus Who sets out to make changes in the lives of those He saves. But Jesus leaves us no choice in the matter: We will either have all of Jesus or we will have none of Jesus.

May God give me the grace, faith, and courage to choose all of Jesus every day. And if life with God is what you want, may God give you these things, too!

*You can read the real story of God giving the Ten Commandments and other commands to Moses in Exodus, chapters 19 to 24. Brooks later incorporated something of this joke into his movie, The History of the World, Part 3. Only there, his Moses held three tablets, one fell from his arms, and Moses announced that God had given "these fifteen...[one tablet falls] Oy! Ten commandments for all to obey!"

The Best News We'll Ever Hear

[This sermon was prepared for worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

The Gospel Lesson: John 8:31-36
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.  ^3233343536

Whenever I read the words of our Gospel lesson, I think that Jesus sure knows how to kill a celebration.

Earlier in chapter 8 of John’s Gospel, from which today’s Gospel lesson is drawn, Jesus called Himself, “the light of the world.” He promised that, “Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” In these words, Jesus was staking His claim to be “the true light, which enlightens everyone…” Jesus was claiming that He was God in the flesh, come to be the Messiah and Savior of the world. The crowd, composed of Jesus’ fellow Jews, was excited. The verse just before our lesson says that, “As [Jesus] was saying these things, many believed in Him.”

Many believed in Him! That was the idea, right? Jesus came into the world to gather a people who believed in Him. He had said it. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him…” Many believed in Jesus. They had signed the contract. They bought the T-shirt. Mission accomplished. Let the party begin.

But Jesus couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had to explain what it means to believe in Him. You see, Jesus isn’t an unscrupulous advertiser who tries to divert our attention from the fine print. He’s not a politician of the conniving kind who says that she or he can’t possibly go into details on what they will do in office until after they’ve been elected. He’s not the scheming suitor who hides his true nature until after the honeymoon. Jesus practices truth in advertising. With Him, everything is up front. No hidden charges, no gimmicks.

But His timing is strange. Take a look at the first two verses of the Gospel lesson in the Celebrate insert. Just as the crowd is cheering, we’re told: “Then Jesus said to the Jews who believed in Him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly My disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

The crowd skips over the words in those two verses that might trip us up. Many in today’s world claim that, contrary to the witness of the Bible, everybody has their own versions of the truth and that every version is swell, no matter what God has said.

Had many post-modern folks been listening to Jesus that day, they might also have recoiled at the notion of “continuing” in Jesus’ Word; that sounds too much like an ongoing commitment.

They might also have been offended by Jesus saying that anyone needs to continue in His Word, the revealed Word of God. After all, many today would say, there are so many words not uttered or endorsed by Jesus, not found in the pages of Scripture. Many would rather treat God's Word like the menu at a cafeteria, picking what words they want to continue in and which they'd rather ignore.

Had other contemporary folks been there to hear Jesus' words, they might have been turned off by the idea of being His “disciples”—His followers, His students. That sounds like a call and a command from Christ to subordinate our egos and desires to Christ alone. (Which, of course, it is.)

Something else Jesus says in those verses is what caught the attention of the Jews in who believed in Jesus, though.

They didn’t like Jesus’ promise, “the truth will make you free.” Look at what they said in verse 33 of our Gospel lesson, “They answered Him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free?’”

“Free?” they ask Jesus indignantly, “Who needs to be free?” They claim that they have never been slaves to anyone! That, of course, is a lie. The whole history of the Jewish people had been riddled with slavery. They had been slaves in Egypt for 430 years. The Babylonians and the Assyrians had conquered and enslaved them for many more years. And, even as they recoil at Jesus’ insinuation that they need to be set free, these Jews are living under the harsh dictatorship of the Romans, a kind of slavery.

Folks, people who are addicted to alcohol or drugs of any kind like to say, “I could quit any time I like” and then keep on using. Some people who are drowning in debt rail against the wastefulness of others, then take extravagant vacations and buy baubles they can’t afford. Some adults speak disparagingly of the unhealthy practices of young people who get tattoos or they say drink too much while themselves endangering the bodies and lives God gave to them by ingesting thousands of unhealthy calories and walking just enough to find the remote before falling asleep in the Lazy Boy. The point is, as the saying goes, denial is more than a river in Egypt. Like all these modern examples I just cited, the Jews in our Gospel lesson are in massive denial. They are slaves, but they won’t admit it.

And at this point in our lesson, they’re also in an uproar. How dare Jesus say that they needed to be free? But Jesus makes clear in verse 34, that He’s only begun to insult them. He says that they are slaves at even deeper and deadlier levels than they might imagine. Look at that verse, please. “Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.’”

Let me take a little survey. (And please do not, under any circumstances, raise your hands. I will collect your responses telepathically*.)

How many of you have sinned—and by that I mean, violated one of the Ten Commandments—in, say, the past year?

How about in the past week?

How about since you arrived here at the church building this morning?

Now, I’m going to make the assumption that all of us gave honest answers and announce the results. It’s a landslide that would make any politician happy this coming Tuesday: 100% of us said yes to every single question. Of course, the bad news is that, according to Jesus, that makes all of us slaves to sin.

“The trouble with saying that out loud,” one commentator writes, “is that many people in the Western world are bored of hearing about sin. They think it just means offences against someone else’s morality.” But, he goes on to explain how the sins we commit, however seemingly minute they appear, enslave us. “When people rebel against God in whatever way, new fields of force are called into being, a cumulative effect builds up, and individuals and societies alike become enslaved just as surely as if every single one of them wore chains and was hounded to work every day by a strong man with a whip.”

Whenever we wander from the plan of God for truly human living—in other words, whenever we sin, we give away parts of our souls.

Like a junkie moving more deeply into the clutches of addiction, with every sin, we become more enslaved to sin. And each sin we commit makes the next one that much easier to commit, that much harder to avoid.

That might not seem horrible. We might be willing to accept slavery in exchange for the pleasures that sin offers us in this life. After all, we commit sins not because we're repulsed by them, but precisely because they're so attractive to us, precisely the things we want to do when we do them.

Being slaves to sin might be OK if this life were all there was to our life, if sin brought pleasure and no eternal consequences.

But we know better. In one of my former parishes, a man came to see me and confessed that he had been conducting an affair with another man’s wife for ten years. “I know I should want to stop,” he told me, “but I enjoy it. Every time I vow that I won’t see her again, she calls and we end up planning to meet again. I can’t seem to break free and I know that, eventually, I will face God and pay the price. But right now, all I can think of is how much I want her.” With tears in his eyes, he looked at me and asked, “What can I do?”

In twenty-six years of ministry, I’ve heard that man’s question—“What can I do?”—from countless other people. That cry of enslavement has come from each of them, whether their particular sin was insensitivity to their spouse, gossiping, misusing God’s Name, thievery, envy, or covetousness. “What can I do?” All these people have known the truth of what Paul writes in the New Testament book of Romans: “The wages of sin is death…”

In the sixteenth century, that truth haunted a German monk and priest named Martin Luther. Brought up in a Church that, like many modern church bodies, conservative and liberal, put human traditions and human reason on a par with the revealed Word of God, Luther had done all the things that the Church of his day told him to do: penance, purchasing indulgences, self-abasement.

But he still felt far from God, enslaved to sin, certain that he would go to hell.

Luther’s life was changed though, when he came to understand a deeper truth recorded on the pages of the Bible. It’s the truth to which Jesus points in our Gospel lesson this morning. Look at what Jesus says in verses 35 and 36. “The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there [in the household of God] forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Do you know what I told that man who asked, “What can I do?” The same thing I’ve told all the other people who have ever asked me that question, the same thing I’m telling you now: “You can do nothing. But if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Through His life, death, and resurrection, Jesus has done everything needed to free us from the power of sin and death over our lives. We simply need to keep believing—keep trusting in Him. We need to continue in His Word.

When Luther realized that God sets free all who entrust their lives to Jesus Christ, he said that the very doors of heaven opened to him. The same can be true for us.

“So what?” we may wonder, “After all, this isn’t heaven.” This sure isn’t heaven! But the certainty of heaven belongs to all who believe in Jesus Christ and that can set us free to live this life with a love and a passion and a boldness that no poet has ever imagined and no brave warrior has ever experienced.

In 1984, Archbishop Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize. In the country of South Africa, where Tutu lived (and still lives), many Christians churches claimed that the oppressive system of apartheid, in which blacks were treated as slaves, was ordained by God. In the Name of Jesus Christ, Tutu rightly called any "Christian" justification for injustice a lie. For his opposition to apartheid, he received death threats every day. Tutu was asked why he risked death. He couldn't help it, he said, injustice is wrong in God's eyes and it must be opposed. "Besides," he added, "death is not the worst thing that can happen to a Christian."

All who believe in Jesus Christ know that heaven is their home. And knowing that sets us free to live this life to the full, no matter what the cost, no matter the opposition.

All who are set free by Christ know that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God.

Luther wrote about this in his great hymn about spiritual warfare based on Psalm 46, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. Listen to the words of the final verse:

God’s Word forever shall abide,
No thanks to foes, who fear it;
For God Himself fights by our side
With weapons of the Spirit.
Were they to take our house,
Goods, honor, child, or spouse,
Though life be wrenched away,
They cannot win the day.
The Kingdom’s ours forever!

Christ can set us free forever. We do nothing to gain our freedom. Christ has already done it all. All we must do is believe in Him.

The Reformation is a call to the freedom that belongs only to those who by faith in Christ are learning to, "Let go. Let God!" That's our call today: "Let go. Let God!" And knowing that by entrusting our lives in Christ we can let go and let God, is the best news that you and I will ever hear! Amen!

*I am kidding about the telepathy stuff, by the way, just in case anyone misses the attempt at humor.

When Jesus Made My Muslim Friend "Feel Good"

Today's installment from the Our Daily Bread devotional speaks of what we do for others when we praise God. That set me to thinking. I wrote the following in linking to the piece over on Facebook:

A Muslim friend once asked me to come to a funeral visitation. His brother-in-law had just died. I was able to show up just before the public calling hours began and before a class I was teaching that night.

I spent some time with my friend and his family. He then guided me to another room in the funeral home so that we could speak privately. He thanked me for being there and then asked me what I believed happened to human beings at the point of death.

Long ago, I learned to be upfront about what Jesus, the Bible, and the Church teach about issues when my non-Christian friends ask. So, I told him that while I couldn't know everything for sure and that while I was certain that God will respect the choices of those who overtly reject Christ during this lifetime, one day we will all stand in the presence of the risen Jesus for "judgment."

But judgment will not depend on our "good works" or on being "nice people." I know myself, at least, and I am aware of all the sinful thoughts I've harbored, all the inhumane deeds I've done. I know my sins and that no cosmic eraser is big enough to alter the simple fact that I'm incapable of being righteous, incapable of being good enough to live--let alone, stand--in the presence of the perfect God of creation. I don't deserve heaven with God.

In a very real sense, Jesus won't even judge us. Jesus said, "God did not send the Son [that's Jesus] into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Those who believe [trust] in Him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the Name of the only Son of God" (John 3:17-18). We will judge ourselves, effectually, and be judged on whether we have dared to trust the goodness of Jesus, whether we have given up on trusting in ourselves or the world more than we trust in God, whether we repudiate our sins and grasp hold of Jesus Christ as our only hope.

Martin Luther put it well. At the judgment, Luther pointed out, Jesus will look on two different throngs of people, both throngs composed of sinners. But one throng will stand naked in their sin. The other throng will stand covered with Jesus. My hope for eternity, I told my friend that night in the funeral home, was not based on my works or my goodness, which are negligible at best, but on Jesus Christ alone.

I went on to explain that my relationship with Christ gave me confidence and hope for the living of each day, it softened my heart to the needs of others for justice and compassion, and it emboldened to me serve in Jesus' Name without regard to the opinions of others. (That is, my relationship with Christ does these things when I don't allow myself to spend too much time contemplating my own navel, worrying about my priorities, or worshiping at the altar of Mark.)

It wasn't clear to me how my friend would react to my answer to his question. In answering him, I tried to abide by the words of Saint Peter who told the oppressed churches of Asia Minor: "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence" (1 Peter 3:15-16). I wanted my friend to know that, like God, I loved him and cared about his family, whether he chose to trust in Jesus or not.

We talked about some other things. Then, it was time for me to go. I hugged my friend. As we approached the door of the funeral home, with tears in his eyes, he said, "Mark, I don't know what it was exactly, but something you said back there made me feel really good."

The truth about Jesus Christ can make us feel miserable, of course. Knowing that a just man who committed no sin died on a cross for my sins is an indictment of every member of the human race. Our sins put Jesus on that cross He didn't deserve. We deserved it instead.

But the compassion of Christ, the fact that He undertook this act of self-sacrifice for us and that all who repudiate their own sin and trust in Him (and commit themselves to the lifetime struggle against their own sin to which all Christian saints/sinners are committed) "makes us feel good." It brings joy and peace and hope!

The Bible says, "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). And in another spot it says this gift comes to all with faith (Romans 3:21-26).

Whenever we praise God, as I tried to do in that funeral home room with my friend, we really do it for others. (This is true, even in our private times with the Bible and prayer to God, because these things fortify our faith and fill us again with the infectious love, grace, and truth of the God we know in Jesus.) Our gratitude to God for Jesus Christ, swelling up in words and deeds, as well as in "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs" can bring hope and strength to all people...and it may plant the seed of a new life that will last forever with God. 

Share Jesus! The world needs Him...and Jesus is counting on you to help others "feel good" for all eternity!

"As followers of Jesus Christ, we want the words that flow from our hearts and out of our mouths to be...life-giving..."

That's a quote from today's installment from Our Daily Bread. It's worth reading. The New Testament passage on which it's based is Ephesians 4:25-32:

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. ²⁶Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷and do not make room for the devil. ²⁸Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. ²⁹Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. ³⁰And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. ³¹Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³²and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

These words from God's Word imply, among other things, that we are both to lovingly tell others the truth about the reality of our sin AND the truth about Jesus, Who brings forgiveness of sin and everlasting life to all who believe in Him. 

Whether we tell it to those who are part of the Christian family or to those not yet experiencing the new life that only Jesus Christ can give, everybody needs to hear and to be reminded of the truth that "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). We also need to hear and be reminded that:

the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets [that is, by the two major strands of Old Testament writings], the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood effective through faith...[God] justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26)

God's call and command that we who follow Jesus "speak the truth in love," also means, in Martin Luther's words in his explanation of the Eighth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" that:

We are to fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, or lie about our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain his actions in the kindest way.

I don't mean to imply that the sort of truth-telling to which believers are called is in any way possible to do when we rely on our own will power or strength of character. The self-reliant can never, in the guts of everyday life, experience the truth of the promise of Jesus that "with God, all things are possible." 

In the face of derision and the pressures of "political correctness," we all would rather do almost anything than speaks God's truth...and usually will. 

But we can tell the truth and come back to the truth that Jesus calls us to tell and to live when we rely on God. God-reliance will always empower us to to be the people that self-reliance only deludes itself into thinking it can achieve!


When it comes to sharing the truth about sin and forgiveness, about life and death, about heaven and hell though, we Christians are all to be proclaimers of the truth. 

Some will be called to tell it from the pulpit. Others are commissioned by Christ to tell this truth while kicking back with friends in those conversations that, as conversations with good friends always do, drift into the subjects that really matter. 

We Christians who withhold the truth about Jesus, that He is, "the way, and the truth, and the life," from our neighbors--even the "neighbors" in our own homes, the "neighbors" with whom we watch ball games, shop at the mall, share cubicles at work, or have a drink--are not fulfilling our sacred obligation or experiencing the unique joy that comes from telling others about Jesus. 

In that sense then, every Christian is commissioned by Jesus, in a sensitive and caring way, to be a preacher of the good word--the good news--about Christ. Paul puts it simply in Romans:

...how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are hey to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?...not all have obeyed the good news [that is, believed in the gospel that life and forgiveness come to those who repent of sin and entrust their lives to Jesus Christ]; for Isaiah [the Old Testament prophet] says, 'Lord, who has believed our message?' So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of the Lord.

Beyond this special and important truth, we are to tell all truth to others, not in a desire to hurt, but to build up others. When tempted to "tell the truth" about those we dislike or who dislike us, those whose integrity or intelligence we may question, and anyone with whom we may be angry or not in sync, the Ephesians 4 passage tells us that we should consider a great option: Keeping our traps shut. This is true whether we're speaking to them directly or when speaking to others about them.

By all means, when we have conflicts with others and the cause, the relationship, and the stakes are important enough to us, we should lovingly "have it out" with the other person. Otherwise again, we should keep our traps shut.

It's passages from God's Word like Ephesians 4, that make my daily prayers of repentance so long!

They're also the reason behind one of my most frequent prayer requests. In many situations I face, I ask God to cause me to speak the right words and to keep the right silences and to know the difference. And I find that when I trustingly get out of God's way, God answers that prayer.

That's how I know, by the way, that God does impossible things: I've learned that God can use an imperfect sinner like me to bring His life to others. If that's not some sort of miracle, I don't know what is.

Faith Tidbit #55

On the first Christian Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus' resurrection, the Holy Spirit came to a group of 120 of Jesus' first followers, who, as instructed, had gone to Jerusalem to await the Spirit's arrival.

But Who exactly is the Holy Spirit?

Jesus and the Scriptures reveal the Spirit to be the Third Person of the Trinity. Christians believe that there is just one God of the universe, but that this big God has three distinct, co-equal, and interdependent personalities: God the Father; God the Son (Jesus the Christ); and God the Holy Spirit.

Be advised though, that the term, Trinity, never appears in Scripture, and that the concept was only understood after the first Christians had experienced all three persons of the "Godhead." That's because, as Billy Graham writes in his classic book, The Holy Spirit, "God unfolds his revelation of Himself in the Bible progressively." Like a would-be groom wooing a bride, God took centuries to reveal Himself and His true nature to humanity, beginning with the mother and father of ancient Israel, Sarah and Abraham; then to their descendants to whom He gave the Torah and the promise of a Messiah; then, definitively in that Messiah, Jesus; and at Pentecost and beyond, in the Holy Spirit Who convicts us for sin, convinces us that the grace offered in Jesus can erase the power of sin and its consequence, death, over our lives, creates faith within the willing, and empowers us to live faithfully each day.

And yet, through the eyes of faith, on this side of Jesus' cross and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we can look back and see that the Spirit was always present, always active, even if He is, as the title of a book of essays referred to Him as the "shy member of the Trinity."

Shy may not be the right word. It may be better to say that the Spirit doesn't like to call attention to Himself. If the servant heart of Jesus is demonstrated in acts we can readily visualize, in things like washing the disciples' feet, in dying a criminal's death on a cross, that same servant heart is expressed by the Holy Spirit in pointing away from Himself. His burden and His mission is to point us to Christ as the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus was describing the Spirit when He told the eminent teacher, Nicodemus, that, to live in God's kingdom, sinful humans must be born from above "of the water and the Spirit." And responding to Nicodemus' incredulity at such an absurd and incomprehensible assertion, Jesus told the old man, "Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:7-8)

In the days before weather satellites and Doppler radar, the wind--be it the wind of a hurricane, a desert sirocco, or a gentle breeze--showed up and left without notice. The wind is still, to this day, beyond our control.

That's a good picture of the Holy Spirit. In fact, in the Greek of the New Testament, the word for "spirit"--pneuma--can be translated not only as spirit, but also as wind or breath. The same is true of its Hebrew equivalent in the Old Testament, ruach. The "Spirit of God" makes His first appearance in the Old Testament at its beginning, in Genesis 1:1-2, where we're told, "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ²the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind [ruach] from God swept over the face of the waters." He shows up again in Genesis 2:7, where the very breath [ruach] of God brings life to the first human being.

The actual term "Holy Spirit" appears only three times in the Old Testament, but each is telling. In his prayer of confession, Psalm 51, David asks God not to take God's Holy Spirit from him. David recognizes that without God's Spirit, life is impossible, though a lifeless, joyless existence might go on. In Isaiah 63, in two places, the prophet recalls how God's people first grieved the Holy Spirit and voices the conviction that the Holy Spirit is the life-giver.

During His time on earth, Jesus repeatedly promised the Holy Spirit to His followers, His Church. What the Holy Spirit has done and is doing in the days since the first Christian Pentecost will, hopefully, be the topic of this next Tidbit.