On this Good Friday, my heart cries out as I read of the Crucifixion and hear Pilate's cry echo out to the Crowd, "Behold the Man!" Oh the sin of it all, as they murdered the Son of God! Behold the Man, beaten to a pulp, with a crown of thorns on His bloody head, a robe of scarlet thrown onto his wounds. They placed a reed into His hand and mocked the King of the World. Behold the King! We have no king but Caesar, the high priests said. Oh Israel, who led you in the wilderness to a land you did not know and made you a people of His own possession? "We have no King." What irony that as they accuse God's innocent Son of blasphemy they themselves deny God!
Only a few days ago, they had cried "Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!" (Mark 11:9-10) And now those same voices cried out "Crucify Him!" No one really understood why Jesus came. They wanted an earthly King, who would restore them to earthly power and wealth and freedom from the Roman oppressors. They did not want a Crucified Savior. A broken and bloodied man hanging on a cross. They did not want the spotless Lamb of God. So few understood that that was why He came. John cried out, in the very beginning, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29) He understood what so many did not, that Jesus' purpose was established before the foundation of the world. Christ came to take away our sins and make us right with the Father. And that took going down the dusty streets of Jerusalem, carrying a cross on His weary, aching back, stinging with wounds. His face, covered in blood, sweat, dirt and spit. He took it all in silence, because this was why He came.
Behold the Lamb! At a distance, the women stood who had followed Him and loved Him. His mother, Mary Magdalene, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. The sons of Thunder. I remembered her request to Jesus, that her sons sit on His left and right hand at the coming of His kingdom. Now, as He hung on the cross, lifted up for all to see, with a thief on His right and left, did she remember her request? Did she see now what she had asked for her sons?
It was a wicked, dark day, as Jesus hung on the cross. Did the disciples remember, as they hid within the crowd, that supper they had taken together? Did they hear His voice in their ears, "My body, broken for you! My blood, poured out for you!" I remember today, as I sit 2,000 years later. I cannot fully grasp the horror of that hour, as Christ's life was drained out, bearing my sins. But still, those words ring out for me as it does for all of us, each and every day. "Behold the Man!" He died for me and you! Behold the suffering Lamb of God upon the Cross. He is the hope of the world; He is the answer for dying, aching humanity. He has taken every sin and all of God's wrath upon His innocent head. The agony of the Cross is my deliverance. Because the Cross is only the beginning of God's salvation for us. There is still Sunday coming. There is an empty tomb. We can behold the Risen Savior in all of His glory. We can say with Mary "I have seen the Lord" (John 20:18). And nothing can ever be the same. Because "the love of the Crucified has touched the springs of our being," and now we walk in the light of the resurrection morn.
