He came to His own but they did not desire to receive Him.
He offered them the Way but they turned in a different direction – the wrong direction – and loved their lostness as they spurned His way.
He came to them as the Truth but they denied Him and prosecuted Him with lies.
As the Life, Jesus came to abolish their death but instead He heard them in a crowd cry out, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”
His followers abandoned Him.
His friends forsook Him. They had once said that they would never do that.
He was stripped from His earthly family and they were torn from Him.
He loved people unto the end and they rejected Him unto the death.
He who healed their wounds and afflictions was wounded and afflicted by them in return.
He who blessed them with His words was covered in their spit and pelted with their curses.
He opened their blinded eyes and they beat Him until His eyes were swollen shut.
Dying as the Lamb of God, the very religious system which had waited for their Messiah – waited for Jesus! – in the symbolism of lesser sacrificial lambs now scorned Him, mocked Him and executed Him for blasphemy.
The Perfect One drank the cup of the Father’s wrath for the ruined, sinful, dead ones. I am speaking also of myself as ruined, sinful and dead. He took the fullness of Father’s holy wrath against my sin.
The eternal Son of God experienced the dark agony of actual abandonment by the Father. It was not poetic rhetoric when He cried out “My God, why have You forsaken me?” It was horrific reality for Jesus.
He looked at His tormentors and repeatedly prayed “Father, forgive them. Father, forgive them. Father, forgive them.” When we had despised and rejected Him He maintained His mission to seek our highest good and interceded for us as our faithful High Priest.
The sun darkened. The earth shook. The veil in the temple split from top to bottom. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had taken the fullness of eternal fury into Himself and died under the weight of wrath.
Before He dismissed His spirit from His body, He declared that His work was complete.
“It is finished.”
Today as I had the opportunity to teach Adult Men Sunday School Class we were learning of the death of JESUS. Each of us was asked what was our feelings and mine came out automatically. Hurt, sadness, embarrassment because I so weakly put my Saviour on the Cross in my place. The last feeling I had was of Joy. Why, you may ask? I realized he went to the Cross in my place of his own choosing. He did it so I could accept him and Know that I was Justified from Sin. Through all of the wrong that the world still puts on him today, he is still willing to say Father forgive them if we turn and come to him and repent and give our all to him. Praise God in the Highest for the Son of God, JESUS.