Good Friday

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."

~Hebrews 4:15

The God of the universe became man and dwelt among us, and yet so often our tendency is to feel like God could never really understand what we're going through. He can't empathize with what it means to be human.

Today, I was thinking about how the cross reminds us that Jesus can, in fact, empathize not only with our temptations but also with our sufferings. He came in the strength of weakness to take on the suffering of the world. He was betrayed, He was beaten, He was forsaken. That is what Friday teaches us--that Jesus is the suffering servant, who identifies with our suffering because He suffered more than we ever could.

Sunday is a day for celebration. Saturday opens the door for our grief, shows us we are allowed to sorrow, and reminds us that God holds space for our suffering. But Friday is not about our suffering but about the suffering of God Himself.

Friday is where we see His pain, His sorrow, His grief. The horror we deserved but never have to endure because He took it. Friday teaches us that Jesus knows suffering, the very suffering we are saved from. 

Though suffering persists in this broken world, we are saved from the unimaginable--from a life without hope or reconciliation, a life of just judgement on our wicked hearts--because Jesus was not saved. Because He sacrificed and was sacrificed. Because He took on sorrows greater than we could ever know.

When we suffer, He empathizes from the inside. From the place of deepest sorrow and hurt.

And that's where we get it wrong. It is not Jesus who is unable to sympathize with our sufferings but we who are unable to sympathize with His.

We all know sorrow, suffering, and injustice--some more than others--but we live in Sunday. When our suffering is ended. When restoration begins. When the war is won. When our hope is secure. When we are reconciled to God. And when we know this brokenness will not be forever. We live in the promise of Sunday. The world is being reconciled to God. We have access to eternity even as we wait for it. We live in that hope even when we struggle to believe its reality.

And so even when the darkness comes, battling on in a war it has already lost, we always have access to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and authority of this world. We face the effects of a fallen world, but we do it with the Resurrected King beside us. We do not ever have to endure the just judgement of God nor ever know separation from Him. Even those who choose to separate themselves from God can only bear the weight of one sinner where Jesus bore the weight of them all. Every sinner past and every sinner yet to come, saved and unsaved, believer and nonbeliever. The check has been written, and whether we choose to accept the covering of our debts or not, Jesus paid it all. 

He took on a weight we could never bear. So when we think He cannot empathize with our pain, the reality is that we cannot empathize with His. 

We cannot imagine the horror of being forsaken. Of being blameless and yet becoming the sins of everyone who has ever and will ever live.

That pain is unfathomable. Utterly. 

So as we look to the cross, we know He more than empathizes with us; He took on the very suffering we are experiencing to turn it to glory and the the suffering we will never experience because He paid for it in full.

In this world we will suffer, but He is the Suffering Servant because that's how much He loves us.

On this day the darkness covered up the light, but take heart; the story doesn't end here.