In the Shadow of the Cross
Good Friday. It’s an ancient story of a hill with three crosses. It’s about betrayal and death, and its message is still relevant today.
Because of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for us, He has become our identity, and the message of hope we share comes from our position in Him. Following His teachings means holding to an upside-down worldview that may seem outrageous to those who don’t understand the story of sin and redemption, but everything we are and have comes from living in the shadow of the cross.
Come, let us gather beneath the shadow of the cross…
When Jesus, the King of heaven, the designer of the galaxies, begged his Father for another way creation must have held it’s collective breath. For more than the nails piercing His flesh more than the thorns thrust on His head, He glimpsed the darkness of hell and staggered under it’s weight. For in the shadow of the cross He perceived how taking the shame of my sin upon Himself was absolute separation from God. “Yet not my will, but Thine be done,” prayed the perfect Son of God as in anguish, He foresaw the Father turn His face away. The wrath for my sin, the cup poured out on Him the sin of the world transferred onto His shoulders, alone, His agony for my saving. And while his grief and anguish at what looms before Him, fall like drops of blood from his face, we sleep in nonchalance. For we do not perceive nor can we perceive of the hell He tasted In our place complete darkness, alone, devoid of God. For holiness can not abide sin. We have never known the complete absence of God for His fingerprint is always present– in the sunrise, in the cry of a newborn, in our very breath– even when we don’t see even when we are too distracted with ourselves to look for Him.
Were God to remove Himself from us to turn His face from us for even a moment, we would know hell. For hell is where God is not, the emptiness would be more than we could endure. And yet, for the joy set before Him the Son of Man fixed His gaze beyond the shadow of the cross, beyond the scorn, beyond the grief, beyond the mocking, my mocking– “If you are the Christ – save yourself!” I didn’t see that He was saving me. And still, the cross throws its shadow over me covering me, erasing the guilt I bring. His grief for my freedom His pain for my healing. The holy exchange the wrath my sin deserved placed on Him, the sinless One. In the shadow of the cross the curtain torn in two a way made for sinful man to access God most Holy. Only through the blood of the One who hung dying, Jesus, the rejected, crucified, and resurrected Christ do we find the power to live in the shadow of the cross. The cross throws its shadow over my path, pointing me in the way I should go It is my roadmap, my due north. My life a thank offering to Him who gave His everything for me. I live in the shadow of the cross It has become my identity the holy sacrifice, that the blameless Son of God would deem me worthy to be abandoned for, to be scorned for, to die for. He has become my identity the One I will live for.
