Good Friday March 29, 2024
Sacrificial Banquet
God takes sin seriously. His wrath toward sinners is real. The sacrificial death of His Son on the cross proves this beyond the shadow of a doubt. His love for sinners is real. The Cross of Christ shows the extent of His love—the price He is willing to pay to redeem the fallen sons of Adam.
This is precisely why you need Good Friday. It is in your nature to underestimate God’s potential for anger and wrath when it comes to your sin, and to be uncertain about God’s grace when things go badly in your life.
Even though the Scriptures are full of evidence that God hates and despises sin and punishes it, we often take His forbearance and His long-suffering as proof of the opposite.
We look around and see how much wickedness seems to go unchecked and unpunished in the world and in our own lives. And the conclusion that we draw from this is that God must not be all that concerned about sin.
Our culture doesn’t offer much help in this regard. Today, no one really likes to talk about sin or God’s “wrath.” He is a God of love, and that’s as far as some denominations will go.
In many pockets of Christianity, people have fashioned for themselves a god that is tame. A god that is not really that concerned about your sin, because he is a god of love.
Think about it—if you really considered your daily transgressions of God’s Commandments as something dreadful and deserving of death and damnation, wouldn’t you run to your pastor for Confession? Wouldn’t you seek to be free of your guilt?
If you simply took God at His Word and believed Him when He says that the “wages of sin is death.” Perhaps you would “fear His wrath and not do anything against” His Commandments.
On Good Friday, we can no longer look at God as someone who merely winks at our sins or simply ignores them. We can no longer brush off our sins and simply say, “I sinned again.” We are forced to face the reality of what God thinks about sin and what it deserves.
If there was ever proof that God takes sin seriously, it was hanging there on the cross on Calvary. It was there in the beaten, bloody, bruised, and dead body of His Son. There God showed the world the full effect of what He meant when he said to Adam and Eve: “For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17).
When you see Christ hanging on the tree of the cross, you are compelled to see what God really thinks of your lying. Your lustful thoughts and actions. Your covetous desires, and your gossip, to name a few.
We do not fear, love, and trust in Him above all things as we should. Your propensity is to put the worst construction on everyone’s words and actions; and your inclination is to worry and doubt God’s love and protection.
What you see in the cross of Christ. What you ought to see most clearly—is the extent of His love for sinners. If there was ever proof of God’s love. Proof of His mercy toward sinners.
Proof of His desire to save, it was hanging there on Calvary.
Christ willingly drank the cup of suffering for you.
There the holy God was taking out His wrath and anger toward your sin on His innocent and holy Son so that you would not have to face His wrath for eternity.
Isaiah 53:4-5 “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.”
You would not have known, unless it had been revealed to you in the Word. 2 Corinthians 5:19 “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”
This is why Christ made known to His disciples the purpose of His sacrifice in the words by which He instituted the Sacrament of the Altar: Matthew 26:28, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
It is through the words of Jesus, and His prophets and apostles, that you know and believe that everything that happened on Good Friday was according to God’s own will. As the Prophet Isaiah declared in 53:10: “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief.”
Every whip, and every nail driven into the hands and feet of Jesus turned God’s fierce anger away from your sin. As Moses once stood between the wrath of the almighty God and the idolatrous Israelites, so, too, this man, condemned to death by crucifixion, “turned away God’s wrath forever” (LSB 627:1).
And as long as we remain in Christ, as long as we remain united to Him by faith, we are safe from God’s all-consuming anger toward sin and unbelief.
This is why we run to Christ when we are overcome by our sinful urges. This is why we remember our Baptism, where God buried us and raised us with Christ.
And this is one of the reasons why there is such comfort for Christians in the salutary gift of the Lord’s Supper.
Through participation in this sacrificial banquet, you receive the benefits of Good Friday: pardon and acquittal of all your sins. These things were won for you on Calvary.
God declared all sin forgiven in Christ’s death. This gift is graciously delivered to you and made available to you in tangible things like bread and wine.
Christian artwork through the ages has often shown the close connection between Good Friday and the Sacraments. Woodcuts from the time of the Reformation show the Lord being crucified, with the blood and water from His hands, feet, and side flowing into chalices held by angels.
And since Christ has turned away the wrath of His Father toward you by His sacrificial death, now the Father turns to you not in anger, but in love when you come to His holy Table.
For your merciful and faithful High Priest, Jesus Christ, has made full atonement for your sins. He has “borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”
You can thank your gracious Lord for unleashing His wrath toward your sin on His Son, thereby cancelling your debt.
You can wake up each morning not in your sins, but secure in the forgiveness of your sins won for you on the cross and given to you in Holy Communion.
You can approach your Father boldly, having been cleansed of your sins through Holy Baptism, knowing that by faith you stand innocent before Him.
That’s why we call this day “Good Friday.” It was good that God placed His own Son under a curse. Good that the nails were driven into His flesh.
Good that the spear pierced His side. Good that blood and water flowed from Him. Good that His head was bowed in death for us.
And it is good that He has turned the cup of His Father’s wrath into a cup of blessing for us, which we receive with grateful hearts in His Holy Supper.
Hymn 627, Jesus Christ, Our Blessed Savior, stanza 1: “Jesus Christ, our Blessed Savior, Turned away God’s wrath forever; By His bitter grief and woe He saved us from the evil foe.”
May these words, and the words of the Sacrament, give you peace as you celebrate and remember His holy Passion. Amen.