It’s Good Friday today. At 4:30 this morning, we climbed up a hill that overlooked all of Granada. We could see the whole city awakening as the starry lights from below faded into shallow blurs in the light of the great bloody sun. That sun which burst out from behind storm clouds of dark blue and steel grey, turning the darkness to light, and spreading its influence across the expanse of sky. Behind us, a Nicaraguan sunrise service commenced, churchgoers singing their grateful praise of which we could not understand. Above them rose a giant wooden cross, spreading its splintered arms from East to West, facing this city that is loved by the LORD.
The past few months, I have been exploring the ways that God feels pain through a series of blogs. Our God, Yahweh, the Holy One, chose the pain of love instead of abandoning His sinful creation. This God is physically unable to abandon us because He is love. (1 John 4:8) He cannot deny Himself (Hebrews 6:18), as He is the only undeniable existence in the universe, therefore, if He ceased to love us, He would cease to be God. Our salvation is not based on our own goodness, but on God’s unchanging, unfaltering, character. (Ephesians 2:1-9) And in this process of keeping His consistency of character, God had to feel pain. 2,000(ish) years ago, God squeezed His Son out of the womb of a young woman, infiltrating the dark world with unconquerable light. Just like the sun this morning pushed itself out of the seam of the Eastern horizon, Jesus Christ Himself came in the form of flesh, very nature God, and lived in our world. God walked among us. He felt the human pain of living. Stubbed toes, jammed fingers drawing frustrated blood, hunger and hurt; He saw poverty and pain, He saw cruelty and slavery, He saw death and temptation. And everything He felt, He felt for us. (Hebrews 4:15)
Why did Jesus live life before dying? Why couldn’t He have simply come, paid the price, and resurrected? What were the 33 years of His life? But He was a missionary, committed to living among the people He loved. His purpose wasn’t just to die, it was to live, so that we might know Him, and that He might be glorified. In, John 17:4 He prays, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.” The life of Jesus glorified God. This glory included pain. Can there be glory without sacrifice? And the sacrifice of Christ was that He laid down His life, not just once, but daily. (John 15:12-17)
Sitting on the wall that faces the rising sun, I remember how the sky went black when Christ relinquished His spirit. I can’t imagine a world without light. In my experience, the sun rises every morning, lightening everything so that I can see. The sky itself groaned in horror as the purest of beings was subjected to the unjust atrocity that was the crucifixion. Christ was obedient to the pain, accepting it as the price of love. He chose to love creatures that did not know Him, also choosing to die for creatures who did not deserve it. He endured the cross for the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2). His love, so great and vast, compelled Him to voluntarily take up the cross and march up a hill, so that we might know God and that God might be glorified.
God had to feel pain, because, being God, He had to love. This does not take away the miracle of this love; the fact that it is essential to His being does not make it less remarkable. Because He is love, it means that neither death not life, not angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, not powers, not height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, will be able to separate us from Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:39) Because He is love, He lived, He died, and He felt pain. Our God, Yahweh, the Holy One, died. The Light of the World allowed Himself to be extinguished because He loved us. So, reader, meditate on the pain of our God. Remember how He was slaughtered, remember how He loved us, remember how our salvation is irrevocable and pure. Remember how once again the sun will rise, because He too has risen and we no longer live in darkness.
Beautiful