For those of us who feel the effect of their serious condition, who realize their humanly unable unalterable condition, the good news is that there’s One who appears on the scene and says this, “I’ve come. I’m leading the way. I am moving relentlessly to the place where I’ll be nailed to a cross and lifted up as the ultimate example of suffering, and there the concentrated fury of the Father’s wrath for your sins will be visited upon Me. And I will groan, for I am sinless and I’m unfamiliar with any sin, with even a single sin. Yet on that cross I will experience the sins of many visited upon My body. And I will die”…but joy will follow His sufferings: the certain joy of knowing His death has ransomed the many.                                                                

     -C. J. Mahaney

The Easter season is a spiritual wake-up call.

Without it we may forget the price paid for our salvation. We may begin to feel pretty good about our gifts, intelligence, successes, influence, and “sacrifices” we’ve made for the kingdom of God.  But when we deliberately take time to read the gospel accounts of the last week of Christ’s life we are stopped in our tracks.

Jesus, while on his way to his death for the sins of the world, needs to break up an argument among his men about who was the greatest and who most deserved the seats of honor. Leaving Jericho on the way to his death, his love and compassion was still so present that he stops to heal the blind man on the side of the road. During his last meal with his disciples, he had to face the heart breaking fact that one among them would take a bribe and hand him over to the ones who had been seeking to kill him from the beginning of his ministry. On his death march to Jerusalem, he must listen to the very people he created out of love call over and over again for his death in the cruelest, most painful way known to man.

But it is when we get close to the cross that we most see love displayed. No one took the life of our Lord. He gave it up on his own. Given so we may be forgiven. Given so we may be recreated from the inside out. Given that we may be with him for all eternity. Given that we, now changed by this love, would make it our lifetime pursuit to share it with others. It is one of many ways we can say a heartfelt, “Thank you, dearest friend.”