"Final Days of Jesus" Reflections | Good Friday
Six recent posts on our website that share some introductions, details, verses, and songs related to this week are:
The Final Days of Jesus – Tuesday
The Final Days of Jesus – Wednesday
The Final Days of Jesus – Maundy Thursday
The Final Days of Jesus – Wednesday
The Final Days of Jesus – Maundy Thursday
Also, the publishing group Crossway has not only released the book, The Final Days of Jesus: The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived , they have produced a thorough collection of beautiful images and thoughtful videos to help reflect on what was going in Jesus' life during this crucial week in history. The following posts will feature the manuscripts for each video they produced in correspondence with each day of Holy Week. Enjoy.
The Final Days of Jesus | Day 6: Good Friday
Jesus is Betrayed by Judas and Arrested
Jesus has an Informal Hearing Before Annas
Peter Denies Jesus and the Rooster Crows
Judas Returns the Silver and Hangs Himself
Pilate Questions Jesus and Sends Him to Herod Antipas
Herod Questions Jesus and Sends Him Back to Pilate
Jesus Appears Before Pilate a Second Time and is Condemned to Die
Jesus is Mocked and Marched to Golgotha
Jesus Breathes His Last
Jospeh of Arimathea Buries Jesus in a New Tomb
The trials of Jesus in the early morning hours begin with the Jews, and they involve a brief appearance of Herod Antipas. But ultimately the decision under God must be addressed with the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. A crucifixion was not a punishment invented only for Jesus, so it would be helpful for us to learn a little bit about the history of this barbaric form of torture in Romans times.
If the disciples could have heard that we now refer to this as "Good Friday," they undoubtedly would have been perplexed, perhaps offended due to the suffering, shame, and humiliation that Christ endured. But while it's easy for us to focus only on Christ's sufferings, for those of us with eyes to see, there's also glory to be found in this most important of days in salvation history.
Jesus Sentenced to Death by Crucifixion
The action begins just before dawn when the Sanhedrin has to convene one last time in order to endorse what they had decided the night before that Jesus should die. Because according to Jewish law, you cannot sentence a man to death in a night session. So this is why Luke carefully tells us the Sanhedrin met on Friday morning and they simply endorsed what they had done the night before at the Caiaphas hearing that Jesus must die.
They learned the process of crucifixion from the Persians. They crucified some of their admirals after they lost the first naval battle to the Romans during the first Punic war in the third century B.C. And then used it in Rome only for the extreme criminals; those who were not Roman citizens could be crucified for a serious crime.
The whole idea is look at what this poor miscreant is suffering. Don't do what he did or you're going to be hung up on the cross the same way. It is a way of preventing further crime, they thought, in addition to giving the miscreant a very horrible way to die.
Jesus' Willing Suffering is Our Pathway to Glory
When we look at the different ways the gospels present Jesus' suffering at the cross, Matthew, Mark, and Luke tend to focus more on the humiliation that Jesus endured and on the physical pain that he endured, while John, writing last, presents the cross more as a station back to the glory that Jesus had before the world began.
It's not so much that John minimizes the physical suffering that Jesus endured, but he shows that the spiritual reality of glory being brought to the Father even at the cross overrides any physical suffering that he may have had to endure.
The writer to the Hebrews as well says that Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him. So you see in the biblical material this emphasis that the suffering was a necessary pathway to eternal glory.
For more details about the trial of Jesus and His glory even in death, check out His Kingdom victory through death on the cross.
For more details about the trial of Jesus and His glory even in death, check out His Kingdom victory through death on the cross.
+ Sully
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