OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT
Diwa C. Guinigundo
Lent brings to mind that time of penitence in some parts of Manila and Pampanga where flagellants abound on Good Friday. Some are nailed on the cross. Briefly done and with proper support, such is a pathetic partaking of the passion of Jesus. After an overnight of physical torture and beating, Mark 15 narrates that Jesus was made to carry His cross on which He was crucified and hanged to death for six solid hours from nine in the morning, or the third hour, through three in the afternoon, or the ninth hour.
Lent celebrates the love of God for His own creatures
This message of love is critical in converting knowledge to faith. John 3:16 captures it well: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus’ sacrifice at Golgotha signals the beginning of the New Covenant, that God saves only by grace through faith in Him. Man could always boast. And His resurrection secures that blessed hope that He is coming back again for His saints, that He has defeated sin and its penalty of death.
Jesus had to die because the Old Covenant did not work. Israel failed the Ten Commandments given at Mt Sinai to Moses, despite all the ceremonies and animal sacrifices. In Isaiah 1:11, God Himself expressed His displeasure in the burnt and sin offerings of animals at the tabernacle.
Jesus had to die for our sins because no one among us people is qualified to pay for them. Every one of us is a sinner. If God could not be appeased by the blood of neither man nor animal, only Jesus can substitute and die for us.
Only Jesus saves.
As He dwelt with us in the flesh, He was broken by torture and the crown of thorns. He was crucified and He bled. With faith in His blood, our sins would be forgiven. Jesus’ love for us is truly without parallel because even before we accept Him as our Lord and Savior, He has offered His blood to cleanse us then, now and in the future.
In substituting for us on the cross, Jesus actually became a curse to redeem us. God the Father had to be separated from Jesus such that blessings, grace and peace were denied Him; the full wrath of God had to be released and satisfied. At the receiving end, Jesus could only utter one of His seven last words: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus’ six hours on the cross must have been a hellish experience because death by crucifixion was reserved for criminals, slaves and enemies of the state. In the Scripture, there was total darkness from noon to 3 p.m. As the Lamb of God during the Passover, He took away the sins of the world, that the spectacle at Golgotha could only be gruesome. Satan and his legion of demons thought they were victorious.
It didn’t occur to them that Jesus’ death to satisfy the law actually led to the forgiveness of sin. Satan failed to tempt Jesus in the wilderness to forget all about His mission. Satan failed through Peter to prevent Jesus’ arrest, punishment and crucifixion.
Who condemned Jesus to His crucifixion?
They were the chief priests and religious leaders who demanded His death; those who welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and later demanded the release of Barabbas instead of Jesus; Pontius Pilate for not doing anything; the Roman soldiers for executing the Sanhedrin decision even if Jesus did not rebel against Rome. They unwittingly brought the mystery of godliness to actual revelation.
What is this mystery of godliness?
Paul cited this “mystery of godliness” in 1 Timothy 3:16: “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”
This is the redemptive plan of God concealed throughout ancient history. But God was just too good to speak through His prophets about the coming savior of mankind in Hosea 13:4; the deliverer from death in Hosea 13:14; and the coming king to reign on David’s throne in Isaiah 9:6-7.
But first, Jesus had to die as a suffering messiah that we may gain life, through His grace. Jesus Himself delivered this paradox to His disciples in John 12:24 when He said that “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a seed; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Jesus was a kernel of wheat who hanged on the cross, died and fell on the ground. By choosing to follow His Father through death, Jesus was highly exalted with the only name by which man can be saved. True, the first Adam inaugurated death for all. In the second Adam, who is Jesus, all shall be made alive. The first Adam became a living being. The second Adam became a life-giving spirit, the essence of bearing much fruit. This is also the essence of living a life of godliness, the challenge to this generation.