Home Pastors Articles for Pastors God Experienced the Cross Three-fold: A Good Friday Meditation

God Experienced the Cross Three-fold: A Good Friday Meditation

Good Friday Meditation

I love my family. My marriage has been good—thirty-plus years day-by-day with the love of my life; I’ve watched three children grow and run and laugh. Then I try to see myself capable of willingly sacrificing any one of them on behalf of others—and not just “others,” but on behalf of my enemies and those who hate me. I try to imagine what I would feel if my children would suffer at the hands of ignorant and wicked men. Then I try to imagine it was my idea, my request, my plan. With such imagination I realized Jesus did not suffer alone. The Father and the Spirit shared the pain. It’s a Good Friday meditation – at he cross, God suffered three ways.

Every loving parent has experienced this in some measure. Your child falls and scrapes her knee. Your child falls and breaks his arm. More chilling: your child falls ill and dies. You would willingly take their place. Perhaps you have offered God that very deal.

A Good Friday Meditation

As an Easter meditation, consider this: God experienced the cross three-fold. We are familiar with Jesus’ suffering: the agonizing night in the garden where he offered up prayers through loud cries and tears; the betrayal of his closest friends; the shame and humiliation of arrest; the torture of beatings and lashes; and the slow death on a cross.

In each event the Father suffered, too. Put yourself in the Father’s place. Everything Jesus endured, the Father suffered in the way only a loving parent can suffer.

Nor did the Holy Spirit stand by, stoic and detached. The Spirit’s energizing love brings glory to the Son and the Father. In the suffering death of Jesus the Spirit’s life force was held in check while all creation rejected the Creator.