It’s Easter Sabbath. A co-worker and I were talking yesterday about how quickly we jump to Easter Sunday, celebrating the risen Christ, but we dwell less on Easter Friday and Easter Sabbath.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
Probably the most well-known and oft-quoted Bible verse. And there’s nothing short of awesome in this verse. But…like Easter weekend, I think we tend to blissfully repeat this verse because we know it almost without thinking.
We use the words “Good Friday” but the only thing ‘good’ about it was that it ended with the death of Jesus. “The fall of man filled all heaven with sorrow. The world that God had made was blighted with the curse of sin and inhabited by beings doomed to misery and death. There appeared no escape for those who had transgressed the law. Angels ceased their songs of praise. Throughout the heavenly courts there was mourning for the ruin that sin had brought.” (Patriarchs and Prophets, The plan of Redemption, emphasis applied).
“The broken law of God demanded the life of the sinner….Since the divine law is as sacred as God Himself, only one equal with God could make atonement for its transgression. None but Christ could redeem….
Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son….” “Christ would take upon Himself the guilt and shame of sin–sin so offensive to a holy God that it must separate the Father and His Son. Christ would reach to the depths of misery to rescue the ruined race.” (PP) While this was THE plan, originated before even the creation of the Earth, the plan itself was unfathomable.
Before the Father [Christ] pleaded in the sinner’s behalf, while the host of heaven awaited the result with an intensity of interest that words cannot express…. The angels could not rejoice as Christ opened before them the plan of redemption, for they saw that man’s salvation must cost their loved Commander unutterable woe….
It was a part of the plan of redemption that Christ should suffer the scorn and abuse of wicked men, and He consented to all this when He became the Redeemer of man.
Christ assured the angels that by His death He would ransom may, and would destroy him who had the power of death. He would recover the kingdom which man had lost by transgression, and the redeemed were to inherit it with Him, and dwell therein forever….
Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets
It was so unfathomable of a sacrifice that it is written of the Plan of Salvation, even though it had been established before creation, “yet it was a struggle, even with the King of the universe, to yield up His Son to die for the guilty race.” But “God so loved the world…. Oh, the mystery of redemption! the love of God for a world that did not love Him! Who can know the depth of that love which ‘passes knowledge’? Through endless ages immortal minds, seeking to comprehend the mystery of that incomprehensible love, will wonder and adore.” (PP)
With this knowledge since the beginning of Time, the close of Easter Friday came and the breathless words of a dying Redeemer had been uttered. “It is Finished.” He had become a cursed human, lived and suffered the previously mentioned ‘unutterable woe,’ and died the sinners’ death…. “The Son of God, heaven’s glorious Commander, was touched with pity for the fallen race. His heart was moved with infinite compassion as the woes of the lost world rose up before Him.” (PP)
What God does this?! What wondrous love is this?!
Thousands of years before He was lifted up on the cross to die for all of mankind, the Father and the Son described to a silent audience of angels the Plan of Salvation. “[Christ] bid the angelic host to be in accord with the plan that His Father had accepted, and rejoice that, through His death, fallen man could be reconciled to God.” (PP)
Then joy, inexpressible joy, filled heaven. The glory and blessedness of a world redeemed outmeasured even the anguish and sacrifice of the Prince of life. Through the celestial courts echoed the first strains of that song which was to ring out above the hills of Bethlehem–“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets
“…so whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” Oh agony, that my sins cost our Savior His life….oh unmeasurable joy that the price was paid for me, the decision made before the beginning of time….oh devastating sadness that so few will chose to accept it.
