Galatians 3:10-13:

¹⁰ All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” ¹¹ Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, “The righteous will live by faith.” ¹² The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, “The man who does these things will live by them.” ¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”  (NIV84)

Many thousands of years ago, when the world was still very young, in the middle of the Garden of Eden, which no human eye would ever see again, God made a promise to the first man and woman, the parents of us all.  Even though they had cursed themselves, their descendants, and all creation with them, by doing the one thing their Creator had forbidden them to do – eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – the Lord had mercy on them and all of us.  While cursing Satan in the serpent, before he got to Adam and Eve, God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Ge 3:15).  This was not only the first promise of a Savior from sin; it was also the first prophecy that that Savior would be stricken in the course of saving sinners.

As the years, centuries, and millennia passed, God gave more details, even as humanity’s sins got uglier and our need for salvation became clearer.  The world was told from what nation and even from what family line this Messiah would come, but in every age, people were urged to put their trust not in their ancestry or their law-keeping but in the Lord’s great grace and his promise of a Savior.  In the meantime, he moved history along, guiding events to ensure that everything would be in place at just the right moment, when the time had fully come.

With Isaiah’s prophecies, God’s people learned even more about the One he was sending to save them.  By the time John the Baptist came on the scene, the Scriptures gave all the information needed to recognize the Savior when he came, but most of his people were too focused on earthly concerns to see or understand.  Instead of the Suffering Servant Isaiah described, they were expecting a mighty hero; in place of the Lamb appointed for sacrifice, they were seeking a king to bring them glory.  In looking so much for a Son of David, they overlooked the very Son of God whose forsakenness David described.

Which is why there were so few friends gathered at the foot of Christ’s cross that first Good Friday.  Even those that remained of his disciples didn’t comprehend that this had always been the plan.  This is where their sins and the sins of their fathers and neighbors and strangers and enemies had led.  This is where all of human history comes to a climax.  This is exactly what the Lord had long promised and his prophets had prophesied.  This is the end of the mission announced by Gabriel to Mary and by the hosts of heaven to the shepherds outside Bethlehem, the fulfillment of the purpose Jesus was born for, lived for, worked for.  It all comes to this.

This – Christ redeeming us from the curse – the consequences of our countless failures to keep God’s law – your and my little and big idolatries, our ingratitude, our arrogant disobedience, adulteries, insults, petty thefts, bad choices, unholy lifestyles, and so much more.  And redeeming not just us, but the whole world from the whole world’s failures.  From sin, from death, from Satan, from slavery, from hell, from futility.  The sinless Son of God takes up our pain and bears our suffering.  The innocent Lamb of God is pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.  The Messiah who is God and Man in one Person has our punishment placed on him and is wounded to heal us.  In silent submission he suffers it all, he accepts the burden, and he takes it all in:  he redeems you by becoming the curse.

Which is the better way to fully appreciate the horrible truth of what actually happened on Good Friday, so that we might more deeply trust it and praise God for it:  to focus on the enormity and foulness of your and my and all people’s sins, or to focus on the enormity and wonder of what Jesus did and endured for us?  Really, it has to be both.

So I invite you to exercise your imagination for a little while.  50 years ago this might have been more difficult, but most of us today have seen enough thrillers, sci-fi, and superhero movies to be able, I think, to picture in your mind what I am about to describe.  Basically, I am asking you to imagine what is invisible as visible:

In your mind’s eye, viewed from some distance, Jesus has just been raised up on his cross. As soon as this happens, you begin to notice something like a fog or a dirty cloud around him, then you realize that this …mist is steadily being fed by wispy threads coming at Jesus from every direction, never letting up and seeming to grow in speed.  You turn to try to figure out where all this is coming from, and you see that dirty black and red … stains are coming out from the hearts of all the people around you, but no one seems to be aware of what’s happening except you.  Closer to the cross you see these wisps drawn out from the soldiers, from the crowd, from Jesus’ enemies, and even from the few friends gathered to watch.  Pulling back, you see them coming from people on the road, from the merchants in their market stalls, from the priests and pilgrims in the temple, from all the Romans in Pilate’s palace, from everyone.  You take a quick look back toward Calvary, and you see that that cloud of filth surrounding Jesus is being absorbed into him, never growing any bigger, but seeming to pulse and throb, as though it’s constantly pushing against some internal limits.

Realizing that it is sin you are seeing, you look away again, and you realize you’re no longer seeing Jerusalem, but are shown Rome, and Athens, and Alexandria, and cities and towns you recognize as probably in Africa and Asia and the Americas.  And in every place you see the same things happening – the wisps of pitch and blood pulled out from every man, woman, and child, joining together in filthy ropes of mist, all being sent at great speed and with seeming urgency to the same distant place – a lonely, ugly hill outside Jerusalem.  And even at such a great remove, you can see – no, it’s more that you can feel, the throb and thrum as all of this … guilt is absorbed into the man hanging there on his cross.

But you look away again and realize that you are seeing people who lived and died long before Jesus walked the earth.  They are sleeping, eating, working, playing; some are even actively, obviously sinning.  You see the Pharaohs in Egypt, Sumerians in Mesopotamia, people of every size and shape and skin-tone on every continent in all the early stages of civilization and in deep jungles and dark valleys.  You think maybe you recognize Moses and the Israelites in the desert, and Jacob and his sons, Noah on his ark, and maybe, even Adam and Eve wrapped in fig leaves – and in every place and with every person, the same thing is happening, all through time but at the same time.

Your perspective shifts again.  You see this happening with knights and peasants on the fields of Europe, at glorious cathedrals and in squalid villages.  You stand on the Great Wall of China and see armies on either side, and it’s happening with them.  There’s a succession of popes, and Martin Luther; then Napoleon’s armies and a slave ship crossing the Atlantic; Benjamin Franklin, John Wilkes Booth, Woodrow Wilson, and farm fields and factories filled with workers, and then you see yourself surrounded by your family in your home.  In every case, in every place, with every person, the stain is drawn out from their hearts and their flesh without them knowing, and sent with speed and inky black certainty to that distant destination that doesn’t seem so distant after all.

Because suddenly you are back again at Golgotha, and as you look up at Jesus you wonder how much longer this can go on.  Hours have passed.  The sky is black, as though the sun had been extinguished.  His body is almost unrecognizable from the torture he’s endured, the bruises, the blood, the strain – he is stricken, smitten, and afflicted – and on top of that you have never seen someone look so alone, so … forsaken.  The pulsing around Jesus has slowed, and you realize that his heart is struggling to keep up, but still the … stain, the filth, the ugly keeps flowing in, from across the world and across the ages, filling, charging, choking, coursing, cursing, and it seems now that you can recognize it in bits and pieces:  hatred, idolatry, lies, abortion, murder, insults, apathy, rape, genocide; the sins of his enemies there around him, the sins of his followers, and your own sins, to your horror and shame.  Whatever they are, whomever they come from, he takes them all in, not missing a one, not leaving any untaken.

And then there’s one last little wisp as he accepts a drink of vinegar, and the misty shroud that surrounded Jesus seems to all have been absorbed into him.  The throbbing and thrumming have changed pitch, and suddenly you feel like you should run and take cover, as though a clock has been counting down all this time and there are only a few seconds left before an atom bomb explodes. 

And then, a shuddering, consuming silence.  With his last strength, with the last gasp of breath he can call from lungs crushed inside and out by the curse he has taken in, he cries out – clearly, decisively, finally: “It is finished.” 

And in that moment, all that blackness and bloodguilt, all that evil and sin, all the world’s iniquity, all that he has taken onto and taken into himself –– reaches critical mass.  His body and soul can bear no more, the limit is reached, and it all … implodes, like a black hole swallowing a hundred thousand stars in the blink of an eye.  The Light of the World is snuffed out.  Gone.  Extinguished.  The Son of God, through whom the universe was created, is dead.  No light left in his eyes, no residual glow, no warmth, no flickering halo, no hint of what’s to come, no hope that this was all a terrible mistake or that our senses have deceived us.  Finished.

Now, what have you just seen in your mind’s eye?  You have seen what it all comes to – all of history, all sin, all your sin, all the events of Christ’s life and especially, his Passion.  You’ve seen the Son of Man, God’s servant, suffer everything Isaiah and David described, and you’ve seen God’s Son, cursed, dead on a tree.  

But even more than that, you have seen the grace and love and mercy of God. Because as awful and ugly as sin and its consequences are, the Lord’s heart is greater.  From eternity he determined to save us, and the plan that was put in place in Eden and came to its head on Calvary is not reason for disgust and despair but cause for rejoicing and relief.  The sin and guilt that Jesus took upon himself died with him – he canceled out every offense, leaving no debt to God or his Law unpaid.  Only the God-Man Jesus Christ could do it, but because he loved us all he gladly did it all.  What you’ve just seen, he did willingly, by choice, for you and me.

And with sin eliminated, sin’s curse and consequences are also extinguished.  Death is defeated.  The devil’s power is undone.  Hell’s threat is snuffed out.  There is nothing left to fear.

But God’s grace in Christ at Calvary is about so much more than what is taken away.  Grace is about giving, and at the cross Jesus gives us the holiness and perfection we lack.  As Paul told the Corinthians, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”^[1]  And since we are now justified, since our guilt has been exchanged for Christ’s innocence, we now have as our own what we could never earn, purchase, or gain for ourselves:  a place in heaven, with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for all eternity, in perfect joy and peace forever.

That’s what it all came to.  The evidence that it’s all true and certain will be revealed on Sunday morning, when the world discovers that death could not hold Jesus, and that just as he lives, so we also will live.

So believe it, be forgiven, be glad, and be the new person that God has made you to be.  Put your trust in Christ and what he did for you, and enjoy the priceless gifts of grace he died and rose to give you:  both the end of sin and new life and hope as a redeemed child of God.  It’s all yours.  It’s what the Lord wants for you more than anything.  It’s what Jesus came for.  It’s what he suffered and died for.

It all comes to this.  

^[1] The Holy Bible: New International Version (2 Co 5:21). (1984). Zondervan.