Good Friday

The days we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are not the same each year. That means my devotional reading today is not about Easter. It didn’t give any Scripture either, so I turned to My Utmost for His Highest. The reading for today is about crucifixion—Jesus’ and mine.

Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Oswald Chambers says, “The imperative need spiritually is to sign the death-warrant of the disposition of sin, to turn all emotional impressions and intellectual beliefs into a moral verdict against the disposition of sin.”

He points out that this verse does not say ‘I have determined to imitate Jesus Christ,’ or, ‘I will endeavor to follow Him,’ but, ‘I have been identified with Him in His death.’

As I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks, this reality is seldom taught in today’s church. Part of the reason is the power of the almighty I. Our sin nature is so determined to be involved, to have a part, to claim its right to itself. However, this free committal of self to God by death gives the Holy Spirit the chance to impart in me the life of Jesus Christ.

The verse also says, “ . . . nevertheless I live. . . .” I’m still here, but as Chambers says, “the mainspring, the ruling disposition, is radically altered. The same human body remains, but the old satanic right to myself is destroyed.”

This is why Christians call this day “good” Friday. When Jesus died, it was for our sin. In taking that upon Himself, He also took sin’s awful penalty and the wrath of God killed Him. By Jesus’ great act of obedience, I am set free from the penalty of sin.

When Jesus died, we also died. God placed me in Him and what happened to Jesus also happened to me. By that great act, I am set free from the power of sin—not by imitating Him, not by following Him, but by dying with Him.

The verse ends with, “And the life which I now live in the flesh . . . .” As Chambers says, this is not the life that I long to live, or pray that I will live, but the life I now live. At this life is “by the faith of the Son of God.”

This faith is not my faith in Jesus Christ, but the faith that the Son of God has imparted to me—“the faith of the Son of God.” This distinction is as important to victory as is my death. This faith is not faith in faith, or me struggling to believe. It is a faith that comes out of the inner core of my being, a faith that supercedes my efforts because it is not my faith but His.

At the cross, I was put “in Christ” and He died. When I believed, Christ was put in me—Christ and all that He is and does. Now I live—all because He said, “Not my will but thine be done” and was obedient even unto death.

This Friday, and every other Friday, and every other day, can carry the label “good”—all because of Jesus.