Good Friday

1 John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

I thank God for giving me the grace to blog about the Message of the Cross on Good Friday.
Let us rewind back to the creation of the world. When God created the world, He found that the world was good. God is good and all His creation were good.

Let us now understand Satan. Lucifer was a powerful angel of God. He was in a very good position in the Heavenly realms. When pride entered him, He started to question the all powerful God. Lucifer wanted to be treated as equal with God, and he rebelled against God. God cursed him and sent him to hell. This happened before the creation of the world. Since then the devil (Lucifer) was always against God and all His people.The underlining cause is Pride that led to Lucifer's down fall.

Let us now focus on the Garden of Eden, the starting point of humanity. It is here that God created all the living beings on the earth. As we know the story of creation, let us fast forward to the moment where mankind lost the fellowship with God. God created human beings with free will and with His own image. They were different from Angels. Angels dont have discernment. They just obey the command of God. But since we have discernment, we can decide our course of life. It was a clever trick again played by the devil, "Satan tempted Eve". Please underline the word "tempted". We know that there are lot of temptations. But the temptation to power, authority and superiority are so close to the human heart even today. Satan had used this to topple first Eve and then Adam, and alas they gave themselves to sin and Satan's ways.

God is so good that even though He was angry, He really cared for Adam and Eve. He did not destroy them, instead He sent them out of the garden of Eden. From that day onwards, Man had to work for his livelihood and we know the rest of the happenings.

Then came the period of the ten commandments and laws. If someone did not obey the commandments, he was considered as a sinner, and he had to offer a sacrifice of an animal (there are some rules as which animals could be sacrificed) and the blood shed from the animal would offer forgiveness to that particular person's sin. But as everyone sinned, God thought of purchasing forgiveness for the entire humanity at once. He is so loving that His heart cried for humanity. He decided that the only way to break the strong hold of sin is through shedding of blood for the entire humanity. He decided to take human form, and live a life without sinning in the world and offer His life as a sacrifice.

He was born in Bethlehem with a single purpose which is to die. Can we think of anyone who could be born with such a purpose?. The all powerful God had to humble Himself to this extent to purchase us the salvation. Jesus Christ had to suffer all the shame, suffering, agony and pain to set us free from sin. He humbled Himself unto death on the Cross. Before the death of Christ, Cross was considered as a symbol of shame and the culprits were crucified on it as death penalty. As Jesus became a culprit for our sins, He was crucified on the Cross, and hence it became the symbol of hope and salvation. Sin and satan were defeated at the foot of cross. Cross is a place where God's plan of purchasing salvation for Humanity was completed. Cross is where humanity tasted freedom from the evil bindings of sin.

Two thousand years have goneby and still we take pride in the Cross. It shows us the way to Heaven. God's love was manifested at the Cross. It was at the Cross that Grace and Mercy originated. It is because of Cross that we have a hope for tommorow. When we look back at the Cross today, It reminds us of the love that our Savior had on a wretched and an ugly sinners like us. Though we are nothing, We are awe struck by the fact that Our Lord Jesus considers each one of us very precious and special.

Now it is upto mankind to decide whether to accept or reject the Precious message of the Cross. The ball is in our court. Now is the time of salvation. God is offering his hand to us now. If we accept cross, turn away from sin and surrender our lives to God, we can be totally assured that God will take care of our live in this world, and put us into eternity with Him.

May be this is the first time that some of us would be realizing the powerful message on the Cross. May be Christ is speaking to us today to accept Him, or may be we have been
Christians for generations. We could claim that we have already given our lives to Jesus long time ago. Let us analyze the condition of our soul today. Is it totally surrendered to Jesus. Are we leading a life pleasing to God? or it is just whims and fancies that creates spiritual pride in us and takes us away from Christ's message on the Cross. After two thousand years, even today many of us still crucify Christ on the Cross by our careless actions and thoughts.If we feel that we are not on the right track, let us re dedicate our lives to God today!.

A time will come when Jesus Christ will come as a righteous judge, where he will reject all who reject the cross now. It will be a very terrible time, that He would put all those whose sins are not forgiven into the hell to be with satan, because all those people belong to satan.

Christianity is centered around Christ. It is either black or white, no greyness. It is very straight forward. Accept Christ and enter Heaven to enjoy eternity, or reject Him and enter hell to suffer the eternal agony and pain.

The loving savior Lord Jesus Christ is offering an invitation to you today. He wants to start your life all over again. So far it could have been very bad. May be your life has been so far nothing but all of sinning. But Christ's death at Cross is so powerful that it will wipe away any mountain of sins. Please dont reject His invitaion now and suffer eternal agony. Let us cling unto the arms of Jesus on this day where God defeated satan and purchased our salvation. God bless you!