Good Friday Meditations

“Let us stand beneath the cross of Calvary, and behold our Lord Jesus hanging there, and remember that His bleeding body was in alliance with the unsuffering Deity. Those wounds of His, that streaming, spear-rent side, was taken into union with the nature of the living and eternal God. The infinite merit of the Godhead was imparted to the sufferings of the manhood. Neither your sins nor mine can ever exceed the merit of the precious blood of Christ. If our sins be high as mountains, the ocean of His atonement, like Noah’s flood, covers the utmost summits of the mountains. It prevails twenty cubits upwards, till all the highest mountains are covered. Though our sins be never so crimson, the blood of Jesus Christ is more crimson, and the one washes out the other. Though our iniquities be never so dark and bitter, His death hath taken away the blackness and bitterness of our sins; and therefore it is that “He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him.”" – Charles H. Spurgeon

“O wondrous, glorious cross! Blessed interpreter of God to us! Scene of the great self-manifestation, the great revelation of the mind and heart of God! O cross of Christ, tell us more and more of this grace of God! Preach reconciliation to the alien, pardon to the guilty, assurance of God’s free yet holy love to the dark and foolish soul! Speak to our hearts; speak to our consciences; pour in light; break our bonds; heal our wounds-all by means of your interpretation of the divine character, your revelation of the righteous love of God!” – Horatius Bonar

“The cross is a center in which many lines of truth meet. The cross is an incomprehensible mystery. That God should be manifest in the flesh, is the great “mystery of godliness.” That the Prince of life should be crucified, was an event which caused the angels to stoop from their celestial thrones, that they might gaze in amazement upon it. The prophets who predicted these events were perplexed at their own prophecies, “They inquired into what time or what circumstances the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating, when He testified in advance to the messianic sufferings and the glories that would follow.”" – Archibald Alexander

“The atonement springs from the fountain of the Father’s love; He commends His own love towards us. We must not think, however, that the action of the Father ended with the appointment and commission of the Son. He was not a mere spectator of Gethsemane and Calvary. The Father laid upon His own Son the iniquities of us all. He spared not His own Son but delivered Him up. He made Him to be sin for us. It was the Father who gave Him the cup of damnation to drink. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Here is love supremely demonstrated.” – John Murray

“The curse which Christ bore upon the cross was not a curse that wrongly rested upon Him; it was not a curse pronounced upon Him by some wicked human law. No, it was the curse of God’s law; it was a curse, therefore, – we tremble as we say it, but the Scripture compels us to say it – it was a curse that rightly rested upon Him. But if that be so, there can be no doubt but that the substitutionary atonement is taught in Scripture. The only way in which a curse could rightly rest upon a sinless One is that He was the substitute, in bearing that curse, for those upon whom it did rightly rest.” – J. Gresham Machen

“Any gospel that talks merely of the Christ-event, meaning the Incarnation without the atonement, is a false gospel. Any gospel that talks about the love of God without pointing out that his love led him to pay the ultimate price for sin in the person of his Son on the cross is a false gospel. The only true gospel is of the ‘one mediator’ (1 Tim. 2:5-6), who gave himself for us. ” – James Montgomery Boice

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Filed under: Charles Spurgeon, Doctrine, God, Jesus, Justification, Salvation, The Glory of God