This Was God's Son (Good Friday Devotional)

 

Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

- Mark 15:37-39

With the benefit of hindsight, Jesus’s identity seems plain to us when we read the gospels. How did so many people miss it?

It starts with Jesus’s conception by the Holy Spirit, his birth by the Virgin Mary. Who else but God’s Son would come into this world in such a way? Who else would an angel chorus celebrate in a starry Bethlehem sky? Who else would magi from the east travel so far to honor?

When Jesus’s ministry begins, we are again stunned that no one recognized him. Did they not hear the voice from heaven when he was baptized; did they not see the Holy Spirit descend like a dove? What about when he fed 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish—did they think it was just a neat trick? What about when he gave sight to the blind; what about when he healed people’s diseases? What about when he raised Lazarus from the dead?

For his disciples especially, there seems to be no excuse. They’d been with him since the beginning, heard every God-given word he’d spoken and witnessed every miraculous act. Peter and James and John saw him transfigured on a mountain, saw him confer with Moses and Elijah. All twelve disciples watched him bring a raging thunderstorm to a whimper with a word.

But after all that—all the sermons, all the miracles, all the power and authority—Jesus was seized by the jealous religious leaders, sentenced by Pilate, and hung on a cross to suffer and die. If people thought him a king-in-waiting, they surely knew better now. If they expected any more from him than from all the would-be messiahs who’d preceded him, they were sorely disappointed. Jesus was nobody special after all.

And then, as he breathed his last, the curtain of the temple tore in two. The fabric which separated God from His worshippers, the curtain that protected the Holy of Holies from everyone but the high priest, was torn asunder. The symbol of God’s transcendence, his mystery, his distance was no more. And it was in that moment that a Roman centurion, of all people, said with awe, “Truly, this man was God’s Son.”

Jesus’s birth showed he is Immanuel, God with us. His life showed us his love and power, his character and his glory. But his death is what brought us salvation. It was in the moment of his greatest humiliation that he was glorified. It was on the cross that he fully revealed himself to us.

Jesus suffered, bled, and died so that God’s will could be accomplished—so that we could be saved. On the cross, Jesus paid a debt we could never repay ourselves. He gave himself for us. Truly, this man was God’s Son.