Good Friday.

Pilate

I thought I was the one with power.

That is what makes it so terrible now.

I stood before a beaten Man and did not know I was standing before the One who holds breath, kingdoms, and forever in His hands. I looked at Him for danger and found only truth. I looked at Him for violence and found only silence. I looked at Him for weakness and found a strength so deep it did not need to shout.

I thought I was judging another prisoner.

But I was standing before a King so much greater than Rome that Rome itself looked small beside Him.

I washed my hands because I did not know what else to do with holiness before me. I could not control Him. I could not understand Him. I could only send Him away.

But now I see it: He was not weak before me. He was giving Himself. Not to me. Not to Caesar. Not to the crowd. But to the will of the Father, for a world that could not save itself.

And I, Pilate, who once believed authority lived in my hands, can only say this now: even while I judged Him, He stood above me. Even while I condemned Him, He was already becoming the hope of men like me.

Simon of Cyrene

I thought I was being dragged into Someone else’s pain.

I did not know I was being drawn near to the true King.

The wood was heavy on my shoulders, but something else felt even heavier in the air. Sorrow, yes. But also mercy. I was close enough to see that this Man was not like any other man. He was torn open, yet there was no hatred in Him. He was crushed, yet there was still gentleness. He was covered in blood and dust, yet nothing in Him felt small.

Somehow, in all His suffering, He seemed greater still.

I carried the Cross for a little while, but I could feel that He was carrying something far heavier than wood. He was carrying grief. He was carrying sin. He was carrying the deep, broken thing between heaven and earth that no human hands could ever mend.

I thought I was helping a dying man.

Really, I was walking beside the One doing what no one else could do.

And I tell my sons, Alexander and Rufus, what I saw: there are moments when the God of all creation encounters a man in such a way that he is never the same again. I touched the wood, but He was bearing the curse. I walked beside Him for a road, but He was walking into the darkness for us all.

And even then, beneath blood and dust and sorrow, there was something in Him that felt so pure and holy.

The Centurion

I had watched many men die. Death had become ordinary to me.

I knew the sound of fear. I knew the bitterness of men at the end of their strength. I had seen bodies fail and eyes go empty.

But there was nothing ordinary about Him.

Most men curse.

Most men rage.

Most men break under shame.

But this Jesus was different.

I watched Him suffer, and instead of becoming smaller, He became greater. The darkness came. The earth shook. And suddenly, all the power of Rome felt thin and weak beside the weight of the One hanging before me.

He was bloodied, mocked, stripped, and yet He carried a kind of majesty no title I had ever heard could hold. His silence was not emptiness. It was a strength. His suffering was not defeat. It was an offering.

And what undid me most was this: even in pain, He did not stop being Himself. He was still merciful. Still steady. Still giving. As if suffering could tear His body, but could not touch the holiness of His love.

I did not just witness a death.

I witnessed the Son of God.

And for all my years as a Roman soldier, for all the men I had seen rise and fall, I can say this: nothing in my life was more real than the moment I looked at Him and knew this crucified King was the true Son of God.

The Thief on the Cross

I had no good left.

Nothing to clean up.

Nothing to hide behind.

No righteousness to claim.

No time left to make anything right.

My whole life had run out, and I was hanging at the end of it.

Then I turned and looked at Him.

And somehow, in all His agony, He was still full of mercy. That is what broke me open. He was suffering more than I could understand, yet there was peace in Him. Not the peace of getting away. The peace of Someone who knew exactly who He was, exactly why He had come, and exactly what love was doing there.

I asked only to be remembered, because that was all I dared hope for.

But Jesus was greater than my hope.

He did not offer me any comfort.

He gave me the truth.

Even nailed to a tree, He was still opening paradise.

Even dying, He was still rescuing. Even broken, He was still the doorway home.

And as I hung next to Him, I was no longer only the thief who had spent his life running. In His gaze, in His mercy, in His promise, I became a man being brought home.

My body still hung on wood, but my soul had already begun to enter joy.

Because the joy of Jesus is not only what He gives.

It is that He gives us Himself.

My Perspective

I often think too small of Jesus.

I have made Him manageable, familiar, and easy to admire without trembling before Him.

But Good Friday will not let me do that.

Especially this year. This Holy Week has been unlike any other. There has been a heaviness in it, but a heaviness that, in prayer, is revealed as glory, mercy, and more. A weight that is not only sorrow, but holy nearness.

A holy gift carried beneath the eyes of the true King of Kings.

We could not climb back to God. We could not build towers high enough to reach Him. We could not outrun judgment, or hide from death, or quote enough truth to make ourselves truly holy and blameless in His sight.

We could not heal the fracture.

We could not carry the weight of our sin, much less remove it.

So Jesus did not come to inspire us from afar. He came to do the impossible in love. He came to go lower than we could go, deeper than we could reach, farther than we could endure, to bring us back into the embrace of God.

And this is why Good Friday is so beautiful, it hurts: the Cross is where we see both how lost we were and how much greater Jesus is than we ever imagined. It is where our worst parts meet His mercy. It is where our darkness meets His light. It is where our exile is welcomed home by His open arms on the Cross.

And more than that, it is where we begin to realize that the joy we have spent our lives trying to find elsewhere has always been in Him, not merely in His gifts.

In Him.

The joy of Jesus is Jesus Himself.

Jesus, I Come to You

Jesus, I come to You.

Do not let me only see Your wounds and miss Your willingness. Do not let me only see Your suffering and miss Your love. Do not let me look at the Cross merely as pain and fail to see it as the place where You opened Your heart to bring me home.

Teach me to remember that You were not overcome by men, but gave Yourself for them. Remind me that You were not trapped by human hands, but willingly went. Keep before me that You did not come only to show me how to endure pain, but to go where I could never go, to bear what I could never bear, to heal what I could never heal, and to bring me where I could never bring myself.

Jesus, I could not heal the fracture between myself and God, so You came to do for me what I could never do for myself.

You knelt because love kneels.

You carried the Cross because love carries.

You opened Your hands because love gives.

You stayed because You wanted us back.

You wanted me back.

So I ask You, O Son of God: let Your truth go deeper in me.

Let it break through my distance and pull me into Your embrace.

Set my heart ablaze.

And when I begin to think too small of You, turn my eyes back to the Cross.

Help me see that You did not remain on the Cross because the nails held You. Your love held You. The desire to bring me into the Father’s embrace held You. The joy set before You held You — and that joy was not only the finishing of the work, but me brought near, me forgiven, me made new, me brought into Your joy, into Your life, into communion with You.

Jesus, keep me from standing far from You in shame or fear.

Do not let me believe that my sin is deeper than Your mercy, or that my ruin is stronger than Your redemption.

Draw me closer.

Teach me to look again at the Cross and see the truth:

that You are more loving than I know,

more holy than I can imagine,

and more determined to save

than I have yet dared believe.

And because Your heart is gentle and lowly, I come to You.

Bring me into Your alignment.

Bring me into Your embrace.

Bring me into Your redemption.

Let me rest with You.

Bring me home.

And when I come, let me not settle for pardon alone.

Let me find You.

And in finding You,

let me find the joy my heart was made for.

Thank You, Jesus.