That sounds kind of strange doesn’t it? I think it is because we have characterized God as only love. Yes, God is love and He demonstrated that love by sending Jesus and by Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. But Calvary is more about the wrath of God. The love of God can only be poured out when God’s Holy wrath for sin is satisfied. For 3 hours we see and hear the depravity of man at his worst
Wouldn’t you except God to be angry with those who are mocking, blaspheming, spitting, beating, scourging and killing His Son by the cruelest method of death, crucifixion. Wouldn’t you expect Jesus to cry out to His Father and ask for Divine judgment? Or the Father, sending fire from heaven to incinerate these murderous, evil doers or opening the earth and swallowing them alive into hell?
What man did to Christ is unthinkable
What God did to Christ is unimaginable – incomprehensible!
For the next 3 hours man is silent, but God shows up at Calvary and speaks loudly and supernaturally in the silence of darkness. God now comes in the full fury of His Holy Wrath. Surprisingly it is poured out on the innocent one, the sinless One, His Beloved Son and not the murderous blasphemers who are deserving of His anger. Calvary now becomes the saving event that was determined in eternity past.
Jesus was crucified at 9:00 on Friday morning of Passover week. For the first three hours, the people, the rulers and the soldiers and even the criminals dominated the scene by blasphemy, ridicule, sneering, scorn, abuse, mockery, spitting, beating, scourging and crucifixion.
At high noon, the sun at its apex in the middle of the sky, blazing brightness; instantaneously pitch blackness. The sun goes out; there’s no moon, there are no stars. A supernatural blackness that can be felt. Can you imagine the indescribable terror and shock of that moment?
In the middle of the greatest sin ever committed or ever could be committed all of a sudden, in an eerie, frightening, panicking, horrifying without warning the world goes pitch black. The darkness engulfed the entire nation perhaps the whole world!
What caused this supernatural blackness? God is the only answer for this instantaneous, total blackness where they couldn’t see their hand in front of their faces, a darkness that froze them on the spot, there is no light, there is no movement of anyone for 3 long solid hours!
How would the Jews view this? How should we view this? The people of Israel would well know that the presence of God could be associated with supernatural, inexplicable pitch-black darkness.
Darkness can symbolize divine wrath. It is the divine presence in judgment. God arrived at Calvary – not in light, but in darkness. The fury of God’s wrath goes way beyond the physical suffering, it’s the suffering of hell itself.
Divine eternal wrath is being poured out in its final form. God brought hell to Jerusalem on that day of “outer darkness,” where there is unrelieved, unmitigated weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth in the eternal, blackness. God showed up in wrath, and what bogglers the mind is it wasn’t wrath poured out on the Romans, or the Jewish leaders, or on the people; it was wrath of God on the Son, His Son. God unleashed the full extent of His fury on Jesus Christ. God, who is the punisher of all the souls in eternal hell, shows up in the darkness of Calvary to punish His Son, and His Son suffers an eternal hell on behalf of all who would ever believe.
Yes, Hell has come to Calvary. In those 3 hours, our Savior suffers the full cup of the fury of His Father’s wrath, His Holy anger against sin. Jesus cries out in the terror and horror of this divine judgment. He is suffering hell in our place. Jesus is being punished for all the sins, every word, even every idle word, every thought, every action that has been committed by those He came to save. Since Hell is an eternal place of suffering, than Jesus must suffer an eternal hell in our place. How can an eternal hell be compressed into 3 hours? Jesus who is God & being infinite can therefore suffer an eternal penalty.
As Jesus cries out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” He is suffering the Hell of eternal punishment. As He suffers in unspeakable pain, can you hear the Father say, because of His Son’s loving obedience, “If ever I loved thee, My Jesus, it is now”
At the end of the 3 hours, God’s eternal punishment of hell is done. When this darkness instantaneously fled, so did God ‘s wrath. The wrath of God in our salvation in has been accomplished; therefore, He can now pour out His love on those He came to save.
Jesus speaks, “It is finished” and “into Your hands I commit My spirit.” Sin has been atoned for, God’s wrath has been satisfied, the love of God in our salvation has been perfectly, forever accomplished for all those who believe in Jesus Christ as their God and Savior.
This is a reminder to all unrepentant sinners that hell is the full fury of God’s personal presence in punishment. God will never be there to comfort, to show any sympathy or mercy, He will never bring any relief. Jesus endured the fullness of hell; both its punishment of God and the absence of any comfort or relief. This is hell, the hell that came to Calvary that day in all its fury and fullness.
All that awaits now is the resurrection, the proof that Jesus is God, God Holiness has been satisfied, God can now forgive sinners because Christ has died for sinners.
Jesus Christ endured the Cross despising the shame to forever show us –
“this is the Love of God, in while we were yet sinners Christ died for us as a satisfaction for our sins!”
It’s Friday… But Sunday’s a Coming!
(Reference: https://web.facebook.com/groups/1006474249439617/permalink/2847546725332351/)
