Good Friday, April 2 Holy Week Day Eight

The Human’s Highest Act

Scripture Reading: Luke 23:33-49

The words of Jesus on the cross are always a source of wonder and reflection for contemporary believers. Even more interesting are His final words during Holy Week and especially on Good Friday. We learn from these sayings profound truth in regard to the humanity of Jesus when He acknowledged His thirst and when He provides for His mother’s care by declaring John to be her son. From His cry of anguish when the Father forsook Him, we get just a glimpse of the deep and lavish sacrifice He made to deal with our sin and grant us His righteousness. And from His dialogue with the thief on the cross and the forgiving benediction spoken over His executors, a portrait of Christ’s amazing love, enduring mercy, and fathomless grace emerges. However, none of His words carry more rich meaning than His words recorded only by Luke, “Into Your hands, I commit My Spirit” (Luke 23:46). What significance do those words bear and what implications for modern believers do they suggest?

It seems that, at the very least, they strike a blow at the pathetic attempt we give to the enterprise of worship. Worship in most Christian circles has become a self-serving activity, tailored to massage the fancy and preferences of the participants by creative and emotionally-charged musical arrangements, atmosphere preparation that more often than not includes a strategy to arouse and manipulate a particular desired response, and motivational lingo that moves the participant to respond or be left out. It seems however, that true worship and the highest human act is a giving back of what God has given to us. That is what Abraham did when he told his servants that he and Isaac were going to worship, knowing all along that what he called worship would mean the sacrificing of His son. It is what David did when he insisted on purchasing the sacrifice from Araunnah rather than receiving for nothing that which he would offer to God. And it is what Jesus did when He yielded back to the Father the Spirit that had been given to Him.

May our aim in worship be the same, that is to lay aside what we want and give back to the Father what He has so graciously given to us.

Prayer: Father, help us to recognize that you spared no expense to redeem us and that you gave what was dearest to you when you gave Jesus and then on the cross He gave back to you the life that you had given to Him. Help us to awaken to the reality that worship does not take place when we receive, but only when we give.