Knox Holy Week 2020 Devotional - Day #6: Good Friday

Luke 22:63-65

“The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and demanded, ‘Prophesy! Who hit you?’ And they said many other insulting things to him.”

These three verses from Luke are a small window into the extent of suffering Jesus experienced leading up to and during his crucifixion. It’s uncomfortable, maybe triggering for some of us, to dwell in the suffering of Jesus. 

If you have been bullied, Jesus was also bullied. If you have been physically or verbally abused, Jesus was also physically and verbally abused. If you have experienced humiliation, Jesus experienced humiliation. If you have been devalued or dehumanized, Jesus was devalued and dehumanized. You are not alone. Your saviour did not spare himself these terrible experiences, you have a saviour who shares your pain and sorrow. You are not alone. 

This was horribly surprising for many of Jesus’ friends and followers. They thought they were following the Messiah, a saviour who would have military and political triumph over the evil Roman occupiers and the tax collectors who made the poor poorer with their greed. How could someone who was so beaten and mocked, how could a dead man stripped naked and left to die on a hill of garbage do anything to save people now? 

And yet God’s rescue plan for humanity didn’t end up looking like a conquest or a political coup, it ended up looking like a saviour who became intimately acquainted with all the worst evil humans have and do suffer. Our suffering saviour chose to experience all pain, unto death. He chose to be laid low so that no one laid low by the evil of this world could ever be excluded from knowing that Jesus loves and values them. 

When Jesus rose from the grave, he rose as one healed but still with the scars of physical suffering and the memory of emotional abuse. He went to the grave broken, he came out whole. Jesus resurrected from the grave all that the world tried to kill: his sense of worth, his sense of value, his sense of calling (they mocked him as a king but he is in fact King!). In his resurrection Jesus rescues us from all death, he redeems all brokenness, he breaks all chains of evil and abuse. 

PRAYER PROMPTS

• Reflect on what it means that Jesus is a saviour who suffered greatly. Spend time in prayer thanking Jesus for his sacrifice of suffering.

• Is there pain or brokenness in your life that you have felt isolated in, like no one can understand? Spend time asking Jesus to reveal to you how he understands your suffering and is close to you in it. 

• Pray for those who have experienced abuse and bullying, pray that they would be healed by the suffering saviour Jesus and that they would know that the world cannot kill in them what Jesus has redeemed from the grave.