04/19/2025
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)
Betrayed and abandoned by his closest friends, Jesus stands silent before Pilate in the face of false accusations.
He willingly accepts the brutal death sentence given to the most serious criminals in the Roman Empire—crucifixion.
Beaten, scourged, and crowned with thorns, Jesus carries the cross through Jerusalem’s familiar streets—the heavy wood pressing into His open wounds.
Just days ago, along these streets, crowds praised His entry as king with palm branches, shouting, “Hosanna!”
How quickly the people’s cheers turned to jeers, now demanding: “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
The city is abuzz with preparations for the great Passover feast to remember how God saved His people from their slavery in Egypt. As is the case year after year, families’ unblemished lambs are secured and prepared for sacrifice.
Meanwhile, another unblemished lamb—the Lamb of God—was also preparing for His death.
But His life wasn’t being taken from Him. Instead, He was willingly laying Himself down for the sins of the entire world.
Outside the walls of Jerusalem, at Golgotha—“Place of the Skull”—Jesus is nailed to a cross and lifted high for all to see.
He accepts a public, humiliating, and slow ex*****on between two criminals. The sin of all of humanity weighs heavily on His shoulders.
A sinless man willingly embraces a death we deserved.
Every drop of His precious blood pours out as payment for a debt we could never pay.
Soldiers mock Him and cast lots.
Bystanders taunt Him: “Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!”
But the Savior patiently endures, hanging between heaven and earth, life and death, for six grueling hours.
The sky darkens. The ground shakes.
“It is finished,” Jesus says as He breathes His last.
Love held nothing back.
“At that moment, the curtain in the temple which separates God and man was torn from top to bottom.”
The people scatter. It is done.
Evil thinks it’s won.
Yet not a defeat as many thought.
It. Is. Finished.
But our Savior was not.
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Bible verses referenced:
Matthew 21 & 27
John 19:28-30
