Lord’s Day 15 this year falls on Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord and this section of the catechism discusses his suffering, condemnation, and accursed death. These subjects are traditionally contemplated on Good Friday when confined to a specific day for consideration. For that reason this section of the catechism especially informs our Holy Week devotions. It reminds us, for example, that the Stations of the Cross, however helpful they may be as a memory tool and devotional aid in their place, miss the point if we do not recognize more than the temporal aspects of our Lord’s Suffering and Crucifixion.

However ugly, painful, humiliating our Lord’s Sufferings were as a man cruelly and inhumanely treated by men, the cosmic-historical importance of our Lord’s Death is found beyond the immediate circumstances so many others suffered at the hands of the Roman Empire. Instead the Crucifixion’s ultimate importance for humanity is the fact of His innocent dying of the death reserved for those who stood accused by Divine Law. At Jesus’ Crucifixion He suffers not as one of countless victims of the Romans, but in His Office of the True High Priest (Hebrews 9:11ff) ordained by God to make cleansing for the People in fulfillment of God’s promise.

Romans 5:12-21 discusses our Lord’s actions as the Mediator and Final Adam, the just one who suffered on behalf of the unjust to bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18) by becoming the propitiation that absorbs and removes the wrath of God from sinners (Romans 3:25-26).

This atonement effectively redeems a people for God from every people and nation to make them a priestly kingdom who will reign with God on the earth (Revelation 5:9-10). This reconciliation, then, is the foundation of the New Creation. This suffering of wrath for sinners is the “beginning of the end”… the happy end of God’s establishment of the unending reign of grace in history. In history, thanks to Jesus’ Crucifixion,Resurrection, and Ascension the outcome of the dreadful Day of Judgment is known for those who have put their trust in the Crucified and Risen Lord. The verdict “justified” on the dreadful day of Judgment is assured for those who believe, because the Judgment of the Last Day was poured out on Good Friday upon Jesus for all those who believe. The wrath of Judgment yet to be poured out is reserved for those who reject the Crucified One and trust in themselves that they are righteous (Luke 18:9-10).

This gracious exchange prompts continual wonder when we move beyond the immediate horrors of the act of Crucifixion and contemplate the “free gift … which brought justification” (Romans 5:16).

Alas! and did my Saviour bleed?
And did my Sovereign die?
Would he devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

Was it for crimes that I had done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! Grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!

Well might the sun in darkness hide,
And shut his glories in,
When Christ, the mighty Maker, died,
For man, the creature’s sin.

Thus might I hide my blushing face
While his dear cross appears,
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness,
And melt mine eyes to tears.

But drops of grief can ne’er repay
The debt of love I owe:
Here, Lord, I give myself away,
‘Tis all that I can do.
(Isaac Watts, 1707)