God is not idle, during the period of His Son’s crucifixion, as we read in the accounts of the Gospels.
His thoughts inspire the soldier to drive the spear into Jesus’ tortured body, to preclude his legs being broken. He causes darkness to cover the land for three hours. His tears may have blotted out the sun. His cries of anguish may have caused the earth to shake, the rocks to crack; and open up the tombs for the dead to walk the earth. These same cries of grief may have torn the veil of the Temple in two. His Son cries out before dying. How much greater would the Father’s cries be! (Matthew 27:45,50-53; Mark 15:33,38; Luke 23:44,45).
…MATTHEW 27:45,51-53…Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon the land until the ninth hour…And behold, the veil in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook; and the rocks were split, and the tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the city and appeared to many.
How the Father must have suffered! He suffers because
His Son, Jesus, is tormented and persecuted, and murdered, in such a diabolical way. And He suffers because He is responsible. It is He who arranges for the emotional and physical torment that is inflicted on Jesus. It is the Father who has His Son killed in such an agonizing manner.
Why? Why does He sacrifice His only begotten Son? John tells us why (John 3:16).…JOHN 3:16…”For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
That is the reason He sacrifices Jesus…for us - all mankind, who ever lived and have yet to live, so we would have eternal life! He does it out of His love for us!
Israel and the Jews were taught by Jehovah to set aside a special day in which their sins could be washed away. On that day, the Day of Atonement, an unblemished goat was sacrificed to wash away the sins of Israel for one year. And this ceremony would be repeated every year, to rid the people of their sins for a year’s duration. But then, when the people died, they did so with no hope of return to earth…no hope of resurrection (Leviticus 16:5-34).
…LEVITICUS 16:5,9,15,21,22,29,30…”And he shall take from the congregation of the sons of Israel two male goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering…Then Aaron shall offer the goat on which the lot of the Lord fell, and make it a sin offering”…”Then he shall slaughter the goat of the sin offering which is for the people, and bring its blood inside the veil, and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat (seat for Jehovah) and in front of the mercy seat…Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel, and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness. And the goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness…And this shall be a permanent statute for you; in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall humble your souls, and not do any work, whether the native, or the alien who sojourns among you; for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you shall be clean from all your sins before the Lord.”
I believe that God intended to sacrifice Isaac (God laughs) for the sins of mankind, thousands of years earlier. Afterwards, He intended to resurrect him, and thus guarantee eternal life for the rest of the world’s people. This is conjecture on my part. It may be that He only intended to test Abraham’s faith as most believe.
God directed Abraham (father is high) to take his son, Isaac, to a mountain in the land of Moriah (thought to be the mount in Jerusalem, on which the Temple was erected years later…and on which the Dome of the Rock stands today). There he was to sacrifice Isaac, his heir, as an offering to God. Abraham did not shrink in his duty. He and his son went to the mountain as directed. As he was about to cut Isaac’s throat, the angel of the Lord stopped him and a ram was sacrificed in Isaac’s place (Genesis 22:1-13).
…GENESIS 22:2,4,6,10-13…And He (God) said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you”…On the third day Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance…And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and took in his hand the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked together…And Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” And he said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not witheld your son, your only son, from Me.” Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up as a burnt offering in place of his son.
I believe God, the Father, changed His mind because of the suffering He saw in Abraham…God’s, avowed friend. I believe that, even though Isaac would’ve been resurrected, God knew that Abraham, His great and loyal friend, would’ve been devastated by the fact that he had killed his own son.
So God had a change of heart and realized, at that time, that only He could bear the sorrow of killing a son worthy of sacrifice, as Isaac was thought to be. Isaac was considered to be nearly perfect…as perfect as a human being could be. Interestingly, Isaac is referred to as Abraham’s “only son”, even though Abraham had another son, called Ishmael (God hears). Ishmael was born of Abraham’s concubine, Hagar (emigrate). I expect that God did not acknowledge Ishmael as his son, as he was not given the Promise, and Ishamel’s birth was not sanctified, as Isaac’s was.
Fathers have killed their sons throughout history because they represented a threat, but not to benefit mankind. The only one that would benefit was the father. Herod the Great, King of Judea, before the start of the Common Era, had three of his sons executed, Antipater, Alexander, and Aristobulus (B-11-355, 366). And Herod was not unique in this practice. Rulers have killed sons time and time again.
So God, in His inestimable wisdom, decides that no one, born of man, can be the sacrificial lamb. There is no one righteous enough to be the sacrifice for all of the iniquities of mankind, and whose death would guarantee eternal life. Only the son of God…the creation of God, the Father, who would be without sin…incapable of committing sin, would be able to fill that role. It is then that He plans the sacrifice, long before His Son is conceived. And His son is to become flesh, dwell “among us”. Then, empty himself, suffer and die for everyone (John 1:1-,14; Philippians 2:6-8; Hebrews 2:9,10). …JOHN 1:1,14…In the beginning was the Word (the Logos), and the word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh (Jesus of Nazareth), and dwelt among us. We beheld His glory, glory as the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
…PHILIPIANS 2:6-8…Who (Jesus Christ) although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
…HEBREWS 2:9,10…But we do see Him who having been made a little lower than the angels, namely Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He might taste death for every one. For it was fitting for Him (The Word), for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their (humankind) salvation through sufferings (as Jesus).
And Paul tells us that “…having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him” (Romans 5:9).
…ROMANS 5:9…Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.
But, on the Day of Atonement, the sacrificial goat’s throat was cut…a merciful death. Abraham was going to slay Isaac in the same way, quickly, mercifully. Many religions, through the ages, that believed in sacrificing humans to their gods, were comparatively merciful, quick…virgins were cast into volcanoes…victims were cast down from great heights and smashed to the ground, or beaten to death with clubs, staked out on altars and decapitated, or their hearts were cut out…all in the name of religion, done quickly. None of these sacrifices entailed the sufferings experienced by Jesus on the cross.
Why does God permit His Son and our Lord, when he is human, to suffer so on the cross? Why doesn’t He just have an assassin slip up behind him, while he is asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane, and slit his throat?
Because, as we read in Hebrews above, His sufferings are necessary to justify all of the sins of mankind, and to give us eternal life. The sufferings have to be extreme enough, shameful enough. His death has to be violent enough to compensate for, and thus justify, all of the evils of mankind throughout history. He is made “to be sin on our behalf” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
…2 CORINTHIANS 5:21…He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
And, Paul says that with His crucifixion, the whole world is crucified (Galatians 6:14).
…GALATIANS 6:14…But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
We don’t know how the Father could plan for His Son to be treated so cruelly…we wouldn’t do this, but we are humans. In order to understand the Father’s reason, we must think as God. This is beyond our capability, at present. And even if it were within our capability to do so, we could not reproach the Father for what He did with His Son. Because He did this out of love “…The Father so loved the world…” Everything that God, the Father, does or causes to be done is motivated by love…His love for His creation—man.
Let us return to Jesus on the cross.
As he expires, his face, though frozen in pain, bears a look of compassion. Sad and forlorn, his eyes transmit the great love he holds for all. For he not only forgives his murderers…he loves them. Could you imagine anything more difficult than loving someone who is killing you? He said, “…love your enemies…” (Matthew 5: 44; Luke 6:35).
He asks this of his people and he would do no less, himself.
The veil, spoken of, is the cloth that separates the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Tabernacle in Herod’s Temple. Remember, it is the Holy of Holies in which the priests, alone, are permitted entrance, before the altar of God. This veil that keeps the altar from being viewed by the commoners has been ripped open. Now there is nothing obscuring the view of the Holy of Holies from anyone. This is the physical act of showing that, with the death of His son, there is never to be an obstruction between God and man… no longer need there be an intercessor between us and God.
(Note: Even though the graves are opened at His death, the dead do not rise and walk until Jesus is resurrected.)
The aura of Jesus, and the unusual events surrounding his death, cause the Roman centurion to acknowledge Jesus as the “Son of God”…an innocent man (Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39; Luke 23:47).
…MARK 15:39…And when the centurion, who was standing right in front of Him, saw the way He breathed His last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
…LUKE 23:47…Now when the centurion saw what had happened, he began praising God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent.”