For those who went to church at Christmas after missing every service since the previous Christmas, please allow me to reflect on the meaninglessness of Christmas without Resurrection Day, a.k.a. Easter.
Mel Gibson went to great pains in researching Biblical narratives and ancient Roman culture to accurately portray the arrest, trial, scourging, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. One cannot watch The Passion of the Christ without being awestruck at the amount of physical suffering the Lord endured, and many have come to appreciate him all the more for being willing to go through that for our sake. I do find one fault with the film, however. I wish Gibson had done more to show how much Christ suffered. Let me explain: I believe that the physical pain that Gibson portrayed in Passion was only a fraction of what Jesus endured. Besides the whipping, the beatings, the crown of thorns, the dehydration, the sleep deprivation, etc., the one who had never sinned became sin. The Bible's 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us:
God made him who had no sin to become sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
We might have difficulty comprehending the dreadful nature of this punishment because we haven't experienced anything like it. Perhaps I can illustrate it: Imagine a child born with no immune system, who has to live his entire life in a totally sanitary environment. One day someone abducts him and throws him into a huge septic tank to drown. This analogy falls short in that having a deficient immune system is a dire weakness, while being immaculately holy is an incredible strength, but it's the best I can come up with to illustrate the extremes of cleanliness and filth.
Perhaps the worst thing Jesus had to suffer was being rejected by his Father. Again, we can't fully understand this. We have never loved anyone as much as Jesus loves his Father, and we have never been so inseparable from anyone for immeasurable eons of time. One of the few personal complaints ever uttered by Jesus was regarding his anguish of soul from being abandoned by his Father. The Father had to turn his back on the Son because he had become sin for our sake. This reveals God's intense hatred of sin, which makes our Lord's intense love for sinners like us so amazing. This love explains why Jesus left the glory of Heaven to suffer what he did. Do you love him? Enough to walk with him every day, no, every moment? After all, just going to church once a year is weak.
