Happy Easter and a very blessed Good Friday to you!
I hope you have the time today to sit and meditate on what Jesus Christ has done for the human race in His death, resurrection, and ascension. This gospel is truly good news of great joy! Jesus became one of us rescuing us from death and sin by dying our death, raising us again to new life, and seating us with Him in heavenly places. Today calls for the celebration and remembrance of this marvelous truth!
Yesterday, I was reading Karl Barth, as I’ve mentioned before, in his Church Dogmatics volume IV.1. As I read I came across a magnificent passage I want to share with you today. Here Barth writes about the objective work of Jesus Christ for all people, what He has done on the cross for all mankind in justifying us and obliterating our sin. It is a beautiful passage on what Jesus has done for the human race, and I was struck with emotion when I read it. It is a perfect reminder as we contemplate and remember what Jesus has done for us! Enjoy!
If you’re looking for something to listen to today, I’ll be listening to the music of Arvo Pärt. Here’s an especially appropriate choral work called “Passio” which follows Johns account of the crucifixion. It’s very beautiful!
Enjoy!
Not One
“But the self-demonstration of the justified man to which faith clings is the crucified and risen Jesus Christ who lives as the author and recipient and revealer of the justification of all men. It is in Him that the judgement of God is fulfilled and the pardon of God pronounced on all men. …It happened that in the humble obedience of the Son He took our place, He took to Himself our sins and death in order to make an end of them in His death, and that in so doing He did the right, He became the new and righteous man. It also happened that in His resurrection from the dead He was confirmed and recognised and revealed by God the Father as the One who has done and been that for us and all men. As the One who has done that, in whom God Himself has done that, who lives as the doer of that deed, He is our man, we are in Him, our present is His, the history of man is His history, He is the concrete event of the existence and reality of justified man in whom every man can recognise himself and every other man—recognise himself as truly justified. There is not one for whose sin and death He did not die, whose sin and death He did not remove and obliterate on the cross, for whom He did not positively do the right, whose right He has not established. There is not one to whom this was not addressed as his justification in His resurrection from the dead. There is not one whose man He is not, who is not justified in Him. There is not one who is justified in any other way than in Him—because it is in Him and only in Him that an end, a bonfire, is made of man’s sin and death, because it is in Him and only in Him that man’s sin and death are the old thing which has passed away, because it is in Him and only in Him that the right has been done which is demanded of man, that the right has been established to which man can move forward. Again, there is not one who is not adequately and perfectly and finally justified in Him. There is not one whose sin is not forgiven sin in Him, whose death is not a death which has been put to death in Him. There is not one whose right has not been established and confirmed validly and once and for all in Him. There is not one, therefore, who has first to win and appropriate this right for himself. There is not one who has first to go or still to go in his own virtue and strength this way from there to here, from yesterday to to-morrow, from darkness to light, who has first to accomplish or still to accomplish his own justification, repeating it when it has already taken place in Him. …There is not one whose peace with God has not been made and does not continue in Him. There is not one of whom it is demanded that he should make and maintain this peace for himself, or who is permitted to act as though he himself were the author of it, having to make it himself and to maintain it in his own strength. There is not one for whom He has not done everything in His death and received everything in His resurrection from the dead.
Not one. That is what faith believes.”
(Karl Barth Church Dogmatics IV.1 Hendrickson Publishers, 2010, pp.629-630)
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