Article by Greg Morse

Many eyes saw a man being crucified. Some saw a criminal. Others, a blasphemer. Few, a king.

All saw blood and torment, torture and death — slow and horrible. Eyes huddled around the horror; man mocked the one who came to save him.

If you were there to survey the wondrous cross, what would your eyes have seen? Barbarity, agony, defeat. Your eyes would have seen Jesus, a great teacher, disarmed by the rulers and authorities, stripped and humiliated, the Pharisees’ plots triumphing over him. You would have wept to see a dismal Friday, a tragic Friday. “We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4).

But the eyes of another world saw otherwise, as if they watched a different scene entirely. Heaven beheld God as “he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:15).

Never have witnesses told such different stories.

We need to see Good Friday through heaven’s eyes. Colossians 2:15 provides the lens to see as the beings of heaven saw, how the Lion of the tribe of Judah “conquered” at the cross.

Disarmed

He disarmed the rulers and authorities.

They took our Lord’s clothes. Stripped his disciples from him. No more whips in the temple. They bound his hands and took him away. This the world saw.

But heaven saw Satan, demons, and the forces of darkness lined up single file, tied, and shipped off. These unseen “rulers and authorities” were disarmed as a surrendered army. Disarmed of what?

God made [us] alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. (Colossians 2:13–14) 

The malevolent accusers’ mouths, shrieking for our condemnation, were stopped. Trespasses were forgiven. The long record of his people’s crimes, the terrible list of Satan’s works, his successful temptations and deceits over entire lifetimes — gone, nailed by the Father to his Son’s cross. They were disarmed of accusations, receipts, evidence — weapons formed against your soul that apart from this day would have certainly prospered. The Lord bore our sins in his body on the tree. He became sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

“God did not just disarm demonic armies; he disgraced them in Christ at the cross.”

The Father placed upon him the iniquity of us all. Lust, vanity, unbelief, hatred, murder, greed — all his people have ever done — everything that could ensure the soul’s damnation, God stapled to his Son on that tree. The Father once and for all condemned sin in Jesus’s flesh so that we might exclaim, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died” (Romans 8:33–34).

When justice stood against you, when Satan would ensure you wouldn’t get away with it, Jesus climbed up the cross to pay it all. The spears and arrows of the enemy were not stolen; he was not disarmed by theft. Instead, all his ammunition was emptied upon the man who hung upon the cross.

Disgraced

He put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

Men saw Christ bloody, naked, disfigured, and disgraced. Pilate bid them, “Behold the man!” (John 19:5).

Heaven saw the devil and all his troops exhibited, displayed, and put to open shame. God bid them, “Behold his enemies placed under his feet!” God did not just disarm demonic armies; he disgraced them in Christ at the cross.

In the spiritual realm, it was they who were made to bear the purple robes, the crown of thorns, the spit, and the slapping. They were made to be naked and paraded up the hill with their crosses on their back. And there, upon Golgotha, their skulls were crushed for all of heaven to view.

The verb meaning “to put to open shame” (deigmatízō) is used elsewhere only in Matthew 1:19 of Joseph. Donald Macleod boasts in the contrast:

When [Joseph] learned that Mary was pregnant he wanted to divorce her quietly, so as not to “expose her to public disgrace.” But public disgrace was precisely what God wanted for the forces of darkness. (Christ Crucified, 247)

God didn’t want to divorce Satan from our souls quietly. He planned to make a scene.

Consider also the word-picture behind “triumphing over.” Paul employs the same language of “triumphal procession” to capture an army returning home in victory, leading a caravan of captives enchained behind them (2 Corinthians 2:14).

Macleod again:

Now, in Paul’s final picture, [Satan] and his demons are part of God’s victory parade. The Crucified One marches in triumph through history, Satan tied to Christ’s victory car, his bedraggled army in chains, half-dragged, half-running in view of the whole moral universe, on their way to execution (Jude 6). (247)

At the cross, the foolishness of God outwitted the wisdom of evil; the weakness of God overcame the enemy in all his power. As with Haman, God took Satan’s instrument of death and hung him upon it, triumphing over him by the cross.

The Good Friday We Could Not See

What do you see at the cross?

Many eyes saw a man crucified that day. Men saw the downfall of a miracle worker. Natural eyes saw only defeat.

But the eyes of faith see the overthrow of beasts and monsters and devils. There, through death, the fiend Satan is destroyed (Hebrews 2:14). There, a people are separated from their sins as far as the east is from the west. There, a people are saved from the wrath of God.

Christ conquered at Calvary. No one took his life from him that day. He laid it down for his sheep to pay for their crimes. Christ was divinely active at the cross; do you believe this?

Do you see the cross as Calvin does? 

There is no tribunal so magnificent, no throne so stately, no show of triumph so distinguished, no chariot so elevated, as is the gibbet on which Christ has subdued death and the devil, the prince of death; nay more, has utterly trodden them under his feet.

Oh, see Good Friday through heaven’s eyes! See Satan disarmed, disgraced, defeated. See God’s people’s trespasses nailed, paid, forgotten. See Christ’s glory manifest, radiant, unending. See him come, see him die, and see him conquer.

Categories: Studiu biblic