There was another perspective of the crucifixion. It was hidden from the gaze of those on Earth. The great cloud of witnesses watched from Heaven as Jesus exhaled one last time before mourners and murders. Millions of souls, from centuries past, witnessed in amazement the unthinkable death of Jesus. They watched His stillness from beyond the veil, perhaps in wonder. It seemed less like a death and more like a realization. Suddenly they understood their story.
David understood why giants fell and kings collided into their own destiny.
Abraham understood the incomprehensible test of Mount Moriah.
Jonah experienced epiphanies of his three days in the belly of the fish.
The three Hebrews who spent time in a furnace, recognized the Visitor again. This time on the cross…
Solomon understood the reality of a friend that sticks closer than a brother.
And Isaiah surely wept as he saw the Man who bore our griefs and was bruised for the iniquities of us all.
They watched. All of them watched–the angels, demons and mortals, the judges and criminals– the wretched mass of man’s worst epics, the ravished ones of the innocent garden. Betrayers and hypocrites understood this story and their role in the middle of this divine denouement. The broken and beaten wept in the midst of their personal revelation. The rabble of messy humanity watched as the last drop fell.
And we too, like the men on the road to Emmaus who walked and dined with the resurrected Jesus, experience revelation. It’s a moment of epiphany.
We say to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32)
The cross makes sense of our struggle. It endows us with meaning and hope. Some will never accept the truth of Jesus and His mercy until they stand before Him. I wouldn’t want to live a day without it.
This work by Matt Tullos is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International