I think I understand why he started, but can’t begin to fathom how he finished.

How did he stay in a garden, of all places, while even his closest followers slept, as he agonized under pressure so intense that he perspired blood? How did he keep from walking off into the darkness?

With new life budding all around him, how did he pronounce his own death sentence? Later, a rigged religious court, an angry mob and an appeasing government would presumably impose the sentence. But he knew his death had been decided by the father who loved him. How did he say again and again, “Not my will, but yours be done”?

How did he take charge, when a large crowd of armed men, authorized by corrupt religious leaders, stormed his place of retreat to arrest him? How did he knock them all to the ground with the words, “I am”?

How did he interrogate Pilate – the Roman governor charged with interrogating him?

How did he remain silent when falsely accused? How did he remain still when taunted and spat upon? How did he keep from zapping them all to demonstrate that his claims weren’t heresy, but truth?

How did he live through the flogging that tore every piece of flesh from his back? Afterward, how did he stand at all, much less walk? Beaten beyond recognition, how did he carry a wooden crossbeam to the place of his own execution?

How did he keep from dying before his mission was accomplished? How did he cling to life when, able to lie down at last, he was nailed hand and foot to that beam? Raised above the heads of those who hated him, those who grieved for him and those who liked the show, how was he able to breathe?

Breathing required pushing up on those pierced feet. Breathing required ramming splintered wood into his shredded back. Breathing required an unfathomable commitment to finish.

How did he speak even once, much less seven times?

How did he pray for mercy for the haters and the gawkers, instead of cursing them? “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” he said, as they gambled for his clothes.

How did he air his deepest pain, his most private grief? “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he cried.

Earlier he had told them, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). To separate “one,” you must rip it apart. That awful ripping happened as he hung violently exposed. How did he find the strength to bare his soul too?

How did he yell out the opening words of Psalm 22, and so point us to an entire song that foretold his agony, and victory, beyond what he had the voice to speak?

And how could he cry, “It is finished!” in the moment he took his last breath – the moment everyone else saw death win and everything he had worked for, crumble?

Breakthrough to life

In a very few documented cases, people have been declared medically dead – only to resume breathing. But the followers who deserted their leader in the garden, the guys who hid in an upstairs room while he died, came out of that room declaring that the man Jesus had not just backed out of death temporarily. He had broken through permanently, opening the way to resurrection life for all who confess him as Lord.

Those witnesses would not – could not – change their story, even when they later faced torture and death. They had seen him alive, and he had transformed them. They knew the resurrection was true.

But how? How did he change them so radically? And how did this dead leader live?

Verses like this tell us the why:

Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph. 5:2)

Because of his outrageous love, he came, kept at it and would not quit.

Verses like these reveal the how:

God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. (Acts 10:38)

The gospel is centered in God’s Son, a descendant of David by human genealogy and patently marked out as the Son of God by the power of that Spirit of holiness which raised him to life again from the dead. He is our Lord, Jesus Christ. (Rom. 1:3-4 Phillips)

By the power of the Spirit of holiness, he finished what could not be done.

The power of holiness

Is it just me, or have you not thought much, either, about the power inherent in holiness? Maybe we haven’t made the connection because we’re taught so many confusing things as to what true holiness is, and what God’s power does, and how to relate to the Spirit in whom both reside.

So what if we ask God to teach us the unfathomable? What if we start by looking again at the weekend when Jesus finished and, while we’re asking how and why, reflect on these questions too:

That Friday, that Sabbath day and that Sunday …

Who showed holiness, and who did not?

What did holiness look like? What did evil look like? How did each differ from the ways we may expect them to look?

What did the power of holiness accomplish, and also, what did it deliberately not do?

Finishing, Jesus offered every one of us a new beginning. He threw open the way for each of us to be filled with the Spirit who is holy, and his exceedingly abundant power and love.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Eph. 3:14-21)

May he be glorified in you, dear one. Even when it seems most impossible, may Christ within you fill you with the why, and the how, to overcome evil with good.

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Adapted from “Snapshot 65: How?” in Focused Living in a Frazzled World: 101 Snapshots of Life, © 2005 by Deborah P Brunt.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

See also

• Darkness, betrayal and the heartbeat of God
• When waiting is writhing
• I AM the one you seek (currently under renovation)
• The arrest of Jesus reminds us that we need to understand the Pharisees, by Rebecca Davis – Leaders who are doing great evil, but appear to be godly, can fool us all.