Most people, at least in my history with the church, would equate the actions of God on Good Friday with the actions of the Praetorian Guard pictured in The Passion of the Christ. We have an image of the Father being so angry that He mercilessly beats up His son to avenge some need for vengeance on the human race.

I want to look at it differently. There is no verse, that's right none, that tells us that God poured out His wrath on Jesus. Furthermore, all instances that mention God’s wrath in the New Testament whether it is being saved from it or the promise of it coming, refer DIRECTLY to His wrath being poured out on an old, inferior, obsolete Covenant. I would go one step further and suggest that by pouring our His wrath on the Old Covenant in AD70 and destroying the Temple that the Old Covenant no longer exists at all.

God is not vengeful towards humanity. Through the sacrifice of Jesus and the inauguration of the New Covenant, God decided to forgive our sins once and for all. The blood shed on the cross was sufficient to meet the demands of a much better covenant, one so good I am mystified why some Christians try to be Jewish!

Then comes the resurrection. On the day of first fruits, the day when the people of God celebrated the return on their investment, Jesus rose. Even if the first fruits were small, the promise was assured. Celebrating all that God will do BEFORE He does it fully, and basing the celebration on what has started to bear fruit is a doorway to more fruitfulness.

I declare that from this past Sunday, God is breathing fruitfulness among us all. Things that have borne no fruit in the past will become abundant. Things that we have tried and have looked like they haven’t worked will in this season, work. He is doing a new thing, it may be time to go for it again!

Romans 8:15-21 (The Message)

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!

That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.