You know that feeling when you’re sick and you wonder to yourself how awesome it would be if you could say the magic word and you’d be fully made well? In moments of desperation, we all would love to have this authority. Today I want to talk to you about Someone who had the word and refused to use it.

For those of us who believe in Jesus, this is a pivotal week in our year and the cornerstone to our faith. This is Holy Week. The week that Jesus began His journey to the cross. Today marks the evening of the Last Supper and the night He will be betrayed by one of His best friends. Tomorrow, Good Friday, is the day Jesus will exercise His full denial of Himself and allow even death to overtake Him for a moment. Sunday marks the great exultation of His glorious resurrection, marking the fulfillment of the gracious gift of salvation for those who believe.

2,000 years ago, this was what was happening on the same earth we find ourselves living on today. I first heard Good Friday explained this way when I was in Kona, Hawaii with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) back in 2017. My school leader, Mike, brought this incredible Friday to life the following way.

Jesus walked this earth just like we do. He was fully human and fully God at the exact same time. He laughed, He cried, He was hungry, He was tired, He felt the joy of love and the sting of betrayal. Hebrews 4:15 says, “This High Priest (Jesus) of ours understands our weaknesses, for He faced all the same testings we do, yet without sin.” Jesus fully understood what it was like to be a human.

Philippians 2:6-8 from The Message translation describes Jesus’ divinity this way, “He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless obedient death— and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.”

This is where I want to pick up the story late that Thursday night. We find Jesus sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane asking His Father if this cup may pass from Him, but He ultimately wants to do the will of His Father (Luke 22:42). Jesus knows what’s about to come. The gruesome journey to Calvary where He will be crucified and the weight of the world’s sin He will carry for a moment and for the first time in eternity, He will experience separation from the Father.

One of His best friends, Judas, brings the temple guards with him with the intention of arresting Jesus. We see this scene in the Gospel of John Chapter 18. Jesus asks them a question, “who do you seek?” They tell Him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus replies, “I am He.” As soon as He says this, the soldiers back up and fall to the ground. The first two questions play out again and Jesus tells the soldiers to let His followers go, and they do. Even in His arrest, there is a clear sense that Jesus is fully in control and His authority is still ever-so present. These soldiers fell over simply at His Word. This is the point I want us to focus in on. 

Jesus continues the dreadful journey the following day. After being unfairly tried, Jesus is eventually flogged, given a crown of thorns, mocked, spit on, struck, and carried His cross exhausted through the streets of Jerusalem. His physical strength depleted, the Romans grab an unsuspecting bystander to carry Jesus’ cross for Him the remainder of the way.

This is all a precursor to the actual torture devise that was commonly deployed during the rule of the Romans – the crucifixion. Nails would be driven through His wrists and through His feet. With His arms stretched out on the cross, He would need to push up on the below nail to try and gasp for air. His shoulders would eventually dislocate. Each breath would require every ounce of strength He had left. Through all of this, death would finally arrive by suffocation. The Gospel of Mark in Chapter 15 tells us that Jesus was crucified at the third hour (9 A.M.) and He died at the ninth hour (3 P.M.). For six hours, He hung there suffering. This was a brutal way to die.

One of the last things Jesus is recorded of saying before He dies is a pleading to His Father – not for Him, but for us. Through all of this, He asks His Father to forgive them, because they don’t know what they’re doing (Luke 23:34). Till the end, He remains fighting for us, all the while having the ability with a Word to save Himself.

We know this from the way Jesus spoke to His disciples in the garden the night He was arrested. In Matthew 26:53, Jesus says, “don’t you realize that I could ask my Father for thousands of angels to protect us, and He would send them instantly?” Jesus’ authority never left Him. He, in every second of that Friday, had to choose to deny Himself. He endured one of the most horrific deaths that man has ever concocted to kill another, all the while, at any moment – only needing to say a Word. Jesus refuses, but the power Jesus had in His Word, with just a thought, remained true.

This is an incredibly integral component to the story. Jesus didn’t get arrested like we would have gotten arrested – helpless. He didn’t find Himself getting whipped, His flesh leaving His back, and suddenly realize He’d gone too far and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He didn’t find Himself gasping for just one more breath thinking to Himself that He’d messed up.

No. Jesus, at every turn was in complete and utter control. What makes His sacrifice all the more worthy of worship, is the fact that all he had to do was just think to Himself, I want this to end – and it would have. All it would have taken was one Word and the pain would have ended, and it could have been over. He had that power. And every second leading up to the cross, Jesus had to make a conscious choice to continue on the path that was set before Him. Over and over again, He had to deny Himself. He had to choose the path of sacrifice and death over His own life and comfort – all the way until His final breath.

This vastly changed the way I viewed that day. What Jesus actually had to go through. The self-control necessary to live through this is truly unfathomable. He loves us that much. And He was sold out to accomplish the will of the Father. It’s such an understatement, but He is so worthy of worship. 

The list of applications here is abundant, but that’s not where I want us to land. I want to encourage you, friends, the remainder of this week to consider the kind of love it would take for someone to choose this path on your behalf. That’s exactly what Jesus did. He chose this to give you an opportunity to receive the free gift of salvation. He denied Himself and endured this road as the ultimate testament of love and sacrifice. And He didn’t just do it for someone. Friend — He did it for you.