Modern society has become very skilled at constructing barriers to shelter from the pain of confronting reality. We develop all kinds of excuses to hide from feeling inadequate;

“I can’t help it.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“I didn’t know that would happen.”

We hide the starkness of death with lots of flowers.

Most of us struggle to measure up to the expectations we place on ourselves, let alone those others impose on us. So our defences go up. The tragedy is that the barriers don’t work. We can’t undo the past. We can’t just delete our mistakes. Guilt has the ability to gnaw away at our souls.

The story of Good Friday is the ultimate breaking down of these barriers. The “in our place” death of Jesus, is God’s answer to our human condition. Jesus took the consequences for our rejection of God and His ways. He bore the punishment for our mistakes. The barriers of guilt that stood between us and God are broken.

Our Creator gives us the new start we yearn for. Jesus deals with the reality of our past not by discreetly sweeping it under the carpet, but by a very public death in our place. He died so that we can break through the barrier into eternal life.

Stephen Semenchuk
Senior Pastor