It Changes Everything!

by TerryLema

Good Friday. The six trials, the mockery, the tortures, the crucifixion, the burial. There is so much I could, perhaps should, meditate on. Each Good Friday it seems God opens to me a different aspect. I see something I never saw before, or one event touches my soul deeper than ever before. For me, this year, it is two words, “Remember me.”

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” [Luke 23:42 NIV]

Those were the words spoken by one of the thieves crucified beside Jesus. “Remember me.” And Jesus’ promised that He would remember. “Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.’”  [Luke 23:43 NIV]

My sins demand my punishment, death under God’s glorious standards, just as that thief’s sins demanded his death under Rome’s harsh standards. He was crucified by Rome next to God’s sinless Lamb. His crucifixion may have satisfied Rome’s law but did nothing to satisfy God’s holy standards.  There was still another death, an eternal separation from the God of Glory awaiting him on the other side.  That is, until he spoke those two words.  “Remember me.”

From that moment on, everything changed for that thief. The death Jesus’ was dying, the separation He would experience from the Father, would that day change a thief from a sinner to a child of God.  “Remember me” changes everything for us also because of Christ’s death on the cross and His resurrection.

Jesus, remember me. Amen.

0 comment

You may also like