Supreme irony

“You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?” They all condemned him as worthy of death. Mark 14. 64

Imagine that: Jesus was condemned for blasphemy - ie being disrespectful to God - by the very people God chose to introduce himself to and through! Still today, people are preferring presents at Christmas and chocolates at Easter to recognising the arrival of God in the world and his resurrection from the dead. "There are none so blind as those who will not see," as some sage has observed.

Someone I know once said of Good Friday: "Is this not when the rubber hits the road?" He was referring to the death of Jesus as the culmination of God's mission and the turning point of history. He was correct: "God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world but that through him the world might be saved" (John 3. 17). And, though the authorities of the day condemned Jesus, the power that was in Jesus was, and remains, greater.

That power is a person: the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit raised Jesus from death to everlasting life and that same Holy Spirit is at work in us who believe. That is how the apostle John is able to encourage fellow believers who are suffering persecution, reassuring them at 4. 4 of his 1st letter: "Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world."