Good Friday: What we have merited

St. Bernard was so terror-stricken by Christ’s sufferings that he said: I imagined I was secure and I knew nothing of the eternal judgment passed upon me in heaven, until I saw the eternal Son of God took mercy upon me, stepped forward and offered himself on my behalf in the same judgment. Ah, it does not become me still to play and remain secure when such earnestness is behind those sufferings. Hence he commanded the women: “Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.” Lk 23:28; and gives in the 31st verse the reason: “For if they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” As if to say: Learn from my martyrdom what you have merited and how you should be rewarded. For here it is true that a little dog was slain in order to terrorize a big one. Likewise the prophet also said: “All generations shall lament and bewail themselves more than him”; it is not said they shall lament him, but themselves rather than him. Likewise were also the apostles terror-stricken in Acts 2:37, as mentioned before, so that they said to the apostles: “O, brethren, what shall we do?” So the church also sings: I will diligently meditate thereon, and thus my soul in me will exhaust itself.

–Martin Luther 

Good Friday: Take Me, and ransom your souls

Now we have found the compassion of God which appeared lost to you when we were considering God's holiness and man's sin; we have found it, I say, so great and so consistent with his holiness, as to be incomparably above anything that can be conceived. For what compassion can excel these words of the Father, addressed to the sinner doomed to eternal torments and having noway of escape: "Take my only begotten Son and make him an offering for yourself;" or these words of the Son: "Take me, and ransom your souls." For these are the voices they utter, when inviting and leading us to faith in the Gospel. Or can anything be more just than for him to remit all debt since he has earned a reward greater than all debt, if given with the love which he deserves.

-St. Anselm of Canterbury(1033-1109) from his Cur Deus Homo

The true Victim

Christ himself is the true Victim, who takes away all the sins of the world. He is the immaculate Lamb of God, sacrificed on the cross during the Paschal season. He is the true Priest consecrated by God, and as such has offered himself up as Victim to the Father in an odor of sweetness. He is the High Priest who once a year enters alone in the Holy of Holies to plead not only for his own people, but for the salvation of all peoples who believe in him. And this Christ truly did, dying once for the entire human race until the end of time.

-Thomas à Kempis

Christ: Sacrifice and Victor

Yet we must not understand that he fell under a curse that overwhelmed him; rather - in taking the curse upon himself - he crushed, broke, and scattered its whole force. Hence faith apprehends an acquittal in the condemnation of Christ, a blessing in his curse. Paul with good reason, therefore, magnificently proclaims the triumph that Christ obtained for himself on the cross, as if the cross, which was full of shame, had been changed into a triumphal chariot! For he says that "Christ nailed to the cross the written bond which stood against us . . . and disarmed the principalities . . . and made a public example of them" [Col. 2:14-15]. And no wonder! For "Christ . . . through the eternal Spirit offered himself," as another apostle testifies [Heb. 9:14]. From this came that transmutation of nature. But that these things may take root firmly and deeply in our hearts, let us keep sacrifice and cleansing constantly in mind. For we could not believe with assurance that Christ is our redemption, ransom, and propitiation unless he had been a sacrificial victim. Blood is accordingly mentioned wherever Scripture discusses the mode of redemption. Yet Christ's shed blood served, not only as a satisfaction, but also as a laver [cf. Eph. 5:26; Titus 3:5; Rev. 1:5] to wash away our corruption.

-John Calvin, Institutes 2.16.6

Which Cross do you believe in?

The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it.
–A. W. Tozer
HT - T19