A person facing certain death has no doubt about the reality of judgment. At that instant he knows where his life is taking him; he is no longer able to ignore the voice of his conscience.

He faced certain death. He not only sensed judgment — he stood before the judge and was condemned. The dreadful sentence of death had been rendered. He bore the heavy weight of our guilt as he left the court.

His was not a private execution before the eyes of a few required witnesses. He walked before his countrymen, disfigured by the brutal treatment of His guards. Strong men paled at the sight of him and women wept. Step by awful step he walked to where his life would finally be wrenched from his battered body.

Many men had walked that grim path before. The guilt they bore sealed their eternal destiny. Stumbling and collapsing from exhaustion, He finally reached the place of execution. In a few agonizing hours the public spectacle came to an end. Those who were there heard him cry out about being forsaken by God. He surely was.

There before the eyes of heaven and earth his life ended. The weight of guilt thrust his righteous soul down into the pit of death. Yet he didn’t bear his own guilt — he bore ours. He willingly took upon himself the anguish that our sins deserved. In all his suffering he uttered no complaint and felt no bitterness.

His death was the greatest act of love ever demonstrated. His innocent blood covered every unjust and filthy act that we have ever done — all the things we continued to do against our conscience.

He spent three days and three nights in death, and that was enough to pay for the sin of us all. The pain he went through was enough. Even in death there was not one bit of distrust or resistance to his Father’s will for him. That’s why the full anguish of death was able to reach the very core of his being in such a short time. It more than equaled the suffering which the hard-hearted will resist eternally as they continue to reason away their guilty consciences.

When he had done all he was sent to do, his Father raised him from the dead. Because of his innocence it was impossible for death to hold him. In his death he purchased the earth and all its inhabitants. In his resurrection he became King to all who would follow him. His name — Yahshua — means I am mighty and powerful to save. That same power that raised him from the dead enables his disciples to love one another the same way he loved us. It actually breaks down the barriers that alienate human beings from one another. It produces a life of love and unity — the evidence that God loves mankind and sacrificed His Son to set us free.

He is our Liberator. Anyone who is willing to do his will can come to him and be set free from death. God, in His great mercy and loving kindness towards man, provided a way that even the unjust and filthy could find forgiveness and change their eternal destiny.