Paschal Trilogy – 2024: Good Friday
Micah 7:19, ‘He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot.’
Micah draws his prophecy to a close with a vision of the eschatological redemption by which YHWH will definitively manifest His identity to the cosmos such that the nations will cover their mouths in silenced awe and come trembling to Him alone as God (Micah 7:15-19). At the heart of this vision is the assurance that YHWH will ‘tread our iniquities underfoot,’ that is to say, that He will finally and decisively overcome all that divides His people from Himself.
The mind-wrenching testimony of the Gospel is that this end-time salvation, this nation-humbling revelation, this sin-trampling redemption is achieved when YHWH in the flesh ascends to the lowly heights of Calvary’s cross and crushes our Sin, our Suffering, our Death, our Hell—and Satan himself—beneath the bruised heel of His nail-pierced feet.
This is the wonder, the awe, the terror, and the glory of Good Friday…that here, in the collected apogee of human agony, is YHWH God, revealed in the cosmos-silencing majesty of his steadfast love, carrying out the unimagined and unimaginable work of redeeming a sin-damned people for and through and to Himself.
This year’s trilogy considers the feet and hands of Christ. Good Friday’s image focuses on the feet. The feet that trample our sin and its effects. This is depicted most prominently in the crushed serpent (Gen.3:15), ultimately picturing Satan himself, overthrown by the blood of the Lamb (Rev.12:11). The thorns picture the ‘curse’ in all of its expressions (Gen. 3:18): sorrow, suffering, cosmic mortality, and the general ‘vanity’ of life ‘under the sun.’ Finally, the skull—shattered by the same cross that pierced the serpent’s head and the Lord’s feet—pictures Death, obliterated from the inside by the love-embraced death of Life Himself ( 1 Cor. 15:55; Heb.2:9,14-15). The blood that pours from Christ’s feet represents His own death, but simultaneously the outpouring of the very Life of God (Lev.17:11) which is given, through death, as life-giving wine to the Bride.
