Can you Imagine this man who carried the dead body of the God Man in his hands from the cross?

John 19:38–42 (NIV)

³⁸ Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. ³⁹ He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. ⁴⁰ Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. ⁴¹ At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. ⁴² Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

I wonder what this man Joseph of Arimathea would feel when he finally stand before Jesus seated at his great throne of glory at the end time when Jesus judges all men? I mean he carried Jesus’ dead body together with Nicodemus and wrapped him up and applied myrrh and aloes to bury Jesus. That’s the narrative between the cross and the tomb, the most heart tearing story, and yet the most powerful world changing story that has brought healing and eternal hope for all of mankind whoever put their faith in him.

Welcome to Easter

Then Jesus rose the dead, and appeared to his disciples for 40 days teaching and exhorting them and assuring them before his final ascension to heaven.

I have lots of questions:

What does God the Father think looking down from heaven at his beloved Son been killed and now being carried out to be buried by this secret disciple? It is not just what went through Arimathea only, but what went through the mind of God at that time? To imagine the omnipotent almighty God allows his Son seemingly defeated and being killed in a murderous torturous humiliating way before the eyes of the whole world? What went through the mind of God?

Jesus’s death and humiliation on the Cross is exactly the Plan of God

But that’s exactly what God planned and written about his Son Jesus Christ from ancient prophecies of Isaiah etc. It’s just beyond human comprehension that this could happen to the God Man himself. No religion can fathom this, and for Christians today to pass through another Easter like life a usual, will be absolutely criminal!

Why did God allow that? The answer is God actually planned for it; God predestined it before he created the world. The Triune God Father Son and Holy Spirit had all thought through this carefully and decided to do this. My argument is that it was not an accident that Adam and Eve fell into the temptation of Satan. Going a step further, it’s also not an accident the fall of Lucifer the archangel to become Satan. The origination of evil is Satan. And Satan is also predestined by God in the eternity past before the angels were created. 

God did it to Show the Depth & Glory of His Love for Mankind

I can only imagine that God predestined it that way to show the depth of his love for humanity and that’s who He is. The only way to show such intense depth is in God’s eternal wisdom, is to have the second person of Godhead , the Son, to die on the cross to redeem humanity. It was not an accident we have Easter! It’s all written in the scripts of God in the Old Testament. 

That’s what Paul wrote in Romans the doxology of God! 

Romans 11:33–36 (NIV). Doxology

³³ Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! 

How unsearchable his judgments, 

and his paths beyond tracing out! 

³⁴ “Who has known the mind of the Lord? 

Or who has been his counselor?”  

³⁵ “Who has ever given to God, 

that God should repay them?”  

³⁶ For from him and through him and for him are all things. 

To him be the glory forever! Amen.

Our Response to Such Intense Love

Ephesians 3 ¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Our response is to pray that we may have power to grasp how wide, long, high and deep is the love of Christ for us all!!

And to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. We can never reach the fullness of God without realizing the depth of the love of Christ!! Let this Easter melt your heart one more time, on a yearly basis every time at this time of the year. Let God’s Holy Spirit dwell in us to richly that he may strengthen us with power in our inner being to understand, to grasp his deep, wide long high love of Christ! Amen