The Standard April 12, 2025
This year Holy Week runs from April 13-20, starting with Palm Sunday and ending with Easter. As Christians, these days call for intentional reflection and special times of worship. Our communities and churches might offer mid-week services in addition to those on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.
There is no better explanation of Holy Week than what we find in the Old and New Testaments. It is a consistent story of human fallenness and need, met by God’s perfect provision and grace. We had a death-inducing sin problem and God, through Christ, gave us the life-giving solution.
“He was despised and rejected by humankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.” “Surely, he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” Isaiah 53: 3a, 4-7
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” “But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!” Romans 5:6-8, 15
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.” “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:17-19b, 21
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” Ephesians 2: 1, 4-7
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