On this Good Friday, we stop to remember Christ’s agonizing journey to the cross and what that act of obedience meant for mankind. The following post is an excerpt from a Bible study that perhaps many of you know: Jesus the One and Only from Beth Moore.
And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house. – Isa. 22:23 (KJV)
The passage foreshadows Christ in a remarkable way. As unfathomable as the process is to you and me, the cross was the means by which God chose to position Christ in the seat of honor for the house of His father. The cross is the open door no man can shut.
Isaiah 22:23 says, “I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place” (KJV). The original word for firm in the NIV and sure in the KJV is aman; “in a transitive sense to make firm, to confirm… to stand firm; to be enduring; to trust.”
Nothing was accidental about the cross of Christ. The Son of God was not suddenly overcome by the wickedness of man and nailed to a cross. Quite the contrary, the cross was the means by which the Son of God overcame the wickedness of man. To secure the keys to the house of David and open the door of salvation to all who would enter, God drove His Son like a nail in a sure place. A firm place. An enduring place.
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. – Col. 2:13-14 (ESV)
I will never fully grasp how such human atrocities occurred at the free will of humanity, while God used them to unfold His perfect, divine, and redemptive plan. Christ was nailed to the cross as the one perfect human. He was the fulfillment of the law in every way. When God drove His Son like a nail in a firm place, He took the written code, finally fulfilled in His Son, and canceled our debt to it.
With every pound of the hammer, God was nailing down redemption.
My sin-oh, the bliss of this glorious tho’t
My sin not in part, but the whole
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
