With this hymn, the chief Good Friday service concludes triumphantly, declaring victory over death. Sometimes we treat Lent, and particularly Good Friday, as if it’s a funeral for Jesus. While it is appropriate to behave especially reverently during the Holy Week services, with more silence and time for meditation on the gravity of what God has done for us in Jesus’ death, nevertheless we are not burying Jesus, for we live even on Good Friday in the hope of Easter and the Resurrection.

In this 6th century hymn by Fortunatus, we reflect upon the victory Christ won against sin and death from the cross. In the first stanza we sing: “The royal banners forward go; the cross shows forth redemption’s flow, where He, by whom our flesh was made, our ransom in His flesh has paid.” The image is of a procession after a war, with royal banners leading the way, followed by the cross upon which hung the body of Jesus. He who created our flesh, now by His own flesh “washes us in the precious flood” of His blood.

Upon that cross, His “hard arms, so widely flung, the weight of this world’s ransom hung, the price of humankind to pay and spoil the spoiler of his prey.” Jesus is the Strongman who breaks into the spoiler’s (devil’s) treasure room, and with His blood releases us from our bondage to sin and death. Because the cross is the place where Jesus won our freedom, we look upon the cross as a thing of beauty. Instead of an instrument of torture, it is now a “tree of beauty, tree most fair, ordained those holy limbs to bear.” Gone is the shame of the cross, for each bough proclaims the King of glory now.

For the Christian, the cross and the body of Jesus hanging on the cross, is a sign of victory and the most precious and beautiful image we could ever behold. Of course Jesus is not hanging on the cross anymore, nevertheless, we are with St. Paul and we know and proclaim nothing but Christ and Him crucified. There on the cross is victory! We hold it before our eyes in remembrance of Him who by the cross has triumphed over every force of evil.

By the wood of Jesus’ cross joy has come into all the world.

Pastor Koopman