This is an excerpt from Remembering Your Baptism: A Sinner Saint Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2025) by Kathy Morales, pgs 74-77.
“The Church exists to tell anyone and everyone who knocks on her door wondering what’s inside: Come and see” (pg. 58). Such reminders make The Church a worthwhile read.
The way of the cross is the actual way of victory. Jesus absorbs the worst of what humanity and even the devil can do to him, and he spurns the shame of it all.

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Out of His mind indeed, as He took our place between murderers and received the insults and torture of humanity.
The miracle of Pentecost is not obvious; it is the miracle of faith created through the preaching of the word of the cross.
There in that moment, the waters of baptism reached down deep into the forsaken path of the grave with a man whose body and mind could no longer hold onto any reality otherwise.
In Martin Luther's Small Catechism he borrows a line from St. Augustine about what defines a "god."
Jesus, Who is truly God, became a regular Joe (or Joshua as the case may be) for us.
Our gods expect us to be perfect, pure, and in constant control of our feelings and thoughts.
There is just something about the idea of not being ‘under Law’ that sets off all kinds of alarms in the minds of many Christians.
Because of Jesus, we don’t have to pretty up anything ugly thing in life.
So, on this Good Friday, our sinful self and all our sins rest with Jesus here in His tomb. Our transgressions are fully atoned.
At Golgotha, Jesus saves us from sin by becoming sin for us. Jesus takes all our messes, all our shame, all our guilt, all our fears and insecurities and He allows them to kill Him instead of us.
Jesus’ death was a direct fulfillment of the will of His Father as promised in the Scriptures.
Jesus was praying a Psalm. Psalm 22 to be precise, and both the Gospels of Matthew and Mark relay the story to us of Jesus praying that Psalm on the cross at the hour of His death.