The Curtain Was Torn In Two
My prayer for this Good Friday is that you get a fresh sense of what Christ dying on the Cross means for us.
To me, one of the most powerful and personal verses in the Bible is Matthew 27:51. Here is the context – we read in Exodus 26-27 that in the Tabernacle the Most Holy Place (sometimes called the Holy of Holies), the innermost sanctuary of the temple, was separated from the Holy Place by a curtain (veil). God resided in the Most Holy Place. Any Israelite could come to the temple to pray or to bring an offering, but only priests could sacrifice the animals or burn incense in the Courtyard. And only the high priest could enter the Holy Place one day a year (Day of Atonement) to offer blood for his sins and the sins of the world.
The meaning of all this is that in Old Testament days the people did not have personal access to God. We see this is Hebrews 9:7, “But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance.” (I encourage you to read this in context in Hebrews 9.)
Having said all of that is to say this – When Christ died on the Cross we read these words in Matthew 27:50-51a, “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.”
The curtain (veil) referred to in that passage is the curtain that separated the people from the presence of God. What does that mean for us here and now? Because of Christ’s death on the Cross, through His blood, we now have personal access to God, who would never again dwell in a temple made by human hands (Acts 17:24).
Jesus is now our High Priest and through Him we can come into God’s presence. In answering Thomas’s question as “how can we know the way (to the place Jesus was going),” Jesus answered him like this, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
We see similar language in Hebrews – “And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water” (10:19-22).
It is in God’s presence that we find true joy, peace, and contentment. Let these words of King David soak deep into your soul – “Surely you have granted him unending blessings and made him glad with the joy of your presence” (Psalm 21:6). It is also in God’s presence that seemingly impossible things objectively happen – “Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turned the rock into a pool, the hard rock into springs of water” (Psalm 114:7-8).
So, today, take some time to reflect upon what it means for you to be able to come into the presence of God.
