David Bryant Mini-Post / 3-minute Read

This Easter, Let’s Dig Deeper Into
Jesus’ Sufferings for Us

Come with me to Cincinnati. Along the banks of the Ohio River sits one of the most startling museums in America: The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Just as often happens at a similar but larger museum on the National Mall, a day spent at the Center often leaves visitors shaken to the core.

There, people are confronted with the stark horror of over three hundred years of African slavery in our nation. By picture walls, videos, artifacts, lectures, recreated life-sized slave markets and slave quarters—through sights, sounds, smells—the gruesome story of the sufferings of millions of men, women, and children at the hands of brutal kidnappers and abusive slave owners is portrayed, relentlessly, from floor to floor.

The story is one of despicable, unconscionable evil.

Visitors face a nearly indescribable, incomprehensible level of affliction, adversity, anguish, and agony. In contrast, we also see displayed the remarkable courage, stamina, resilience, and even resistance of those enslaved.

The Freedom Center encases an incredible record of America’s troubling past of repulsion and redemption, of hideousness and hopefulness.

Though unintended, for Easter 2025, the Freedom Center provides an even more profound message for those with ears to hear.

Repeatedly and vividly, the themes of the story told there mirror much of what Christ’s crucifixion involved for him. Consider:

Like the ancestors of today’s African Americans, he too underwent unjust suffering—abusive, horrific, incomprehensible.

Yet, just as the African American tragedy has resulted, to a significant degree, in compelling an entire nation to reengage with and redeem issues like human dignity, racial nobility, and civil rights, even so, Christ’s cross achieved, in a far more profound way, an eternal liberation that is purposeful, redemptive, and transformative.

But his sorrow, anguish, and pain did not result in the possibility of the rehabilitation of only one nation. It was for the reclamation of the entire creation!

How might we respond to this insight during the Easter season?

Why not go to a quiet place and spend time in thoughtful, biblical reflection and prayer. Allow the Holy Spirit to help you penetrate more deeply into the connection between human and divine afflictions and suffering.

Of course, when it comes to the Son of God and his cross, we will never truly fathom the excruciating agony of our pure and holy Savior becoming and bearing the sin of all mankind, even if we could stand among those who, over the centuries, have been crushed by the oppression of whips and chains.

But penetrate we must!

We must because the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ was and is inseparable from his redemptive mission.

We must because his deadly mission was and is inseparable from his ever-living position today, reigning as our Lord and Savior in heaven and earth.

We must because his sacrificial mission was and is inseparable from our everlasting condition as those reconciled to God and “washed in the blood of the Lamb” to glorify and serve our Savior, victorious forever.

Galatians 6:14-16
(The Message)

I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. Can’t you see the central issue in all this?. . . It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life!

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About the Author

Over the past 50 years, David Bryant has been defined by many as a “messenger of hope” and a “Christ proclaimer” to the Church throughout the world. Formerly a minister-at-large with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, president of Concerts of Prayer International (COPI), and chairman of America’s National Prayer Committee, David now provides leadership to ChristNow.com and Proclaim Hope!, whose mission is to foster and serve Christ Awakening movements. Download his widely read ebooks at ChristNow.com. Enjoy hundreds of podcast episodes. Watch his vlogs at David Bryant REPORTS. Meet with David through Zoom or in-person events through David Bryant LIVE!