This is So Important To Remember on Good Friday

David Burnette:

It only makes sense on Good Friday to shine the spotlight on Jesus. 

Christ’s death is, after all, the climax of the Gospel accounts (along with the resurrection, of course). That the the Son of God willingly took our punishment is the foundation of our hope and it should be the object of our deepest gratitude. But if God’s wrath is what Christ shielded us from, then how can we rejoice in the Father’s intentions on Good Friday? 

The cross certainly reminds of God’s holiness and of his hatred of sin. However, unless we take a step back to consider what was going on at Calvary, our view of God the Father can become distorted. He can become a cold and angry Deity who in his quest for justice is just itching to wipe us out. Until, thankfully, Jesus intervenes. 

Gratefully, this is not how Scripture presents God the Father. 

In The Cross of Christ John Stott cautions us against characterizing the Father as Judge and the Son as Savior. It is one and the same God who saves us in Christ (140). This error may at first sound subtle, but it’s always a big deal when we have a wrong view of God. Just as we honor the Son by thanking him for his sacrifice on the cross, so too we should honor the Father by responding rightly to his role in our salvation. To this end, here are three things to remember about God the Father on this Good Friday …

Read the rest.  

9 Things You Should Know About the 9/11 Attack Aftermath

Joe Carter: 

1. It took 99 days -- until December 19, 2001 -- for the fires at Ground Zero to be extinguished.

2. Cleanup at Ground Zero wasn't officially completed until May 30, 2002. It took 3.1 million hours of labor to clean up 1.8 million tons of debris at a total cost of cleanup of $750 million.

3. There were 20 people pulled from the rubble in the two days after the attack. On the day following the attacks, 11 people were rescued from the wreckage, including six firefighters and three police officers. Two Port Authority police officers were also rescued after spending nearly 24 hours beneath 30 feet of rubble.

4. The total number of 9/11 victim deaths rose to 2,752 in January 2009, when the New York City medical examiner's office ruled that Leon Heyward, who died the previous year of lymphoma and lung disease, was a homicide victim because he was caught in the toxic dust cloud just after the towers collapsed.

5. More than 1,000 people who have lived or worked near ground zero, including first responders, have been diagnosed with a cancer related to the attacks, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

6. Most of the steel from the World Trade Center wreckage was sent to New Jersey salvage yards where it was broken down and sent all over the world for reuse. Nearly 350,000 tons of the steel was sent to be reused in small and large scale tributes, including 7.5 tons for use in the navy battleship USS New York.

7. For the first time in history, all nonemergency civilian aircraft in the United States were grounded for three days. The lack of condensation trails (contrails) from jet aircraft caused the average temperature across the U.S. to rise by an average of 1.8 C.

8. A longitudinal study of 38 women who were pregnant on 9/11 and were either at or near the World Trade Centre at the time of the attack found that those who developed Post-traumatic Stress Disorde (PTSD) following exposure to the attacks had significantly lower cortisol levels in their saliva than those who were similarly exposed but did not develop PTSD. The children of women who were traumatized as a result of 9/11 subsequently exhibited an increased distress response when shown novel stimuli, suggesting that the effects of the trauma were passed on to the children prior to birth.

9. On September 13 a worker at the site, Frank Silecchia, discovered a 20 foot cross of two steel beams amongst the debris. The beams were dubbed the "Ground Zero Cross" and became a spiritual symbol for families of the victims and workers who cleaned up the debris.

How To Overcome

How dare you approach the mercy-seat of God on the basis of what kind of day you had, as if that were the basis for our entrance into the presence of the sovereign and holy God? No wonder we cannot beat the Devil. This is works theology. It has nothing to do with grace and the exclusive sufficiency of Christ. Nothing. 

Do you not understand that we overcome the accuser on the ground of the blood of Christ? Nothing more, nothing less. That is how we win. It is the only way we win. This is the only ground of our acceptance before God. If you drift far from the cross, you are done. You are defeated. 

We overcome the accuser of our brothers and sisters, we overcome our consciences, we overcome our bad tempers, we overcome our defeats, we overcome our lusts, we overcome our fears, we overcome our pettiness on the basis of the blood of the Lamb.

- D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus (Re:Lit), 103

Shrinking To Your True Size

Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.

- John R. W. Stott, The Message of Galatians, 179.

Revolt and Relief on Good Friday

Mike Cosper:

One of my favorite passages of the Bible is Genesis chapter 15. There, God and Abraham participate in an ancient-near-East covenantal rite; a ceremony that many commentaries note was relatively common at the time. God asks Abraham to bring him a cow, a ram, a goat, a turtledove and a pigeon. He cut them in half, laying the pieces across one another, and waited until nightfall.

The idea was fairly simple (and incredibly powerful). Two people would stand in the midst of the halved animals and make their vow. Implicitly, one was saying, “May this happen to us should we break our vow.”

But God breaks from the custom here, and if you notice in the story, Abraham makes no vow; only God does. Abraham stands and witnesses as God’s presence, represented by a smoking fire pot and a torch, pass between the pieces.

I find it startlingly easy to imagine myself there. You can see the flames flickering in Abraham’s eyes, their warm glow causing the pooling blood and exposed viscera to shine like jewels under the dark, starry sky. God revealed himself as light in the darkness, and He foreshadowed a violent solution to the world’s biggest problem.

There’s surely a mix of revolt and relief in Abraham’s mind. Though the sight of butchered animals was anything but foreign to him, I still imagine that the sheer, bloody violence of it all must have made his stomach turn. And yet, there was great relief. God alone appeared amongst the carcasses. God alone made a promise. God alone put a price on his Sacred Head, saying, “may this happen to Me should we break our vow.”

It’s a relief for Abraham, because he knows he doesn’t have it in him to keep the promise. God has promised him countless descendants, but he’s an old man. Only God can give him children. Only God can change his future, filling it with his children. Only God can remain faithful to the promises made, as Abraham’s own story demonstrates.

And though God asked Abraham to prepare for the ceremony, God takes it upon himself to make the vow, saying, “I’m going to do this. Singlehandedly, I’ll get it done.”

I imagine that standing in the glow of the fire pot and torch felt a lot like standing at the foot of the cross, watching the One who made the world bleed, agonize for breath, and finally die. It’s no wonder the sky turned black. There, God kept his word, and the price of a broken covenant was exacted. He took it upon himself, and as he died, he said, “It’s finished.”

As we gather on Good Friday with our churches, remembering that dark day, we share in Abraham’s revolt and relief. The cross is revolting, Good Friday is a day to look with horror upon the violent results of our sin in God’s world. But it’s a relief too. The promise was kept, and we know that what God began, he’ll finish.

Books by Mike Cosper:

• Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey 
• Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel

Good Friday Meditations

Some great writing for Good Friday and Easter from Trevin Wax.

Tetelestai!

Melinda Penner:

On the cross, Jesus fulfilled the Law of Moses by satisfying the demands of it. By doing that He paid our certificates of debt we each earned.

The certificate of debt is a concept that lies behind Paul's comments about the certificate of debt in Colossians 2:13-14: And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

In Roman times, this certificate was a list of crimes committed against the state that required "payment," much like an indictment in our legal system today. The Romans gave Jesus a certificate of debt when He was sentenced to die; it was nailed to the cross: "Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews" (John 19:19). When the crimes were paid for, the certificate was canceled and was stamped with the word tetelestai, meaning "paid in full."

Paul says that Jesus "canceled out" (paid) our certificate of debt (v14).

Jesus' last words, His victory cry on the cross was, "It is finished!", literally in Greek was "tetelestai!" "He said, 'It is finished!' And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit." (John 19:30). "Paid in full." What was finished? His work of redemption paying for our certificates of debt against God.

What Does It Mean for Jesus to Despise Shame?

John Piper:

In running the race of life we are to look to the exaltation of Jesus at the end of his race. But Hebrews 12:2 tells us to look not only to his exaltation, but to his motivation.

Jesus was carried in the agonies of the last lap of his race by the hope of joy. “For the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame” (verse 2). Jesus kept his eyes on the same place we should — his own future exaltation at the Father’s right hand, with the completion of our salvation crowning his head. This was his joy.

There were mammoth obstacles in Jesus’s way. Two are mentioned. The cross and the shame. The cross, no doubt, stands for all the pain and abandonment and spiritual darkness of those hours, as he lunged, dying, to the finish line.

But shame is the one agony of the cross which the author mentions. And he said that Jesus despised it. That is an amazing choice of words. Would you have chosen such a word to say he overcame shame? He despised it.

Shame was stripping away every earthly support that Jesus had: his friends gave way in shaming abandonment; his reputation gave way in shaming mockery; his decency gave way in shaming nakedness; his comfort gave way in shaming torture. His glorious dignity gave way to the utterly undignified, degrading reflexes of grunting and groaning and screeching.

And he despised it. What does this mean?

Read the rest.

Jesus' Insomnia and Ours

Powerful and important words here from Dr. Moore.

Russell Moore:

When the disciples screamed in the face of a storm, Jesus slept (Mk. 4:37-38). When Jesus screamed in the face of a cross, the disciples slept (Mk. 14:37,41).

Why could Jesus sleep so peacefully through a life-threatening sea-storm, and yet is awake all night in the olive garden before his arrest, crying out in anguish? Why are the disciples pulsing with adrenaline as the ship is tossed about on the Galilee Lake, but drifting off to slumber as the most awful conspiracy in human history gets underway?

Peter, James, and John rebuke Jesus for falling asleep on the boat: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mk. 4:38) Jesus rebukes them for falling asleep as he prays before the cross: “Could you not watch one hour?” (Mk. 14:37)

Jesus isn’t the anxious sort. He tells us, remember, to be anxious for nothing, to take no thought for tomorrow (Matt 6:25-34). So why is he awake all night, “greatly distressed and troubled” (Mk. 14:33). In the storm, Jesus dismisses the disciples’ terror with a wave of the hand. In the garden, he screams, with loud cries and tears (Heb. 5:7), until the blood vessels in his face explode.

It is because Jesus knows what to fear. Jesus knows to fear not him who can kill the body, but instead Him who can cast both body and soul into hell (Matt. 10:28). Jesus doesn’t fear the watery deeps, which can be silenced by his voice. But he knows that is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Danger doesn’t keep Jesus awake; the judgment of God does.

The disciples are just the opposite, and I fear I am too. They are worried about relatively meaningless things, things that need only to be given over to the attention to Jesus. But they are oblivious to the cross that overhangs the cursed world around them, and within them.

I lose sleep quite often over the things Jesus tells me I should not worry about: my life, my possessions, my future. Such is not of the Spirit. Why is it easier for me to worry about next week’s schedule, and to lose sleep over that, than over those around me who could be moments away from judgment? Why am I more concerned about the way my peers judge my actions than about the Judgment Seat of Christ?

The Spirit of Jesus joins us to him in his Gethsemane anguish. We groan with him for the revealing of the sons of God, for resurrection from the dead (Rom. 8:23-27). We like him, through the Spirit, come to terms with the crosses we must carry. And, through it all, we cry with him, “Abba, Father!” (Mk. 14:36; Rom. 8:15).

The next time you find yourself unable to sleep due to worry, ask whether you’re in the Galilee waters or the Gethsemane garden. Ask yourself whether your wakefulness is of the weakening flesh or the awakening Spirit.

Books by Russell Moore:

• Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ
• Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches
• The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective

Getting Ready for Good Friday

Ryan Huguley:

I don’t know about you, but if I’m not careful, I tend to think about sin in a general, rather than a specific sense. The danger in this, is that sin becomes an idea rather than a reality. This means Christ died for a vague idea we label “sin” and not for the specific ways our hearts and lives have declared war on the God who made us. On the cross, Jesus dealt a definitive blow to my sin and yours. However, unless you get specific regarding the sin in you that put Christ on that cross, it won’t grow the gratitude in your heart it should.

Sunday we will celebrate Christ’s victorious resurrection! At Redemption we’ll sing loud, proclaim the gospel, and baptize people. But… We can’t celebrate the empty tomb until we’ve been to the bloody cross.

Don’t go through the motions tomorrow. Don’t miss out on what God wants to do in you. Seize this gracious opportunity to remember the price Jesus paid for you, as we remember Good Friday together.

Read the rest.

Death and the Language of Victory

Mockingbird Blog:

Jim Valvano (most likely known to non-sports fans as the namesake of the Jimmy V Foundation, a cancer research supporter which has given away hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the disease) was the subject of the latest ESPN 30-for-30 documentary, “Survive and Advance,” which premiered on Sunday night. The doc is about the unlikely path-to-a-championship of the 1983 North Carolina State Wolfpack, coached by Valvano, which included nine consecutive must-win games, many of which came down to the final seconds. The team’s run (the final basket in the championship game was recognized by Sports Illustrated and ESPN as the “greatest moment in the history of college basketball) was fascinating, but also typical, in a Disney film sort of way. It played out in exactly the way Michael Eisner might have recommended. What’s interesting to me is how the documentary treats Valvano’s illness and eventual death.

Naturally, Valvano’s diagnosis, foundation-founding, and eventual death are a major part of this story. Jonathan Hock, the director, has said that one of the things that interested him most about this story was that it was a wonderful tale of triumph after triumph being told about the life of “a doomed man.”

Interviewee after interviewee (Valvano’s players, wife, and friends, which include such luminaries as Mike Krzyzewski, Dick Vitale and Sonny Vaccaro) told of how, when Valvano was diagnosed with cancer, they thought — no, they assumed — he’d “beat it.” This is the language we use with cancer: the language of victory. I saw a post on Facebook recently in which a young boy wanted 100,000 “likes” because he’d “beaten” cancer. Valvano’s friends all spoke of being shocked as he became sicker, and ultimately astonished at his death. They’d thought he would win.

Even Jim Valvano died. The Facebook boy might have beaten cancer, but he hasn’t beaten death. No one has, or ever will. Well, except this one guy.

As humans, our most desperate wish is to win. We try to win everything, up to and including the ultimate contest: us against our own deaths. The profundity of the cross is that it looks death in the face and confronts it directly. The cross is the end of the human contest. We lose. Even Jim Valvano lost. No one “survives and advances.”

God, in Christ, brings victory out of defeat. God, in Christ, brings life out of death. We all die, but in Christ, we have the hope — no, the promise — of new and eternal life.

The Secret To Freedom in Life

Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making.  Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original:  whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring two pence how often it has been told before), you will, nine times out of ten, become original without having noticed it.  The principle runs through life from top to bottom.  Give up yourself, and you will find your real self.  Lose your life and you will save it...  Nothing that you have not given will be really yours...

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 190

"The idea of a goal, an ultimate aim, calling us to a hard road of self-denial has been quietly removed from the record."

Walt Mueller:

I've been reading through N.T. Wright's After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. Wright states a compelling case for a more proper way to approach our lives as Christians here in the midst of our broken world. . . a way more proper than 1) the belief that Christianity is all about conformity to a set of rules (the Pharisees!), or 2) the more widespread contemporary error that Christianity is all about following a Jesus who "accepted people as they were, and urged them to discover their real identity, and to be true to that essence." Wright goes on to say, "The idea of a goal, an ultimate aim, calling us to a hard road of self-denial - the idea, in other words, that Jesus of Nazareth meant what he said when he spoke of people taking up their cross to follow him! - has been quietly removed from the record, no only of secular Western life but also, extraordinarily, of a fair amount of Christian discourse." I couldn't help but reflect on these words from N.T. Wright as I read the reports on Rob Bell and Senator Portman.

Read the rest.

Denial

Kevin DeYoung:

Yes, you do receive incomparable blessings when you come to Jesus. But we must also hear, to paraphrase Calvin, that true Christian faith is built on denial of ourselves. This is why some folks have such a hard time hearing the gospel. We think, “God is love, and if God is love then he wouldn’t ask me to do something I don’t want to do.” But what good news is this?

The good news is that God is going to give us more than we could ask or imagine. But the reality of Christianity is that it only comes by a cross. Unless a seed falls to the earth and dies, it does not bear fruit.

When Jesus calls a man he bids him come and die.

That he might truly live.

Read the rest.


Books by Kevin DeYoung:

• The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness
• Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will
• What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission
• The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism
• Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion

The question is not "how can a just God send people to Hell?" The question concerns how a just God can allow sinners into Heaven.

Doug Wilson:

If there are ten innocent citizens rounded up, and five of them are shot by a despot, there is a gross injustice. But if there are ten inmates on death row, and the governor pardons three of them, there is no injustice done at all to the remaining seven. The only question of possible injustice arises with regard to the three who were pardoned. In other words, the question of justice does not arise when we are talking about Hell. It does arise when we are talking about Heaven.

The question is not "how can a just God send people to Hell?" The question concerns how a just God can allow sinners into Heaven. A God-centered concern about justice would worry far more about Heaven than Hell. A self-flattering, man-centered approach would worry aloud, and does worry aloud, about the purported justice of Hell. But we needn't worry. The Scriptures teach plainly that at the point of judgment, every mouth will be stopped. The Bible tells us that when it comes down to it, there will be nothing to say. The debates will be over.

The real problem, the problem of justice and Heaven, is resolved in the cross. Christ died as a blood atonement so that God could be both just and the one who justifies. God could be just and send us all to Hell. He could be the one who justifies and let us all into Heaven on a boy-will-be-boys basis. But in order to be both just and the one who justifies, Christ had to bleed.

And that is our final theodicy. Christ is the one who bled.

Read the rest.

Barabbas and Me

This is a powerful meditation for you on Good Friday.

David Mathis:

Year after year, as Christians walk through the Passion week with Jesus, our hearts are knit to him. He is our greatest hero, at the climax of his greatest feat. As we relive the story with him, we pull for him, and against his enemies.

We feel varying levels of disdain for Judas who betrays him, Peter who denies him, the chief priests who despise him, Herod who mocks him, the people who call for his crucifixion, Pilate who appeases the mob and washes his hands, and Barabbas who is guilty but gets to go free.

But wait. Barabbas — the guilty who goes free? Barabbas — the sinner released to new life while the death he deserves is paid by an Innocent Substitute?

Take careful note of where Luke is leading us in his carefully crafted narrative.

Read the rest.

Michael Kelley has a helpful reflection as well here.

Is Easter Too Violent for Kids?

Russell Moore:

Our children need to hear the Gospel. They need to see Jesus. That means they need to see both sides of skull place. That’s graphic, sure. It’s confusing, of course. And not just for kids. But it is the only message that saves. It’s the only message that prepares one for salvation. It is, as Paul says, that which is “of first importance,” the message he received from Jesus Himself (1 Cor 15:3-4).

The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is the Gospel. That’s the first word. If we cannot speak of that, we would be better off not speaking of Jesus at all, rather than presenting another Christ, one who meditates but does not mediate, who counsels but is not crucified, who is accessible but not triumphant over sin and death.

The apostle Paul told us the word of the cross would be folly to those who are perishing (1 Cor 1:18). He didn’t warn us that it would sometimes also be folly to those who are publishing. No matter. It is still the power of God

This Easter, preach the Gospel… to the senior citizens, to the middle-aged, to the young adults, to the teenagers, to the seekers, to the hardened unbelievers, to the whole world. And, yes, preach the Gospel to the preschoolers.

Read the rest.

Tony Jones on the Atonement

Tony Jones:

As with all theology, talk of the atonement is conjecture. God's truth is ultimately a mystery to which no human being is privy.

Thus his conclusion:

For my part, it's clear. I'm not interested in a God who needs to bargain with the Devil, or in a God who is bound to a legal system, no matter how just it seems to us. The crucifixion was the single most pivotal event in the history of the cosmos. In it, we see that the true character of God is love. God loves with an immensity that is hard to fathom. So much, in fact, that he forsook much of that divinity in order to find solidarity with you and me.

Doesn't quote A disqualify quote B?  We can't know anything for sure about God yet here are the things that I know about God.  They are "clear".  Love and solidarity are ultimate?  But I thought we can't know anything "ultimately"?

So ironic that in quote A it's all mystery, but in quote B he is willing to use the word "true".  Cake and eat it too?

The Cross Seems Silly When God is Shrunk and Man is Elevated

“All inadequate doctrines of the atonement are due to inadequate doctrines of God and man. If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to his, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it. When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God, and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely ‘hell–deserving sinners’, then and only then does the necessity of the cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before.”

- John Stott, The Cross of Christ, 109

(HT:  OFI)

Is the Cross a Classic Case of Misplaced Aggression?

My religion professor in college summed up his main critique of my belief in biblical Christianity as bad ethics.  His summation was that, "God is angry at sinners so he decides to beat up his son in our place".  It's classic misplaced aggression and it's bad ethics.  Recently on the Stand to Reason radio program, J. Warner Wallace, answered this objection.  I would encourage you to think well about this.

Some atheists are challenging Christianity by claiming that God is immoral. It’s an internal critique of Christianity. In other words, it’s an attempt to take what Christians claim and show that there’s a serious flaw. It doesn’t succeed because it doesn’t take into account a critical claim of Christianity, but here’s how it goes.

The atheist claim is that Christians support the unjust torture and killing of an innocent human being for their crimes. Christians believe it’s immoral to punish innocent people, yet we believe that God punished an innocent man, Jesus, for the crimes the rest of us committed. So they are attempting to say that Christianity’s core belief is immoral, therefore Christianity is an immoral belief system.

The idea that the suffering of this man, Jesus, is not fair because he’s innocent--and notice my words I’m using, an innocent man—is misrepresenting a core claim of Christianity. The claim treats Jesus as just another man. It separates God the Father and Jesus. It treats Jesus as another creature just like the rest of us, though innocent. This claim fails to take into account that Jesus is God.

When Jesus goes to the cross, it’s not another human being like you and me who goes to the cross to die for someone else’s penalty. It’s God Himself that is going to that cross. You see, it’s a category difference.

I think they would be right if, in fact, Jesus was just a man--a good man, a man who didn’t deserve to die--who died for you and I. That would be one kind of claim. But if, in fact, Jesus is who He said He was, and demonstrated He was through the resurrection, God is not punishing an innocent bystander for others. Jesus is clearly something more than one of us. Jesus is part of the triune God. So this is a decision that God has the right to make because He’s offering Himself as the substitute. He’s not punishing a third party; He offers Himself.

That’s the core claim of Christianity that is missing from the objection, and it makes all the difference in the nature of the punishment.

When folks try to categorize or try to describe Jesus as just a man, then this argument, I think, has some emotional power because it sounds like you’re just punishing one of your kids for the other one. But in fact that’s not what’s happening in the crucifixion.

It’s all about what God did for us, not to one of us for the other. It was what God Himself did for us, and that’s a much different claim. That is what Christianity teaches, rather than the way the atheist objection frames it.

And I think, really, it takes that act and it makes it incredibly virtuous, where it may seem at face to be horrific. God has self-sacrificially come to us and given Himself, instead of requiring anything of us. We deserve punishment, but He took it on Himself for us. That’s quite the opposite of being immoral. It’s the most virtuous act of love.