Here is an amazing thing. Jesus, on the night of His betrayal, actually thanked the Father for His own impending death. We can read about it in Luke 22:19, “And He took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them,  saying, “This is My body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.”

Wow. I never saw this more clearly than I did early this morning, listening to an audio sermon of an old country pastor preaching himself to tears over the sacrifice of Christ. He reminded me that the bread was the symbol of the Body that was to be broken within hours of that evening, on the cross of Calvary. So Jesus was thanking the Father for the coming breaking of His own body on the cross, even as He led His still clueless disciples in that very first communion.

How could such a thing be possible? Thanking God for your own death? The only reason it was even thinkable was because Jesus knew the “life-story” for sinners that would come out of the “death-story” of His sacrifice. He was so vividly committed to this that He was able to actually thank His Father for executing Him.

What a matchless Savior we serve.