“The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross is the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God” (Oswald Chambers).

I was blessed to be able to watch episodes 1 and 2 of The Chosen Season 5 in theaters. So far, it’s set during the Lord’s Supper with flashbacks to events earlier in the last week of Jesus’ ministry and life. I was able to more fully appreciate the totality of the weight that was on Jesus during these last days. In fact, you might even say that the weight of the world was on His shoulders.

He saw lost and hurting people. He saw misguided and corrupt religious leaders not only not helping people find salvation, but at times actively hindering people from doing so. He saw a temple that had become a market where money mattered over worship and where the house of prayer had become a den of thieves.

Jonathan Roumie portrayed all the inner turmoil that Jesus went through. Sometimes in movies about the Christ, I feel like the divine part gets played up at the expense of the humanity, and Jesus can come across as divinely disinterested and maybe a little bored. But this series has brought Jesus down to earth by emphasizing His humanness but not at the expense of his divine nature.

I remembered as I witness the emotions of Jesus during these first two episodes that Jesus was not called the Man of Sorrows for no reason. It wasn’t a catchy title. Jesus’ heart really did break over the lostness of the world He encountered — first, metaphorically during three years of ministry then literally on the cross when the spear pierced His side.

I can’t wait for the next episodes. And also, I’m dreading these next few scenes a bit. I know where this is heading. It’s not the rom-com portion of the program. In the next few days, we have betrayal, arrest, false trial, execution and death. All leading up to Good Friday. All leading up to Easter Sunday. But the good news is that as the old sermon said, it may be Friday, but Sunday’s comin’.

More than ever, I really can’t wait for that Sunday to get here.