What is the significance of the sun going dark in the middle of the day when Jesus was on the cross?

What is the significance of the curtain in the temple being torn in two when Jesus dies?  (Matthew 27:51 and Mark 15:38 specify that it was torn in two from top to bottom.)

How are we to understand (and respond to) the events in this passage?  Should we mourn them?  Celebrate them?  Something else?  Why?

Why did Jesus die on the cross?  What did he accomplish?  Could he have accomplished that in some other way?  Why or why not?

How do Jesus’s words in 23:46 serve as a template for how we, as believers, walk through life and approach death?

Why do you think that the centurion responds the way he does in 23:47?  What does that tell us about him?

Why do you think that the crowds respond with mourning in 23:48?  What can we learn from this?

What are some ways that we, as Christians, can keep Christ’s death on the cross in view was we walk through life?  Is that something we should actively try to do?  Why or why not?

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