The truth is that while Easter Sunday is one of the most celebrated holidays in the Christian faith, what happened on Good Friday cannot be overstated. Understanding the significance of what Christ accomplished via His death on the cross might be the most important theological concept for Christians to understand.
Good Friday is a solemn day to reflect on the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf. It’s important to recognize the brutal suffering Jesus endured as He was beaten, tortured and ultimately crucified, all on our behalf. What Jesus endured was on our behalf. It should be me on that cross, not Jesus.
Scripture is clear that the effects of Jesus’ death were immediate. Hence, we don’t have to wait until Sunday to celebrate what Jesus secured for all believers on Friday – namely, that sin has been fully atoned, we are completely forgiven and we have free, unobstructed and direct access to God Himself!
Reflection
Why do you think Good Friday is referred to as “Good Friday”?
What do you think Jesus accomplished via His death on the cross?
How do you typically observe Good Friday? What traditions do you practice that you’ve found to be helpful for reflecting on the importance of this day?
If you read the 3 different articles linked in this post, what did you find most helpful or challenging to your understanding?
When you think of the full Easter story, it seems the good part is on Sunday, when Jesus is resurrected. Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash
Have you ever wondered why Christians refer to the Friday before Easter as Good Friday? I never quite understood that myself growing up as a kid even though I went to church and heard the Easter story every year.
Think about the Easter story as a movie. The good part is at the end, when Jesus comes out of the tomb, resurrected! It seems to me that Friday is bad, at least if you’re looking at Jesus as a hero figure. On Friday, he’s dead. How is that good?
To answer that, I want to first ask a different question. Why did Jesus have to die? To put it another way, what was the purpose of Jesus’s death?
When you think of the full Easter story, it seems the good part is on Sunday, when Jesus is resurrected.
Have you ever wondered why Christians refer to the Friday before Easter as Good Friday? I never quite understood that myself growing up as a kid even though I went to church and heard the Easter story every year.
Think about the Easter story as a movie. The good part is at the end, when Jesus comes out of the tomb, resurrected! It seems to me that Friday is bad, at least if you’re looking at Jesus as a hero figure. On Friday, He’s dead. How is that good?
To answer that, I want to first ask a different question. Why did Jesus have to die? To put it another way, what was the purpose of Jesus’s death?
It’s an honest question, really. If Jesus is God, as he claimed, why couldn’t He just declare sins to be forgiven?
I’ve posed this question to many people over the years as I’ve engaged in conversations about Jesus and some people respond that Jesus’s death is an example to us.
I suppose that could be true, but how exactly is it an example?
Perhaps Jesus’s death was simply a demonstration of his love Photo by Neal E. Johnson on Unsplash
Well, you might respond by pointing to the verse where Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13, NIV)
Yes, it’s true that Jesus’s death does demonstrate the depth of His love for us. But what does that do for us?
Some people have responded to that question (Why did Jesus have to die?) by saying that Jesus’s death was a sacrifice.
Agreed. But what does it mean that His death was a sacrifice? In what way was it a sacrifice?
The simple answer to “Why did Jesus have to die?” is that God’s justice required it.
Romans 6:23 says that “the wages of sin is death.” Since the penalty of sin is death, the only way Jesus could pay for our sin was to die. He couldn’t just declare sin to be paid for because death is required.
I often share this illustration with people when talking about the importance of Jesus’s death on the cross….
In New Testament times people who owed a debt were often thrown into debtors prison until they could pay their debt or until their sentence was complete Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash
In New Testament times, when a person committed a crime, the authorities would throw the offender in the dungeon until he made restitution or until his sentence was completed.
On the door of his cell they would list the crimes that he had committed. When he had completed his sentence or paid for his crime, they took the list and wrote ‘tetelestai’ across it, which in greek means “it is finished”, or “paid in full”.
The person would then use this document as a receipt that those specific crimes had been paid for. He could not be accused of those crimes again.
We are separated from God because of the debt that we owe as a result of our sin. The debt we owe for our sin must be paid for.
Now think about the Easter story again. Jesus is arrested, tried and crucified. The last words Jesus uttered before dying were, “it is finished” (tetelestai).
Here’s what Paul said to the Colossians about the importance of Jesus’s death:
He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. (Colossians 2:13-14)
Why did Jesus have to die? Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
The picture here is that Jesus had a written list of all of your sins and all of my sins and He nailed that list of all of our iniquities to the cross. Just before He died, He uttered “it is finished”, meaning that sin had been “paid in full”.
It’s as if Jesus, in his last dying breath was taking a big rubber stamp to that list and stamping it “PAID” so that we would know that sin was paid for and therefore forgiveness could be granted.
So when you think of the full Easter story, it doesn’t appear that Friday is good. It seems rather bad, if you are looking from the perspective of Jesus as the hero.
But if you realize what Jesus meant to accomplish – the redemption of mankind, the forgiveness of sins – through that lens, it’s clear that Good Friday is indeed good. Actually, it’s rather GREAT for us! Sin is paid for. We are forgiven!
Good Friday is indeed GOOD! And, that’s not even the end of the story….
When you think of the full Easter story, it seems the good part is on Sunday, when Jesus is resurrected. 
The Lowedown 