Why Call It “Good”?
Musings on Good Friday By, Sarah N.
Why is Good Friday good?
Good Friday is the day that Christians observe the trial, death, and burial of Jesus Christ. If you’ve read any account of this day, you know that Jesus endured terrible beatings, merciless taunts, and ultimately a most cruel death on a cross. Why would we want to celebrate the day that our beloved Savior suffered so badly, much less call it “good”?
We first have to acknowledge that the word “good” signifies “holy” more so than “suitable” or “profitable” or similar understandings. The day is HOLY because it is when our holy Lord Jesus died, leading to our redemption. But it is also GOOD because we couldn’t secure that redemption on our own.
We could never pay the debt created by our sin. We could never provide anything that would satisfy God and free us from our condemnation, that is death.
God has no needs. He doesn’t need our debt to be paid in order to continue being God. But God demands justice because he is just. To be just means to set things right. In order to set things right, we must have a standard by which to judge what is right. Jesus is our standard for righteousness. We can see in scripture that he lived a perfect, sinless life even though he was tempted in every way. But we can never live up to his example. We can never follow God’s law perfectly, or even good enough to be considered right with God.
Only a perfect sacrifice could satisfy a perfect God. But because God so loved the world, he gave his only Son to die on the cross so that whoever would believe in him would not be condemned but would be saved through faith in him. God demonstrated his righteousness by sending Jesus, his perfect Son, to bear our sins upon the cross so we wouldn’t have to. He took our punishment even though he never deserved it. He provided justification in place of judgment, pardon in place of penalty, redemption in place of rejection.
This is why it’s GOOD.
But it didn’t end with Christ’s death. If Jesus died and that was all, what would be the point? If our punishment for being sinners is death, and Christ became like us, took on our sin, and died, he would have been just like the millions of other people who had died before him, still dead in their transgressions.
But he’s not. He rose from the grave, victorious. Just as sin had no power over him in life, it also had no power over him in death. Christ is sovereign over death and his resurrection proves that. His death canceled our debt but his resurrection gave us life. He died for all, so that all might live for him.
God reconciled us to himself through Christ’s death and resurrection once and for all. Because we are reconciled, we have peace not only with God, but also with creation and with each other. We have been adopted as heirs of God and awarded an eternal inheritance of unity with the Father.
Christ did all the things we could not. He lived a life of perfect obedience to God’s will, died as an acceptable substitute, overcame sin and death, and rose from the grave, never to die again. And by the grace of God, we who believe and are reconciled to him will share in the gift of his eternal glory. This good news sounds like a pretty “good” Friday to me.
