Leadership Thought: Why is Good Friday Really Good?

Dear Friends

Today is called Good Friday. It is “good” Friday because Jesus’ death on the cross became our complete and final sacrifice for sin. Without "Good Friday, there was no other way we could have erased our sins. Our hands would have been forever stained with every single sin we had ever committed.

To fully understand why the good news was so good, we must realize why the bad news was so bad. Romans 3:23 reminds us, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and Romans 6:23 states “the wages of sin is death,” so if all of us have sinned and sin’s wage is death, then we all deserve to die.

But the “good” news is that God laid upon Jesus the sins of us all

“But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we were healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, everyone, to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:5-6

All our sins were laid on Christ and Christ assumed our guilt. As Paul puts it, “Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

The cross has meaning for a man when he knows that his guilt was imputed to the Son by the Father, and when he knows, further, that the Father laid upon His Son the hell that every sinner deserves.

Peter state “Christ bore our sin in his own body on the tree.” (1 Peter 2:24).

The death of Christ has no meaning for a man until the concept of imputation grasps his soul as it did for Martin Luther. Imputation simply mans the attributing of something to a person so that the thing imputed becomes the ground of reward or punishment.

God the Father laid upon God the Son all the guilt and wrath we deserved, and He bore it in himself perfectly, totally satisfying the wrath of God for us.

And when he cried out the word “Tetelestai” a Greek word which means “it is finished,” it was a cry of triumph. He had assumed our debt; He had paid the penalty for our sin. 

In the far north at the foot of Mount McKinley a skeleton was found seated on the root of a tree. Just above was a finger carved in the bark, pointing downwards to the skeleton. Beside the finger there were these words: “The end of the trail.”

They told the tragic story of one who had set out to climb that lofty mountain, but his strength had failed. He had died with his purpose unrealized.”

But the words from the lips of Jesus, “It is finished,” were not the words of failure but of triumph. Charles Spurgeon writes “Jesus died with the cry of the victor on his lips.”

“He came to pay a debt He did not owe because we owed a debt we could not pay.”

This is why “good” Friday, is not just good, but it’s great, for as we know, “It’s Friday but Sunday’s coming.

Yours in faith and friendship,

Tom