Good Friday

And it was the third hour when they crucified him. (Mark 15:25)

​Today Christians around the world celebrate Good Friday.  This is the day on which Jesus of Nazareth was crucified on a Roman cross two-thousand years ago.  But why call it Good Friday?  Jesus was completely innocent not only of the crimes he was accused of, but of any crime or any sin.  Jesus was without sin.  Thus, if this is the day on which the greatest miscarriage of justice was ever carried out, the greatest evil was ever committed, then why call it good?  Because it was good for sinners.  The Bible tells us we are all sinful, that we have all transgressed the Laws of God (Rom 3:23).  As a result, we all deserve to perish eternally.  We all deserve death, eternal death in hell because “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).  No one forces us to sin.  We all choose to sin and rebel against God.  If God were to send every person who has ever lived straight to hell for all eternity, he would be completely just in doing so because that is what we all deserve.  Yet for some amazing reason we are told that “God showed his love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:).  Though we are all sinners, though we live our lives in open rebellion against God, he still loved us, and he demonstrated his love for humanity by sending his perfect son into the world to die for sinners--to die on our behalf.  If the “wages of sin is death” and Christ had no sin, then why did he die?  “He died for us.”  He died on our behalf.  He absorbed the wrath of God that should have come upon us.  He died in our place as our substitute, as a substation for those who place faith in Christ and believe he died on the cross to pay for their sins.  The scriptures tell us that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.   For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Rom. 10:9-10).  Thus, Good Friday is about remembering that from the greatest act of evil ever committed came the greatest good ever offered to humanity.