So it’s Good Friday today. Perhaps most famously known for being the first day of the long Bank Holiday Easter weekend! It’s been a beautiful day here in Plymouth and I hope it has been where you are too.
To me, Easter is more important than Christmas. I wanted to take this opportunity to write about Good Friday and what it means to me and millions of others worldwide, why it’s not just another Bank Holiday, and why it marks probably the most significant remembrance weekend for the whole year.
Why is it Good?
What we now call Good Friday would probably have once upon a time meant more like “holy” Friday. That’s a little more apt for what Christians celebrate today.
For a day called “good,” it’s actually a little ironic that we remember death.
On this day in about AD 30, Jesus of Nazareth was killed by the Roman rulers of the nation he lived in, Judea (modern-day Israel). This death was instigated by his own people, the Hebrew nation ruled by the Romans at the time. But why did the leaders of the Hebrews want Jesus dead? Because he claimed to be something that went against their religion, way of life, and whole identity as a nation waiting for their God to come and save them.
Jesus claimed to be God himself.
The Jews (Hebrews) believe in the same God as Christians, and we share part of our Bible with the Jews, even to this day. To an extent, we believe the same truth that God would come to save his people and establish them as a nation that will stand forever, and even beyond this life.
The difference is that Christians believe that person was Jesus.
Here is an excerpt from an ancient Jewish text written in the 6th century BC:
Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:1–6.
Jesus was killed by the Jewish leaders for claiming to be the one who this paragraph talks about, and in doing so, enact what the words foretell. Jesus was pierced many times, hung from a Roman cross and left to die. Mocked and despised by the nation he came to save.
The “transgressions” and “iniquities” that it speaks about are all the things that we all do all the time. We act in a way that is not loving toward others. We tell lies, cheat, spread rumours, and even worse at times. When we think these things do not matter, we kid ourselves. They affect us deeply, they affect those close to us, and they affect those who just happen to come into contact with us on a bad day. But most important of all, they place a barrier between us and God, who has asked us to live a life of goodness towards each other and towards him.
We are in a hopelessly stuck place, on the side of a great canyon, with God on the other side, and there is no way of crossing.
Another way to think about this is that our white clothes are stained red, and no amount of washing will get it out, there is residue, and we keep adding to it day by day.
God, seeing our hopeless position and knowing that no amount of good will make up for the stuff we’ve messed up on, took the situation into his own hands, and out his unspeakable love for the whole world, took on the form of a man, and lived a perfect life without sin. He is the only one who never got a stain on his white clothes. He lived on the side of the canyon where God was, but then knowingly and willingly submitted himself to die, though he was innocent.
This perfect man, who was also infinitely God, was the only one eternally right and innocent, and so by dying a death he did not deserve was able to bear the debt that all other imperfect people cannot ever hope to pay. This exchange created a bridge across the uncrossable canyon, so that anyone willing to admit that they are broken and in need of a rescuer, and admit that Jesus is that rescuer may cross this bridge and enter God’s presence once again. In the process, their dirty stained clothes are replaced with clean, white ones paid for by the one who sacrificed himself for us.
THIS is why this Friday is so GOOD.
We remember the fact that God took it upon himself to bear our wrongdoing and through faith believe that Jesus saved us, and gave us the gift of new life; life forever living in the goodness of God; escape from an eternity separated from him and all the good things that we get just to taste in this life, but that we will know fully in eternity to come.
This is what’s so good about today.
Now you know, **spoiler alert** that Easter is actually on Sunday, and that is when we celebrate the fact that Jesus came back to life, thus proving his God-ness and being the first human to be brought back to life gives us the same promise because we are all spiritually brought to life when we put our faith in him.
I cannot begin to explain in this short space what being spiritually alive is like, but I want the same for you too. Life with God fills the hole in your spirit that we all have without him.
People wonder, “Is there more to life than this?”
There is.
People make money and buy cars and holidays but are never truly happy. Let me tell you, promise you, that you can be truly, truly joyful in your soul. Trust me, nice houses and cars and all the rest are not the sources of that joy. That is all God.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, following our own ways instead of God’s; the good news this Good Friday is that God is willing to cancel the debt that’s piling up, he has laid it all on Jesus, all you need to is put your trust in him and follow. Turn from what’s slowly and surely sending us to die, toward the one who promises life!
Picture from: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18232126/is-good-friday-a-federal-holiday/