What’s So Good About Good Friday?

If there is any message that I will never tire or retire from reiterating, its the one that follows this sentence:

Dear reader,

God loves you. He created you to be His, and you are His because He created you. God made you to worship and delight in Him. He made you so that He could share His goodness with you and express His goodness through you. God wants what’s best for you. He is the only one who knows what’s best for you because He is the only one who knows you best. He intricately designed and purposefully tweaked you to reflect His image. You are at your best when you reflect God. You are most human when God is most displayed through you. There’s nothing more important in your life than how you relate with God.

To live for God is the true purpose of your life. Every other pursuit is subsidiary at best, and vain at worst.

Yet, this is not how you are currently living. You don’t reflect Him. At least not entirely, not as He intends you to reflect Him. You are defective. Even worse, you are a defector. You have turned away from God, dear reader. Even though “what may be known about God is plain to you, because God has made it plain to you,” you have still chosen to ignore and disobey Him. You are a sinner, dear reader. Your lifestyle is defiant and disobedient to God’s will for your life. That’s the definition of a sinner. Your sin has separated you from God. And because of that God is not pleased with you. Even though He loves you, for that’s His nature and He cannot deny Himself, His love for you is frustrated by your sin. Your sin has separated you from God. And a day is coming when this separation will be punished, for God is just. All those opposed to God are going to face their well deserved punishment for their sin. All wrongdoing (all anti-God’s-purpose-living) must be punished.

Yet, despite your deliberate defiance and blatant blasphemy; despite the fact that you have spit in God’s face and chosen to go your own way, God has not given up on you. He wants to be reconciled to you. Even though God is not pleased with you, He is pleased to have you reconciled to Him. God wants to redeem you from your meaningless and wayward life, dear reader. God wants to remove the curse of sin that has separated you from Him. He wants to tear down the veil of sin that prevents you from seeing Him as He truly is – as the very point of your existence. But even more than wanting to reconcile Himself to you, God has provided a means of reconciliation. He has provided a way to deal with your sin and save your soul from eternal separation from Him. God has “demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Jesus took your place, dear reader. He came into this earth as a human being, lived a sinless life, and eventually gave up his life for you. He was crucified by Roman soldiers and died the most horrific death – death on a Cross. Why did Jesus do this? “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.” That’s right, God did this because He loves you. He sent His son to take your place so that your sin will no longer separate you from Him. He did this to reconcile you to Him. He did this to restore your humanity. He did this to save you from eternal damnation – eternal separation from God.

This is the good news about this Friday. This is the point of Easter. This is why Christians are celebrating, rather than mourning the death of God’s son this Friday. And you too can be part of this celebration, dear reader. You too can be a recipient of this gift of salvation, this gift of redemption from the power of sin, this gift of eternal reconciliation with God – the gift of eternal life. At this point, you may be asking, “what must you do to be saved?” And the answer is this, BELIEVE. Believe that Jesus died for you, for your sins, to reconcile you to God.

And the story gets better from here on. Jesus did not stay dead. On the third day, He rose from the grave and went back to be with God. He now rules over those who are saved. Dear reader, do you believe this? Do you believe that, through the gift of God’s Son, you are now reconciled to God? That you are now God’s child? Do you believe that, because of the resurrection of Jesus, you are now part of God’s Kingdom and family?

Then you are born again.

That’s what’s so good about this Friday.

“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. [Romans 10:9]