Why call Good Friday good?

23-Mar-13

In 2010 I had an opportunity to share with a recent addition to the Body of Christ 
a short explanation of just what is so good about Good Friday. 

My friend happens to have a birthday that fell on Good Friday that year, and wondered what all the fuss was about when I didn't wish her a happy birthday immediately when
finding out that this year Good Friday and her 16th birthday fell on the same day.

 I recalled Jonny Hart , the late roaring lamb who wrote the BC comic strip, who in
 past years, had poet Wiley penning these words under his favorite thinking tree:  

"Now who can call Good Friday good?
A term too oft misunderstood.
You who were bought by the blood of His cross,
You can call Good Friday good."

We born again believers who follow Jesus as Lord and call Him Savior are unique 
in the perspective we have for this particular 1 day that comes each Easter and
Passover season. 

How else can you describe the ultimate sacrifice of one man laying down his life for his
friends, when they are not yet identified as friends, let alone brothers and children of
the same Father, the Creator God of the Universe?  This Jesus, that the Bible tells us
on that first Good Friday asked His Father to forgive the ones who mocked and ridiculed
him while he died on a Roman execution stake rather than call 10,000 angels to destroy 
the world and set him free, or rain fire from Heaven, His eternal home shared with the 
other persons of the triune God, we honor on this Good Friday, and then proclaim on Resurrection Sunday, when the tomb empty to this day proclaims, He is alive, He is risen, He is risen indeed!  

This was a Friday when the disciples of Jesus must have wondered about the peace He
said was given to them.  His peace, not the peace that the world teases us with, a calm lack of trials and stress from time to time, but Christ's unique peace that passes all human understanding, apart from knowing the peace that comes from hearing "well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord" moment to moment knowing we are walking in obedience, not grieving or quenching the Spirit of God. 

This was a Good Friday, as the thief on the cross who asked to be remembered by Jesus, 
dying next to him, and was told that "today you will be with me in paradise".  What a great, Good Friday to know that we don't have to and cannot earn our way into God's favor and Heaven with good works, but only receive this free gift as a ragamuffin child, holding out dirty, empty hands to someone willing to take mercy on us and show grace to us in our weakness and need, this is indeed why we call this day Good Friday.