Good Friday Indeed

Romans 5:6-8
"For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Isaiah 53:10
"Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief."

Two thousand and some odd years ago, on what tradition says was a Friday, Jesus Christ endured the worst suffering that many of us could imagine. He was betrayed and abdoned by his closest family and friends. He was accused and convicted falsely before a corrupt justice system. He was beaten with whips that had glass shards in them, beard yanked out, punched, spit on, and forced to carry a huge wooded cross up hill, all while wearing a crown made out of thorns, and being mocked and cursed at by an angry crowd who was thrilled to see him die. A crowd who just days before had honored him as their own king. Then soldiers drove nails into his hands and feet - nailing him to the cross that he was unable even to carry the whole way to the top of this place they called Golgatha - or "the place of the skull." Finally he was hoisted up into the air nailed to the cross to suffer a death by what was actually asphyxiation - lack of oxygen. Being nailed to a cross at hands an feet one would have to put the pressure of their whole body on a single nail driven through their feet to give their lungs enough of a foundation to even breathe - something that would be excruciatingly painful, and after so many hours of doing even impossible.

Yet all of this was not even the real kicker. There were actually two other men there that day on their own crosses, next to Jesus. Their situations were not exactly the same, however. Yes, it was a common practice for men to die on a cross in that fashion during the days of Rome's rule. But the real kicker of this story is this: Jesus was innocent. He was perfect, sinless and blameless. And to top if off, when He suffered this death, He accepted the very penalty of sin iteself - something that literally billions of people who have lived since the dawn of mankind should have suffered. But Jesus paid it all. God laid the sins of every man on Jesus, His own Son, so that every man could become a member of God's own family.

Good Friday? For Jesus it must have been tough - in fact nearly impossible to call "good." For us - "good" can barely begin to describe it.

Jesus paid it all

All to Him I owe

Sin hath left a crimson stain

He washed it white as snow

(chorus from Jesus Paid It All - by Elvina Hall, 1865)