).png)
Today is Good Friday also is observed on the Friday that proceeds Easter Sunday (also called Resurrection Sunday). It is a day when people remember Jesus’ death on the cross. Many people, mostly Christians, celebrate this day by attending a Good Friday service where they read the biblical accounts of Jesus’ death on the cross. (Read Luke 19.)Although the term “Good Friday” is not mentioned in the Bible, we can study the events that took place on the day Jesus was crucified. After Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, He was taken through several trials before the chief priests, Pontius Pilate, and Herod (Luke 22:54–23:25). Three of the trials were by Jewish leaders and three by the Romans (John 18:12-14, Mark 14:53-65, Mark 15:1-5, Luke 23:6-12, Mark 15:6-15). These events led up to Good Friday.
Jesus was crucified on Golgatha, which means the Place of the Skull (Mark 15:22) The sky turned dark for three hours (Mark 15:33). Jesus cried, "Father! Into your hands I commit my spirit!" and He died (Luke 23:46). The disciple Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1:18-19, “For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. He paid for you with the precious lifeblood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.” The blood of Jesus Christ is absolutely the most precious thing God has offered us.
Is good Friday really “good”? It may seem odd that people celebrate the day Jesus’ was crucified as “good.” Obviously, the suffering Jesus went through on Good Friday was not good. He was whipped, beaten, mocked, and killed in a very violent way. How can that be good? The results of Jesus’ death are very good! This is explained in Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Then in 1 Peter 3:18, it is reiterated again: “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.”
He paid it all just for you and me, without the shedding of the blood there would be no remission of our sins. We would not have the keys to eternal life. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22). Why not? It’s important to note that it is not the physical act of shedding blood that is the key. If that were the case, Jesus could have just had a cut on the arm and shed blood for us all! No, shedding blood is just a way of referring to the fact that without death, there is no forgiveness of sins. Throughout the Bible, the punishment for sin is death. In Genesis 2, God tells Adam, “And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:16-17). That day Adam suffered spiritual death, separation from God. He also experienced physical death, and that has continued to this day. This is powerfully shown in Genesis 5, which is a list of Adam’s descendants. We are told the name of each one, how long they lived, and then the refrain, and he died. This is also affirmed in the New Testament. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he writes that the wages of sin is death. “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:22-23). So, blood has to be shed because the punishment for sin is death. Nevertheless, this leads us to another question. Why is the punishment for sin so serious? Isn’t death a bit over the top?