By any normal standard, Good Friday sounds like a contradiction.
Nothing about that day looked “good.” Not to the crowds. Not to the disciples. Not to anyone who watched Rome do what Rome did best.
Crucifixion was designed to erase a person—publicly, painfully, and shamefully. It was the Empire’s way of saying, This is what happens to people who cross us. And Jesus endured every part of it.
He was spit upon.
He was beaten with the cat‑o’-nine‑tails, a whip laced with stone, metal, and pottery—each strike tearing flesh, not merely bruising it.
A crown of thorns—not a symbol of honor but of mockery—was pressed into His scalp until the blood ran freely.
A robe was thrown across His shredded back, only to be ripped away again and again, reopening wounds for the soldiers’ amusement.
And when they finally nailed Him to the cross, they lifted Him up between two criminals, as if to say, This is where He belongs.
By the world’s vocabulary, nothing about that Friday should be called “good.”
But Christians dare to call it Good Friday because we see something the world cannot see on its own.
Good Friday is good not because of what was done to Jesus,
but because of what Jesus accomplished through it.
On that cross, the sinless One carried the sins of the world.
The innocent One stood in the place of the guilty.
The rejected One opened the way for us to be accepted.
The dying One destroyed death by dying.
Good Friday is the day the worst thing that ever happened became the best news ever told.
And while the darkness of that day was real—thick, suffocating, disorienting—it was not final. The dismalness of Friday dissolves in the sunrise of the third day. The cross is not the end of the story. The tomb is not the end of the story. The suffering is not the end of the story.
Resurrection is.
So we call it Good Friday because God took the world’s worst injustice and turned it into the world’s greatest mercy.
We call it Good Friday because the blood that fell on that hill still speaks forgiveness.
We call it Good Friday because the One who died there now lives—and because He lives, we can live also.
And that is very good indeed!
See you Sunday!
Pastor James