Why They Call It Good Friday
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“Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces He was despised, and we held Him in low esteem. Surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:1-5 (NIV)
The prophet Isaiah described the suffering of Christ in this chapter over 700 years before the crucifixion. Amazingly, this chapter and Psalm 22 give us a more vivid account of His death than any other part of the Bible. Notice how the emphasis changes in the first few verses from the last two. In the first half, we read a description of the coming Messiah. His coming would be met with disbelief. Later in the New Testament, John 1:10-11 (NLT) tells us, “He (Jesus) came into the very world He created, but the world didn’t recognize Him. He came to His own people, and even they rejected Him.” Not only would they reject Him, but they would despise Him. Isaiah called Jesus a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. The New King James translation says He was acquainted with grief. This means that Jesus understands our sorrows.
This is where the emphasis shifts from the personal pronouns describing Jesus in verses one through three to an emphasis on the plural pronouns in verse four and five where it says, “He took up our pain and bore our suffering … He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed.”
Isaiah is telling us that Jesus did not die because of anything He had done, but because of what we had done. Even when deciding His case for a capital offense, the Governor, Pontius Pilot, said three separate times, “I find no fault in Him at all!” (John 18:38; 19:4; 19:6) Then why? Why did He have to die? Because the only ground on which God can forgive sin is through the Cross of Christ. The Bible says in Hebrews 9:22b (NLT), “For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.”
In his classic devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes, “Forgiveness which is so easy for us to accept, cost the agony of Calvary. … Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace; it cost God the Cross of Jesus Christ before He could forgive sin and remain a holy God. … Never build your preaching on the fact that God is our Father and He will forgive us because He loves us. It is untrue to Jesus Christ’s revelation of God; it makes the Cross unnecessary, and the Redemption ‘much ado about nothing.’ If God does forgive sin, it is because of the death of Christ. God could forgive men in no other way than by the death of His Son … Jesus Christ hates the wrong in man, and Calvary is the estimate of His hatred. … It is shallow nonsense to say that God forgives us because He is love. The love of God means Calvary, and nothing less; the love of God is spelled on the Cross and nowhere else. The only ground on which God can forgive me is through the Cross of my Lord.”
This is why they call it “Good Friday”. He paid the debt He did not owe for a price we could not pay. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23 (NLT)