Thought for Today

Good Friday: God’s answer. On Good Friday we see God’s provision for our sin problem. Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, willingly chose to die on the cross for our sins.

To the world, to all the other world’s religions, that makes no sense. God coming down to earth? God dying, let alone God dying for our sins? Ridiculous! But that is precisely what God did.

1 Corinthians 1:22–24 (NAU): “For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

People generally fall into one of two camps: “spiritual” or “rational,” although it appears that the first camp is growing more than the second. After all, our culture tends to denigrate thought—logic being a toxic form of masculinity—and exalt feelings. One group looks for spiritual signs or special spiritual sensations, for mystical experiences. The other group wants intellectual answers, answers in line with human philosophies, human wisdom; certain atheists come to mind. Many insist that a person can have either faith or reason, but not both (the church where I serve is named Faith & Reason Ministries).

But what does the Scripture say? God’s answer, Christ crucified, is a stumbling block to the first group and pure foolishness to the second group. Most reject. Most would rather seek to try to save themselves: I’ll get to heaven via my spirituality, my rational thought in relation to my good deeds. That is not how it works.

As Ephesians 2 states, we were dead in our sins. A dead thing cannot make itself alive. Someone or something must intervene to make what is dead come to life. That is precisely what Jesus did, through his death on Good Friday and Resurrection on Pascha* (Easter).

Romans 5:8 (NAU): “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Can we really wrap our heads around what God did for us? What God did falls outside every human category, doesn’t it? But Scripture also states, Isaiah 55:9 (NAU): “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Consider what happened on that cross through Christ’s death, 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NAU): “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

We so easily forget the severity of our sin. We so often make light of it; people even mock the idea of sin and its consequences. But, God had to die so that we could be forgiven. On this Good Friday, think about that: God had to die, for us, for you, for me.

God offers us salvation through Jesus’s death on the cross. Through Jesus, and through Jesus alone, God provides us with forgiveness. But He doesn’t force us to accept it. Each of us has a choice: eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior or to seek some other way, whatever way “I” prefer, whether that be some sort of mystical or rational way, and face eternal death, eternal separation from God as a result.

Consider carefully. Choose life. Let us be thankful for God and what He provided for us through Jesus’s death on that cross.

*It is only in English and German where the day of Christ’s Resurrection is labeled “Easter” a term often linked to a certain pagan goddess and various fertility rites. In most Latin languages the day is referred to as Pascha, after Christ, our Pascal Lamb (think sacrifice). Also, the early church in Asia Minor, unlike the rest of the church, celebrated Christ’s Resurrection on Nisan 14, Passover, a practice that was later formally rejected by the Church as a whole (see the Quartodeciman controversy).