A Very "Good Friday"

Have you ever wondered why the church calls today “Good Friday”? What’s so “good” about the fact that the One who Christians acknowledge as their “Savior” died such a horrible and “unexpected” death?

As humans, isn’t it hard for us to see death as a good thing? Most of us will spend all of our lives living in fear of death…doing all we can to avoid death. Many of us try to eat right, exercise, and stay generally healthy so that we can live long lives…and the rest of us feel guilty about not eating right and exercising.

But, Jesus said that He came to the earth, to live for a short 33 years, to have a public ministry of just 3 years, and to die, all so that we might be able to live an abundant life. To our simple human brains, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The idea that death can bring life is what we would call a “paradox”.

A paradox is a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement, idea, person or thing that is true or may be true. In other words, a paradox is something that is true even though it might not seem to make any sense to our human intellect.

For example, the statement, “This sentence if false” is a paradox. If the statement is true, then the statement is false. In which case, the statement is true, which means the statement is false...and so on for infinity.

Another paradox: “You can't get work without experience, but you can't get experience without work.” Somebody explain to me how exactly that’s supposed to play out.

How about this: “The customer is always right.” So, if two customers say that the other is wrong, both are right, and therefore, both are wrong that they are both right that they are both wrong that they are both right that they are both wrong, etc.

God is a God of paradox. For example, have you ever tried to think about the fact that God “Always has been”? For God, there never was a beginning. That’s a hard thing for us to wrap our minds around, considering we know without doubt that everything we experience as humans had a beginning at some point, even if we weren’t there to witness it.

Or, how about the idea of The Trinity – God is One and Three all at the same time. Even our best attempts as humans to explain this idea fall short. Maybe you’ve heard somebody use water to illustrate the Trinity of God…water can be a solid, liquid and gas. But, water cannot be all three of those things at the same time.

And, just as God often reveals Himself as a paradox, Jesus’ life on this earth was a paradox…listen to this:

JESUS had no servants, yet they called Him MASTER...
JESUS had no degree, yet they called Him TEACHER...
JESUS had no medicine, yet they called Him HEALER...
JESUS had no army, yet KINGS feared Him...
JESUS won no military battles, yet He CONQUERED the WORLD...
JESUS committed no crime, yet they CRUCIFIED Him...
JESUS was buried in a tomb, yet He LIVES TODAY...

It probably seems odd to most people outside of the church that Christians would gather together once a year to remember and celebrate the anniversary of Jesus’ death, but it’s because of this paradox, that Jesus’ death means life for you and I, that we have reason to celebrate. Death on a cross is a gruesome thing…bloody and painful and humiliating. Yet, there is a beauty in the death of Jesus, knowing that He willingly died because of His great love for us.