“But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5
“Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush Him (Gen. 3:15); He has put Him to grief (immense suffering); when His soul makes an offering for guilt…” Isaiah 53:10
I know it is Monday, BUT…Friday’s acomin’!
It may seem counterintuitive to refer to the day when Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried as “good,” but its goodness is measured from the beginning of time! Its goodness is grounded in a promise kept. Gen. 3:15-“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall bruise your heard and you shall crush His heal.”
For the Christian, Good Friday begins the celebration of what used to be one of the most momentous three days in the history of the world. That weekend began with an early morning illegal trial…progressing through the morning to His scourging… to His walk down the Via De la Rosa ending at the Cross where even more horror awaited Him as He was NAILED to the cross with 16 inch spikes so that His suspended body would hold in place….all by 9 am. “But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.”
When Jesus cried out, “It is finished” from that cruel cross, He meant what He said! The demands of God’s perfect, righteous justice were fulfilled by Jesus paying the penalty for our sins in full. “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush Him (Gen. 3:15); He has put Him to grief (immense suffering); when His soul makes an offering for guilt…”(Isaiah 53:10) Because Jesus took our place on that cross, receiving the full measure of God’s divine wrath for our sin, we have now received the first fruit of justification: peace with God. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, bwe1 have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”- (Rom. 5:1)
“…God gave His only begotten Son” so that the holy demands of His perfect righteousness would be completely satisfied by Christ’s sacrificial death. The promise of redemption made so very long ago. God’s unwavering, steadfast love for us, met God’s faithfulness to administer justice, and both were fully expressed at the Cross. Righteousness and peace met at the cross and kissed one another. “Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.”(Psalm 85:10) This is good news.
But that’s not all. Good Friday wouldn’t really be “GOOD” without Easter Sunday! The weekend reached its wonderful conclusion when God placed His supernatural stamp of approval on all that Jesus had done by raising His beloved Son from death to life. “He is not here, for He has risen, as He said. Come, see the place where He lay.” (Matthew 28:6)
The angel reminded the women that Jesus walked out of the tomb, just as He said He would. You see, Good Friday’s goodness brings us to Easter morning and the Resurrection. If Jesus had remained dead in the grave, we would all still be dead in our sins; “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (Rom. 15:17). But Jesus was raised from death to life and showed Himself to hundreds of people during a 40-day period before He ascended back into heaven, where He now sits at the right hand of God the Father.
The “goodness” of Good Friday not only saves us from the penalty of our sin, it also begins the life-long process of saving us from the power of sin. Peter writes, “He himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).
Jesus Christ’s wounds witness to the wealth of goodness that we have been given through His unimaginable suffering on that dark, dreadful day more than 2,000 years ago. To the watching world, evil had triumphed…it seemed to His followers the great “idea” of the Messiah had come to an end that Satan had won, but that “victory” was short lived. On Easter morning, Jesus became the “death of death”; and that is the ultimate goodness of Good Friday. I pray that this truth will set us free on this Good Friday as we prepare to celebrate the Resurrection.
“Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:54-57)
Friday marks the greatest act of love in the history of the universe: “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 53:5).
God bless y’all today as you reflect on this week as a whole.
In His Grip,
Pastor Mike
