I know it’s more than a tad confusing. Why celebrate such a terrible, horrible, devastating day?
For those that believe in Jesus Christ, believe that He was and is the Messiah, why in the world would we be happy 2,000 years later, celebrating His death?
And why, how, could we call this Good Friday?
It’s more than just a little confusing, I know that.
And although a little bit of me doesn’t want to speak on this at all, for fear of explaining it wrong, leaving something out, or just not doing the story justice…I also must speak. As someone once said, how much do you have to hate a person to truly believe you know the truth and yet keep quiet?
So I won’t stay quiet.
About 2,000 years ago a man named Jesus walked this earth. He didn’t do a single thing wrong. He never talked back to his mother, He obeyed his father the first time He was asked, and in all He did He never once sinned. For us that is impossible. We start rolling our eyes and talking back before we even understand what we’re doing. But because He was God and man all in one (a mystery that is very hard to understand, yet so simple at the same time), He lived a completely sinless life.
He was (is) a Healer. The Healer. Blind people began to see, people that couldn’t walk jumped up and started dancing, all because He healed them.
2,000 years later teenage girls with brain tumors get healed by the same Healer. -Forever grateful-
This upset many of the religious people and rulers (because let me stress – this is NOT about a religion. It’s about a relationship). I mean can’t you imagine? Someone comes to your town from a neighboring city. A so-thought normal man who has lived 30 years growing up and then working a normal job. Out of no where he is on the news, being shown as a man that can make deaf people hear for the first time.
I would be skeptical.
I wouldn’t believe it.
I would want to see it for myself.
I mean, He’s always been just another run-of-the-mill guy, right? So what’s so special about Him? It must be a joke, some sort of magic trick.
That’s what I would think.
Except they weren’t one-time healings. Over and over for years people were healed.
Let’s pretend that the brain tumor I had killed me. It was cancer and they weren’t able to get it out. Clearly I wouldn’t be blogging, and someone would have updated here saying I had died.
Now let’s pretend that three days after, I was on here posting away, telling you all that I had come back to life.
You wouldn’t believe it, right? I mean c’mon, who would?! You would want to see it with your own eyes. See the death certificate, and see me now in real life.
It just doesn’t seem possible.
But that’s what happened to Jesus. For us it’s harder to believe because, well, we can’t SEE Him. We can’t touch His hands and feet, see the scars from the nails pierced through. And that makes it very very hard to believe. Could you believe me if I told you I came back to life after three days, yet you never saw me in person, alive, as proof?
It would be hard, wouldn’t it?
Good Friday is the worst day in history. A day never to be celebrated. A day longed to be forgotten.
Until.
Until three days later.
Until three days later when Jesus comes back to life.
Did you see that correctly? Yes, He COMES BACK TO LIFE.
That’s what makes it so Good. The worst day in history became the best day in history three days later. Because in His death He fulfilled many prophecies. That’s great and all, but it doesn’t matter if He stays dead.
Which is why when He came back to life and fulfilled every unfulfilled prophecy, He closed the deal. He gave the final victory shout. The battle was over, the curse gone, and every human free that would truly believe in Him.
Easter is coming, and I’m so grateful. But I don’t want to skip over what He went through for me, for you, for all of us.
He went through brutal torture, more than what we can imagine, and more than we can ever deserve. All our, my, pain and sins were inflicted upon Him.
I can never be worthy.
