Good Friday commemorates the day that Jesus the Christ of
Nazareth was beaten, interrogated, spat upon, and crucified by the
political and religious authorities of the day. The year is
generally considered to have been 33 AD, but Sir Isaac Newton, who
invented calculus and was a major contributor to the formulation of
physics, did an in-depth study of the question and decided that 34
AD is the more probable year.
Good Friday commemorates the day that Jesus the Christ of Nazareth was beaten, interrogated, spat upon, and crucified by the political and religious authorities of the day. The year is generally considered to have been 33 AD, but Sir Isaac Newton, who invented calculus and was a major contributor to the formulation of physics, did an in-depth study of the question and decided that 34 AD is the more probable year.
I never quibble with Sir Isaac; he was a lot smarter than I am. Jesus was condemned by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, not for any wrongdoing, but because the religious authorities of the Sanhedrin told Pilate if he did not crucify Jesus, they would fink on him to Caesar. The Sanhedrin wanted Jesus dead because He was performing miracles, amazing the people, and, during interrogation, admitted to being the Son of God. This they called blasphemy. How could a man be God?
Now, C.S. Lewis (who was another person much smarter than I, who spent his adolescence and young adulthood as an atheist and was convinced of the truth of Christianity in middle age) points out that the one thing that cannot possibly be true about Jesus is that he cannot have been a wise, good teacher and a great merely human man. He claimed to be the Son of God, equal with God. That makes him either a liar, or a lunatic, or Lord. Take your pick.
Personally, I ignored the claims of Christianity for 33 years because I thought it was not worth serious study. That was stupid of me. Christianity is either true or false. If Christianity is true, it is the most important thing in the world. If it is false, it is of no importance at all. In either case, it is worth serious study to see if it is true or false.
If Jesus had died on the cross and stayed dead, that would have been the end of the story. Instead, He rose again the third day and was seen, first by a few of His disciples, then by all of them, eventually by about 500 people before He ascended into heaven. One argument atheists make is that Jesus did not rise from the dead, that his body was stolen by the disciples so they could pretend Jesus had risen, and so retain power. That is a foolish argument.
The disciples did not get any power from being apostles and evangelists. They got beaten, jailed, ostracized, and eventually martyred. No one takes that kind of abuse for a lie.
Of course, if they had seen the risen Lord, they would have accepted the abuse and martyrdom, because they had been promised everlasting life. Think it through. So why is Good Friday called good? If God was tortured and killed that day, should it not be called Bad? The term Good Friday probably originated as God’s Friday, much as good-by originated as “God be with you,” and adios and adieu both originated from “a Deus:” “to God,” as in “I commend you to God.”
God is perfectly holy. He cannot abide sin. Humans sin: we do things that are wrong and fail to do what is right. God is perfectly just; sin must be punished. God is perfectly good. When Jesus walked on the earth, He lived a sinless life. He taught and performed miracles: turned water into wine, walked on water, calmed a storm, healed the sick, made the blind to see and the dumb to speak, cast out demons, and raised the dead. But He said His purpose in coming to earth was to suffer and die for us.
The teaching was for our good; the miracles, He specifically said, were performed so that we might believe on Him, and believe in Him who sent Him. On God’s Friday, God took the punishment for our sin. But death could not hold Him. He rose from the dead on the day we celebrate as Easter. He offers the free gift of salvation to all who believe in Him as Lord and Savior. That is what is good about God’s Friday.
