A Very Good Friday

Today is Good Friday.

To Christians around the world, it is the day we celebrate the second-best day the world has seen – so far. It’s a day that deserves our ultimate gratitude towards our Creator.

To the unbeliever, however, I’m not sure what it means. Likely, it either means nothing or is just another day off. Or, perhaps it simply represents an opportunity to ridicule Christianity, the futile practice and province of the prideful and the ignorant.

But given that this day of God’s promise of Redemption to the world, the cleansing of sin for all Mankind, was foretold thousands of years before the fact, it ought to make any thinking individual, particularly the sceptic, re-think (repent) their position.

“How so?” The unbeliever asks.

The answer is incredibly simple. If an event is predicted to occur years, decades, centuries or even millennia beforehand, and it comes to pass, then the writer–and the Book containing it–must have credibility.

Those are precisely the facts surrounding the time and place of Christ’s arrival, as well as His sacrifice on the cross. Consider just a few of the many passages from the Jewish Tanach, also known as the Old Testament, that tell us about the birth and sacrifice of Jesus:

·      In the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, Abraham is about to sacrifice his only son Isaac on Mount Moriah. God tells Abraham not to go through with it. Abraham tells Isaac that God will provide His own. That book was written some 3,000 years before Christ’s crucifixion–which occurred on Mount Moriah.

·      Psalm 2:12, written by King David 1,000 years B.C., written mostly in Hebrew, tells the Jewish people to “kiss” or “embrace the Son.” But then David uses the Aramaic word for son–foreshadowing Jesus, who spoke Aramaic.

·      Proverbs 30:4 asks, “Who has descended and ascended to heaven? What is his name and what is son’s name? Surely you know!”

·      The prophet Daniel gives an exceptionally precise and accurate time of when the Messiah would come–before the destruction of the second Temple–His lineage and his violent death. That was about 700 years before Christ’s crucifixion.

·      The prophet Isaiah speaks clearly about Jesus in the 8th century B.C.: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

·      In Isaiah 53, the prophet clearly identifies Jesus as the Messiah, his rejection by his own, and his sacrificial death.

·      The prophet Micah lived in the 7th and 8th centuries B.C. and said that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.

There are many more examples, of course, but the point is that the crucifixion occurred; of that there is no doubt.

The reason is as simple as it is devastating: All humanity faces death due to sin, and is something that we all have in common.

As humanity’s Savior, it was Jesus’ destiny and purpose to pay the price of our sins. After all, what good is a Savior if he has no idea or experience of what it means to be human, with all our fears, failures and frailties?

What good is a Messiah if He doesn’t protect us from our rightful place in death, with His own?

“No good,” would be the answer.

But that wasn’t the case. Nearly two-thousand years ago. Jesus did all of those things at the cross - and so much more - and He did so willingly.

Because He loves us, even on our worst days.

Today is a very Good Friday, indeed.