What’s so good about Good Friday? Why isn’t the day called Bad or Sad Friday? After all, it’s meant to be a day of sorrowful reflection, not a day of celebration. Sometimes, this day takes other names, such as Holy Friday. In Germany, it’s called Karfreitag, or Sorrowful Friday. So where did we get the tradition of calling it “Good”? Some believe it may have originated from the older tradition of calling it “God’s Friday.”
No matter the origin of the name, it’s still appropriate to call the Friday on which Jesus died “good.” Out of Christ’s sacrificial love, He died for our sins. That’s why Good Friday is good. And the great news is that three days later He rose from the grave in victory.
New Testament scholar D.A. Carson wrote, “It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father’s will—and it was his love for sinners like me.” We read in 1 John 4: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (v. 10).
The good news of Good Friday is that God loves us and wants to have a relationship with us! Because of that love, we’re called to love others (vv. 7, 11). When we do, we show our love for Him.
What does Good Friday mean to you? How can you honor Jesus on this day?
Dear God, thank You for loving me! Please help me to tell others about You.
Visit go.odb.org/040326 to learn about Jesus and His atoning sacrifice.
John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23), wrote much about how God loves us. In his gospel, he says that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son” to save us from our sins (3:16). In one of John’s letters, he uses similar language: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. . . . He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). Similarly, Paul accentuated that God demonstrated His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us “while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8). Because of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice for our sins, which we remember on Good Friday, “we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God” (v. 11 nlt). K.T. Sim
