Over this coming weekend, Christians all around the world will celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ but, for many, this is quite a confusing time. How does celebrating the death of a good man, from more than 2,000 years ago, have any relevance to us today? Isn’t the resurrection a myth? Was Jesus really God? For children, they may wonder how it is that we celebrated the birth of Jesus just four months ago and now we celebrate His death. That was quick!
So, what’s so good about Good Friday?
Firstly, Good Friday reminds us that God is a loving God. He loved us so much that He sent His Son into the world for our benefit. Jesus did not come as our judge, but as our saviour. He came to restore the relationship between humanity and God our Father which long ago was so tragically broken.
We were never created to live apart from God. If you were to take a child away from their parents at birth, starve them of parental affection and protection, that child will either die of a broken heart or will live by discovering their survival instinct but they will still lack the guidance, love and identity of a loving parenting relationship. They will always have a missing piece to their existence and they will try to compensate that emptiness by filling it with all manner of things but never find true satisfaction. Every day they will look in the mirror wondering ‘where did I come from, what am I here to do’? They may display all the characteristics of their parents in looks and mannerisms but they will never know the reality of that relationship. They will lack context, connection and security. So, Good Friday is an invitation to an orphan world to come home so as to receive their full inheritance and birth-right. God our Father has made this possible through Jesus Christ His Son.
You can see what love the Father has given to us – that we should be called the children of God. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him but they did recognise God’s image in us (my emphasis).
Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared but we know that when He appears we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. (The Bible – 1 John 3:1-2)
Secondly, Good Friday is a complete dismantling of a system that causes an orphan to remain an orphan. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the Satan so as to achieve this reconciliation (1 John 3:8) but what is the work of Satan? It is simply this; to tempt us to reject the ways of God so as to believe the delusion that we can become like God ourselves. Satan works to nurture and cultivate an attitude that puts our desires above God’s. The Bible calls this lawlessness; and it is this that separates us from God and we are powerless to change it.
Imagine for one moment you are a parent whose time is consumed by your career which causes you to neglect your role to lovingly nurture and guide your child. Your child will not give up on learning until you are ready, on the contrary they will learn from the next strongest and available influence and in so doing will neglect, in fact may even reject, what you have to offer. Satan’s plan has always been to invest in all of us – the belief that we have no need of God.
I wonder how you, as a parent, would deal with such a scenario? All the time the other influences in your child’s world have life, you will not be able to adequately train them as you desire. The plan then has to be to remove the influences, then re-train your child. This is exactly what Jesus did by dying on the cross.
Jesus through His death, removed the power of Satan over us by doing what we were powerless to do. We have become completely consumed by a life without God and like a regular long term ingestion of a strong opiate it is impossible to confront the supplier in the hope you can get freedom for they have a vested interest in our addiction and so have power over us. However, Jesus was completely immune to Satan’s influence, He was able to claim back our freedom to be children of God. The Bible teaches us that the one that the Son sets free is free indeed.
Thirdly, Good Friday is good because we do not have to complete a sinless perfection test to progress. We simply, through faith, acknowledge God as our heavenly Father and Jesus His Son as our mediator and in doing that, Satan is made powerless over us. There are those that will tell you that to become a Christian, you have stop sinning, however if those same people were to be asked if they have yet attained sinless perfection, they would have to confess that they had not, lest they be found out to be liar. Through our wonderful restored relationship with God, we are given the ability and desire to make radical changes in our lives in line with God’s will. But most importantly, the missing piece in our lives is recovered, namely a close personal connection to the source of all existence, and we now have a desire to know and be known by God our Father.
Take some time to reflect on the true meaning of Good Friday and then thank God with a grateful heart for his amazing grace and love shown towards us through Jesus Christ.
Finally, although it’s Friday … Sunday is coming. I pray that Easter Sunday becomes for you ‘Resurrection Sunday’ and that you are filled with the hope of life like never before.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for doing what I was powerless to do. I turn my back on the influence of Satan and acknowledge that you are the one with the power to transform my life. Forgive me for not seeing this sooner, I was blinded by this world’s system. Lord, I want to come home, will you accept me. Amen.
If you have prayed this prayer then contact your local church, as you will need their help to move forward. If you do not know how to do that, then make contact with me through the CHURCH OFFICE and I will be more than happy to help you.
Happy Easter
Mark