Have you ever wondered why the Friday before Easter is called Good Friday? Most of the world knows that it is the day celebrated by Christians around the world as the day as Jesus was crucified. From what I can tell I’ve read that the word good used to have a secondary
meaning of holy. There are a number of cases in set
phrases where the words God and good got
switched around because of their similarity. One case was the
phrase God
be with you, which today is just good-bye. So
perhaps Good Friday was originally God’s Friday.
But I think we call it Good Friday because, in pious retrospect,
all that tragedy brought about the greatest good there could
be.
Now, the
crucifixion is probably the most brutal and torturous death penalty ever
devised by men. But even before Jesus
went to the cross, he experienced incredible pain and bruises. Because after six trials and staying up all
night and lack of sleep it says that they gave Him to the Roman soldiers who
just wanted to make fun of Him. They put
a robe on Him and they crowned Him with a crown of thorns which stuck into His
head, into His brain. They put a
blindfold on Him. Then it says they
began to beat Him and slap Him. They hit
Him in the face. The Bible says that
they even began to pluck his beard. Just
out of sheer torture. They did this it
said and said, “Who hit you, Jesus?” And
somebody slapped Jesus on the face. “Who
slapped You? If You’re God, tell us who
we are?” Jesus could have given their
names, their father’s names, their grandfather’s names. He could have traced their family tree back
to Adam. But He remained silent because
He was taking the suffering of the world upon Himself.
says He was mocked and He was scorned. He was taken and scourged. Scourging was far worse than whipping. They would been a man over a post so that he couldn’t kneel down but he
could stand up either. And you know how
that hurts your back when you’re in that half way position. They would tie your hands, strip you down to
the waist, then two men called lectors would hold these whips that had a
cat-of-nine-tails in it, nine long strands of leather. In each of these strands of leather they’d
tie two things – sharp bone that would cut the skin and bits of led in order to
bruise the skin. They would whip and
when they did it would not only cut the back open but it would bruise it at the
same time. By law, you could only give
40 stripes because it would usually kill a man. So they always gave only 39. Because if you miscounted and gave more than 40, the lectors who would
be giving the punishment would be given the same punishment they just doled
out.
was one bloody pulp even before He went to the cross. When you figure 39 times 9 that’s how many
scars he had on His back even before He went to the cross. Then they gave Him the heavy cross that He
was to carry up the hill to Calvary. As He carried the
cross up the hill, He stumbled and feel due to the loss of blood and
fatigue. The soldiers just grabbed
somebody out of the crowd to help Him carry the cross
up to the top, they would stretch Him out on the cross and nail Him. You’ve seen many things where it looks like
the nails were through the palms, but historically they would nail in the
wrist, between the two bones. When it
would go through it would hit that never that goes up your arm and be
excruciatingly painful.
on the cross was a death of suffocation. If you hung this way for any period of time, what happens is the muscles
around your chest cavity, the pectoralis major, begin to paralyze. And when all the weight of your body is held
this way, eventually you’re able to breathe in but you can’t breathe out. So the death on the cross would have been a
simple death of suffocation except the Romans didn’t want to make it that
easy. What they would do is take a
person’s knees and bend them a little bit and nail the feet to the cross. So a man would be hanging there in absolute
agony until the pain in his chest was about to explode with pins and needles
then he would lift himself up on his feet that were nailed to the cross, so he
could breathe. He would hold that
position until He could no longer stand the pain in his feet and He would let
himself back down again. Until the pain
in his lungs became unbearable. The
death on the cross was up and down, up and down. It was an incredibly torturous event. That’s why the Bible tells us (and history
too) that the Romans would eventually break the legs of the person on the
cross. They couldn’t stand up anymore
and then they’d suffocate.
That’s the
kind of punishment that Jesus went through on the cross. Why? Why did Jesus have to die? Because somebody had to pay for your
sins. There’s a law of the universe that
says, you reap what you sow. If you
break man’s laws you pay man’s penalties. If I go out and speed and I get a ticket, I’ve got to pay. If you break man’s laws, you pay man’s
penalties. If you break God’s laws, you
pay God’s penalties. The Bible says, “The wages of sin is death.” The Good News is it’s already been paid
for. Jesus said, “You deserve
punishment.” Because all of us do
because none of us are perfect. All of
us have blown it. He said, “I love you
so much. I created you. I will come to earth and take your punishment
for you.”
for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” You look at creation and see God’s hand but
you look at the cross and you see God’s heart, His passion. This is why Jesus allowed Himself to be
crucified. Ephesians “By the death of Christ we are set free,
that is our sins are forgiven. How great
is the grace of God which he gave to us in such large measure.” Jesus hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t deserve to die. He didn’t deserve the penalty. What was He guilty of? He was guilty of love in the first
degree.