Why Does Good Friday Matter?
Posted on: March 29, 2024
The following is a special devotional from Marcus Hayes, NGU Board of Trustees member and Lead Pastor of Crossroads Baptist Church in The Woodlands, TX.
Have you ever asked the question, “Why does Good Friday matter?” Remembering the significance of Good Friday can easily prevaricate a person’s once held convictions.
Good Friday makes Easter possible. Good Friday matters because it is the day that the God of all Creation pulled off His plan of salvation through the shed blood of His precious Son on the Cross. On Good Friday, all the promises and all the prophecies were fulfilled. God’s plan to redeem humanity from rebellion, rejection, and separation became a reality because Jesus, fully God and fully man, bore the punishment for all our sins, past, present, and future, on the Cross. Jesus would pay the penalty and debt that we owed. Dying in our place as our substitute.
So, a person can argue that one can describe the Gospel in four words, “Jesus in my place.”
Good Friday matters because, on that day, God’s justice and grace met in the person of Jesus, making possible the impossible, washing what had once been unwashable, making it whiter than snow. Good Friday matters because, through Christ’s death on the Cross, you and I can take off our old clothes of unrighteousness and put on our new clothes of Christ’s righteousness.
Good Friday matters because on that day, long ago, God brought light out of darkness and made beauty out of ashes. On that day, Jesus’ blood ran red, defeating sin and death so we might claim the spoils of His victory. On that day, God sought us and bought us, giving us the gift of eternal life to all who would hear, believe, and receive. Good Friday matters because Jesus paid in full what we could not pay.
Good Friday is only good because Sunday is coming.
