"Good" Friday?

Most people would never choose the adjective "good" to refer to the day of someone's death ... let alone such a brutal and violent death such as the death Jesus Christ endured. Yet "good" is the adjective we use to refer to the day when Jesus died. Read the following Scripture and concluding prayer by John Piper ... and I believe you will see why the day Jesus died was indeed a GOOD day!

Romans 3:23 - For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 6:23 - The wages of sin is death . . .

Mark 10:45 - The Son of Man came . . . to give His life a ransom for many.

1 Peter 2:24 - He himself bore our sins in His body on the cross.

Isaiah 53:6 - The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

1 Peter 3:18 - For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

2 Corinthians 5:21 - God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Romans 6:23 - The wages of sin is death . . . BUT the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Father, what can we say? We feel utterly unworthy in the face of Christ's unspeakable sufferings. We are sorry. It was our sin that brought this to pass. It was we who struck him and spit on him and mocked him. O Father, we are so sorry. We bow ourselves to the dirt and shut the mouths of our small, dark, petty, sinful souls. O Father, touch us with fresh faith that we might believe the incredible. That the very pain of Christ that makes us despair is our salvation. Open our fearful hearts that cannot feel what must be felt - that we are loved with the deepest, strongest, purest love in the universe. Oh, grant us to have the power to comprehend with all the saints the height and depth and length and breadth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, and may we be filled with all the fullness of God. Fight for us, O God, that we not drift numb and blind and foolish into vain and empty excitements. Life is too short, too precious, too painful to waste on worldly bubbles that burst. Heaven is too great, hell is too horrible, eternity is too long that we should putter around on the porch of eternity. O God, open our eyes to the vastness of the sufferings of Christ and what they mean for sin and holiness and hope and heaven. Make us awake to the weight of glory - the glory of Christ's incomparable sufferings. In his great and wonderful name, amen.
(John Piper from Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ)

Thanks for stopping by . . .

pj