A Good Friday reflection

Delta Flight 104, with 272 passengers and 14 crew, had just departed São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport on Sunday when flames shot out from its left engine. Passengers screamed for the pilots to “turn around” the jet. They immediately declared an emergency, shut down the affected engine, and circled back to the airport, landing safely shortly after departure.

Video from inside the cabin shows passengers erupting into applause and cheers when the aircraft came to a stop. No injuries were reported.

Imagine yourself inside that airplane. If you could speak to the pilots, what would you say to them today? A year from today?

Let’s come back to that thought and its Good Friday relevance in a moment.

I was once given a ticket for what the officer claimed was an illegal left turn. I disagreed, but an attorney convinced me that the chances of winning my argument in court were nil. So I paid a fine and received deferred adjudication. By avoiding another ticket for six months, I also avoided what is known as a “final conviction.”

This was by the grace of my attorney friend. He advised me prior to my hearing, drove me to the courthouse, pled my case before the judge, and negotiated the mercy I received. He would not let me pay him for his time.

What he did not do was die for me.

Imagine that I had committed a capital offense and had been sentenced to death, and that the court somehow allowed my friend to die in my place. In that case, his sacrifice would make logical sense. My penalty was death, so he died to pay it.

However, I was accused of committing an illegal left turn. For my friend to die to pay for my crime would make no logical sense at all.

This episode constitutes the entirety of my experience with our court system. I have never committed murder or otherwise done anything for which the sentence is death.

Why, then, in atoning for my sins, did Jesus have to die for them?

Why do we call this day “Good” Friday?

We call this day of Holy Week “Good Friday,” though I can assure you no one present on that day called it that. The earliest use of the title is in a text from around AD 1290. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that “good” in this context refers to “a day or season observed as holy by the church.” Others think the title is a version of “God’s Friday.”

Etymology aside, humanity has an excellent reason to call this day “good.”

On this day, Jesus “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). But why did he have to die to do so?

Sin cuts us off from the holy God who “gives to all mankind life and breath” (Acts 17:25; cf. Psalm 36:9; John 1:4) and leads eventually and ultimately to death (Romans 6:23). If you cut a flower from its roots, the flower will die.

The “debt” incurred by sin, therefore, must be paid by death—either ours or someone else’s on our behalf. But since every other human (except Jesus) has sinned as we have, they have their own debt to pay and cannot also pay ours (cf. Romans 3:23). If I have $100 and owe $100, I cannot use my money to pay your debt as well.

This is one reason the Gospels so adamantly demonstrate Jesus’ innocence with regard to his trials and conviction (cf. Luke 23:14–15; John 18:38). If he had committed sin, his death could not pay for our sins. But because he was “tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), he had no debt of his own to pay and thus could pay ours.

“God’s love and justice came together”

However, there was another option: Why could God not simply forgive our debt?

If you run into my car on the street, I can forgive you without requiring your death or even that you pay for the damages. Similarly, the judge in my case had the power to dismiss all charges. If he wished, he could simply have forgiven me for my alleged misdeeds.

But he could not do so and do his job. The policeman who issued my ticket was as convinced of my guilt as I was of my innocence. The judge had no way to satisfy the demands of justice while ignoring or forgiving my legal debt.

The Bible says that God is both love (1 John 4:8) and holy (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8). With regard to our sins, how is he to be both? Billy Graham expressed God’s quandary this way:

If God were simply to forgive our sins without judging them, then there would be no justice, no accountability for wrongdoing. God would not be truly holy and just.

But if God were simply to judge us for our sins as we deserve, there would be no hope of salvation for any of us. His love would have failed to provide what we need.

Dr. Graham explained the answer: “The cross is the only way to resolve the problem of sin. At the cross, God’s love and justice came together.”

If the judge in my case had pronounced me guilty and then paid the fine himself, he would have been loving and just. There was no other logical way for him to be both.

“Unless there is a Good Friday in your life”

Imagine that someone died physically in your place. Perhaps a soldier shielded you from a grenade that would have killed you, or a police officer stepped in front of a bullet meant for you. Would you go a day of your life without remembering their sacrifice? If they somehow came back to life, what would you do to express your gratitude to them?

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen noted,

“Unless there is a Good Friday in your life, there can be no Easter Sunday.”

You and I will have all of eternity to thank Jesus for this day.

But remember, eternity starts today.

Quote for the day:

“If we want to know what God is like, let us look at Calvary.” —Robert E. Coleman

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