Good Friday is an important date on the calendar each year as churches across the globe pause to remember and reflect on the death of Christ in preparation for the celebration of Resurrection Sunday. Not to be confused with the materialistic chaos of
“Black Friday,” it is called “good” because, though we remember the brutal torture and crucifixion of the incarnate Son of God, what he accomplished on the cross is the greatest good we could ever know.
It is valuable to build memorials into our yearly calendars to take time to consider what is most important. The Easter season is a wonderful means of grace in our lives together in local churches, but it is essential that we don’t relegate our consideration of the Cross to a particular week in the Spring each year. The grace of Calvary and what Jesus procured for believers on that fateful Friday should flow into and inform each and every day of our lives. Here’s why:
I Sin Every Day
As a believer, there is nothing sweeter than to know that I have been justified and reconciled to God through my faith in Christ. By God’s grace, the enslaving power of sin has been broken in my life, but sadly, I still must deal with the fact that I sin each and every day. The impure thought, the angry reaction, the selfish impulse—if we are honest with ourselves, we know that sin is all too common in our daily lives. That is why we need Good Friday to function each and every day. The apostle John puts it this way:
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.1
The blood of Jesus shed on that very good Friday is my daily need as I acknowledge and confess my sin to God with the confidence that “the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.”2
I Face An Enemy Every Day
Author and apologist C.S. Lewis points out that we can fall into one of two errors in thinking about the devil and his minions—we can disbelieve in their existence, or we can have “an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”3 While those who are biblically informed must acknowledge their existence, most of us find ourselves in the first camp in our approach to each day. We should avoid and “excessive and unhealthy interest’ of course, but we should be aware and prepared knowing that we have an adversary who “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”4 He is “the father of lies”5 and the one who seeks to accuse us before God.6 What good news then, that the Cross has defanged his accusations and thrown him down so that he can never make a condemning charge against us!7
Through the blood of Christ, we overcome this dangerous enemy of our souls8, and through our faith in him, we can successfully resist the attacks of our enemy.9 We have been given the armor of the gospel to shield and protect us in the fight, and so we ultimately have nothing to fear from Satan.10 How good to know that every day I am prepared to face and resist my enemy because of Calvary!
Every Day I Draw Closer To Death
Newsflash—you are going to die. And so am I. We all face the terrifying prospect of the curse of death that we will all endure unless Jesus returns first. It doesn’t help to distract ourselves or ignore it; death comes for all of us. If we are blessed, we may enjoy 70, 80, even 90 years or so, but there is nothing we can do in ourselves to cast off this inevitability. I must admit that, at the age of 49, life seems to be passing me by at an unsettling, alarmingly fast pace. Truly, life is like “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”11
It is understandable that when we face the prospect of our own demise, we can be dismayed or perhaps even filled with fear. What good news for us that at the Cross, our Savior destroyed the power of death and delivered “all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”12 Praise be to God that we need no longer fear death, knowing that in Christ, death has been transformed into the wardrobe entrance to a Narnia of everlasting life and joy!
Oh, my believing friend, let us never confine our contemplation of the death of Christ to a Friday in early Spring each year. Let every day be a good day, because every day is one in which we are forgiven, sheltered, and protected by the grace of Calvary. Let’s make every day Good Friday!