Today is Good Friday. But we may not necessarily have to delve into the depth of historical antecedents. So, without much ado, we concern ourselves with the fact that there was a historic day when someone in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth was crucified.
It is a day universally celebrated in Christendom as the day Jesus was crucified on the Cross of Calvary. Down through the centuries, the celebration has continued as an annual religious event or ceremony. For some of the churches, especially the orthodox ones, a number of events run through the week culminating in the Easter Sunday celebration. The week is usually referred to as the Holy Week. As such, some churches observe the different events that occurred in the week before the eventual crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Amidst all these, the question that readily comes to mind is: Is it a Good Friday or Bad Friday? This might sound too simplistic in a sense of it. Also, it might be very irritating to or provoke some sense of dissatisfaction in those who down through the ages have tenaciously held on to the tenets of Christianity handed down to them by the early leaders of the Christian Faith. In this context, the answer is not going to be just from one point of view. It is considered from three different perspectives (or if you like, three different Schools of Thought). These perspectives would be explored in the succeeding discourse.
First of all, it is a Good Friday. This School of Thought springs from the teachings of the early Christian fathers or leadership of the church. The thinking is predicated on the fact that it was the day Jesus paid the Supreme and Eternal Sacrifice that led to humanity’s freedom from the bondage and tyranny of Sin, Self and Satan. So, ever since, whoever appropriates the Finished Work on the Cross of Calvary by believing in the redemptive power of the shedding of blood by death and resurrection of Jesus Christ automatically becomes a member of the body of Christ or is born into the Family of Christ by virtue of that New Creation experience. In essence, there is already a Blank Cheque of Salvation which each individual has to intentionally appropriate by cashing in on the Finished Work at Calvary. This is nothing else but Eternal Goodnews born as a result of the event of Good Friday. There is nothing else like it ever since the world began. And because this Supreme and Eternal Sacrifice was made on that particular Friday, it is considered a Friday like no other. How else would it be looked at if not as the Good Friday?
The other perspective of looking at it is that it WAS NOT actually a GOOD FRIDAY. This sounds very ridiculous, negative and supposedly misleading, when considered in the light of ESTABLISHED Christian teaching and thinking. But never mind. Let us be a little open-minded here. Imagine that you were or I was one of the early disciples or apostles of Jesus Christ. How would you or I have felt in that circumstance if we had experienced that historic event firsthand? You mean the day our Leader was crucified? The day our Mentor was crucified? The day our Man was dehumanised? The day our Light was put out and the spirit of the light of hope was quenched? The day our Healer or Miracle Worker was ‘strangulated’ to death? We could keep on questioning ourselves over and over again. That would not be a Good Friday! At all! It must be a Bad Friday! Those who are very much familiar with Bible stories already know that the Bible aptly captures the mood of the moment. The tone of the moment of Jesus’ crucifixion depicts a tell-tale of seeming utter-hopelessness and utter-helplessness (as it were) as far as the disciples were concerned then.
In fact, there was a group of those who rejoiced or felt that it was a Good Day or they had had their best moment ever. It was the group of those who heartlessly crucified Him. To them, it was a moment of WOW! FEELINGS. It was mission accomplished. At least, at last, they had gotten rid of that Demonic Angel who had terrorised their society with mesmerising and unpardonable strange teachings and demonstrations of the power of Beelzebub (as they misleadingly supposed and usually accused Him of wrong doing). So, it was a moment of uncertainties and mixed feelings as the wicked people of that generation, who hated him furiously, celebrated the accomplishment of their Murderous Mission whereas His followers (both those who had made a public commitment and declaration of their faith and those who were secret disciples) ultimately saw that as the worst or most traumatic moment of their lives. Again, then, it was a POSITIVE Bad Friday (for the disciples of Jesus) whereas it was NEGATIVE Good Friday (for the killers of Jesus Christ). As we speak, we might be looking at it in retrospect. But they had not had a hindsight – for we enjoy the blessing of hindsight. Even if they had been foretold that it was going to be a fulfilment of prophecies they had not looked at it from that vantage point of prophetic manifestation – regardless of the blessings of foresight and insight. Was prophetic introspection even useful to them then? At the time of the occurrence of that historic event, it was unlikely that they thought of it as a blessing or Supreme and Eternal Good.
Now, coming to the third School of Thought, or perspective, one can rightly assume or, perhaps, categorically state that it is a GOOD-BAD FRIDAY. It is good on one hand and bad on the other hand. A good number of times, Christians have usually held the teaching or view that if someone does not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or after believing in Him goes back to the life of sin, such a person is crucifying Christ for the second time. And if this be the case, such a one’s life is not at synch with the appropriation of the Finished Work on the Cross of Calvary. In other words, such an individual is saying that ENOUGH IS NOT ENOUGH, as far as their romance with Sin, Self and Satan is concerned. What their action portrays is: “I need to deliberately crucify Him much more, because enough is not enough.” Then, every moment of this historic celebration no longer becomes a time of personal reflections and relishing of the remembrance of the enormity of this Supreme and Eternal Sacrifice made by Jesus Christ. Thus, it is somewhat useless to such a person. What an awry aura it creates in the mind!
Again, it is a Good Friday if it becomes a moment of reminiscences, personal reflections, relishing and reliving the ugly beauty of this Supreme and Eternal Sacrifice and responding accordingly to the promptings or dictates of the Spirit of God and the New Life in Christ Jesus. Then, and only then, can one truly, confidently and loudly say that it is a Good Friday.
In sum, is it a Good Friday or Bad Friday? It is not a question of ordinary logic. It is not a question that demands a lip-based or lip-bound answer. It sounds very rhetorical anyway. But, surely, it requires a moment of soulful soul-searching, brutal spiritual heart surgery and continuous pondering over (and again) in the light of how one lives one’s life in relation to the need to meet the essence of the debt that was paid on the Cross of Calvary on the Good Friday, which was never so as at the time of its occurrence. Let it be a moment of spiritual re-awakening. How then can it be so without reconciliation, regeneration and heartfelt return to the Maker?
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