The God of Good Friday

Good Friday Was Not Cosmic Child Abuse

by Josh Buice | Mar 29, 2018 | 

On Good Friday each year, Christians remember the most glorious sacrifice and the most horrific murder that ever occurred in human history. Why do we refer to the Friday after Thanksgiving as “Black Friday” and the Friday before Easter “Good Friday”? Should they be reversed? It’s the day set aside on the calendar to remember the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus for the sins of his people and the heinous murder of God’s Son. Why would we celebrate that day as a good day? Many people flow through Good Friday as if it’s a normal day and they give little to no recognization for the significance of what happened on the day Jesus died. Others celebrate it from a heart of worship. Still others mock the day—calling it cosmic child abuse.  Famed atheist Richard Dawkins writes the following:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. [1]

Is God guilty of abusing his Son on the cross? According to Isaiah 53, “It pleased the LORD (YHWH) to crush him (Jesus)” (Is. 53:10). Some have stated that the Father was “well pleased” with his Son at the baptism (Matt. 3:17), and then he was vengeful with his Son on the cross. How should we reconcile such statements? Why was Good Friday a good day? How can the death of Jesus be considered a good thing? Is it cosmic child abuse worthy of laughter or substitutionary sacrifice worthy of worship?

Good Friday Was Good Because God Is Good

The entire scene of the cross is filled with brutality, blood, insult, shame, and death. That does not exactly sound like a good day, but it was. When we look at Good Friday and all of the events that transpired on that day through the lens of human self-preservation and humane concepts—it’s a horrible day. When we view the events of Good Friday through the lens of God’s justice—things are put into perspective. Just the statement, “God is good” is often thrown around so casually that people fail to get the point. By the goodness of God, we don’t mean God gives us good things like a cosmic grandfather figure. God is good and because God is good—he must punish sinners for their guilt. This is demanded by the justice of God.

Far too often, God is misrepresented by the Christian community as a cosmic bellhop or a loving grandfather in the sky who showers all people with salvation regardless of their sin. Still others misrepresent God as a vengeful and hate-filled cosmic being who is always looking to zap people with judgment. God is neither of those caricatures. When we see God issuing love and grace to guilty sinners—it’s based on God’s ability to love which is not disconnected from his necessity to judge. Grace is offered on the basis of his satisfaction. The only way God can offer grace is by the fulfillment of his justice. However, if God judges sinners—he is good. If God saves sinners and spares them from wrath—God is good.

God would not be good if he merely bypassed the demands of justice and allowed guilty sinners to sneak in the backdoor of heaven. Such underhanded deals are common in this world of sin, but the moment that God offered such a corrupt deal to a guilty sinner is the moment that he would cease to be good. The holy justice of God is pure and righteous and it requires that all sinners will be justly judged for their sins. Therefore, as God is punishing his Son on the cross, we must remember that he was not punishing him for his sin. Instead, Jesus became a substitute and was being punished for the sins of God’s people (every person who would be the recipient of grace through Jesus Christ—every one of God’s elect past, present, and future).

According to 1 Peter 2:24, Jesus took on himself the sins of his people (Matt. 1:21) in order that they would receive the righteousness of God. There was a great exchange that took place. The sins of his people were placed upon him and he suffered immensely for them while his righteousness was imputed to the account of the sinners—freely received by faith.  According to Stephen Nichols, ‘The word imputation comes directly from the Latin. It is an accounting term; it means “to apply to one’s account.’ Expenses are debited and income is credited. The old King James word is ‘reckon.'” [2] The apostle Paul provides the plain truth of this doctrine in his letter to the church at Corinth as he states, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

Good Friday Was Good Because God Was Satisfied

All through the Genesis account of creation, we see the phrase repeated, “it was good.” God was satisfied with his creation—but when sin entered the world (Rom. 5:12)—it was not good. God was angry with his creation. The demands of God’s holy law demonstrated the need for God to be satisfied. On the eve of the final plague, God promised to judge every home and take the life of their firstborn if the blood of the lamb was not on the doorposts. The death angel would visit each home—including the home of Pharaoh. God demanded that each year on the Day of Atonement that the blood of the lamb would be offered and the blood would be sprinkled on the mercy seat. All of this blood was necessary and it likewise was a foreshadowing of the perfect Lamb of God who would one day come and take away the sins of his people throughout the world (John 1:29).

When Isaiah prophesied of the birth of the Prince of Peace (Is. 9:6), he was not merely thinking of peace between animals so that the lion would lie down with the lamb. He was looking beyond to a greater peace—one that would reconcile sinful man with holy God. As Charles Wesley would write so eloquently in his hymn, “Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.” From birth, all of us are under the wrath of God (Rom. 1:18). We have all sinned against God and we are all born into sin as we’re connected to Adam (Ps. 51:5). As a result of our sin, we’re considered the enemies of God. It’s by the death of Jesus on the cross as our substitute that we are no longer the enemies of God—but now we’re reconciled to him. Paul articulated this truth in his letter to the church at Rome as he wrote, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life” (Rom. 5:10).

When Jesus died on the cross, Charles Spurgeon said, “It became midnight at midday.” It was a dark day as God died in human flesh. The death of the second Person of the Trinity was a horrible act of rebellion and human depravity. It resembled the act of Satan seeking to dethrone God from the beginning. It had all of the marks of evil and twisted human depravity—yet at the same time what man intended for evil—God intended for good. It was on that very day when the heads of the homes in Jerusalem were slaughtering their lamb for Passover that Jesus was dying on the cross to be the propitiation for the sins of his people (1 John 2:1-2). The reason that Good Friday was good is because God was satisfied with the death of his Son in the place of guilty sinners.

Nothing that you do can impress or please God. The very best that you can offer God is human effort stained by sin. You need something greater. The only way that sinners can be reconciled to God and find peace with God is through the substitutionary death of Jesus and the righteousness of God that is received by faith. Will you come to God today by faith trusting that the death of Jesus on the cross was a good thing? Mark Dever explains:

God’s answer for your guilt is not to explain it away by circumstances that have victimized you, but to call you to own your sins fully and to entrust them all to Jesus Christ by faith. Jesus Christ is our substitute. He has taken our penalty. [3]