Good Friday? Good for whom?
For you and me? Yes.
Good for Jesus, no. It was Bad Friday for Him, wasn’t it?
Or was it?
The writer of Hebrews says, “For the joy set before Him, Jesus endured the Cross, scorning its shame.”
What joy?
It was for the joy of what was nailed to the Cross.
So what exactly was nailed to the Cross?
Isaiah records an usual statement from God –
Comfort, comfort My people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
That seems unfair! We receive double (!) for our sins! Here’s a brief video where I explain what this means culturally –
Only when invoices were paid-in-full did they get doubled-up.
The Bible tells us that we’ve all sinned, and that the invoice or penalty for our sin is death. We have the IOUs of sin nailed to the door of our heart where God says “You owe Me your life!” But we cannot pay this debt by ourselves.
But Jesus can. And Jesus did! Check this out –
He personally carried our sins in His body on the Cross…. (1 Peter 2:24, NLT)
Having cancelled and blotted out and wiped away the handwriting of the note with its legal decrees and demands which was in force and stood against us. This He set aside and cleared completely out of our way by nailing it to His Cross. (Colossians 2:14, AMP)
That’s what is good about Good Friday. Jesus knew that taking our sins on His body, and then allowing His body to be nailed to the Cross, would double-up and nail-down our sin once and for all!
When Jesus said, “It is finished!” He was really saying, “It is was paid-in-full!”
Craig T. Owens 