Good Friday is the most challenging day of this Week for several reasons. Things turned treacherous and painful in the hours that led to the death of Jesus.
According to Gospel writers, Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus the night before, was overcome with remorse and hanged himself early Friday morning.
Meanwhile, before the third hour (9 am), Jesus went through the shame of false accusations, condemnation, mockery, beatings, and abandonment. After unlawful trials, he is sentenced to death by crucifixion despite being innocent.
Before they led Christ to Calvary, the soldiers had some fun spitting on him, tormenting and mocking him. They pierced his head with a crown of thorns and then had Jesus carry his cross up the hill of Calvary. There, he was again mocked and insulted as the soldiers nailed him to the wooden cross.
The Romans were professionals when it came to killing people, and crucifixion was one of the cruelest, most public, and shameful forms of execution they employed. Victims typically died from either physical trauma, loss of blood, shock, or suffocation from no longer having the strength to lift themselves to breathe. It was a gruesome way to die and was most often reserved for enslaved people and the worst of criminals.
Jesus’s enemies mocked him to the very end. They taunted and derided him. Hurled insults. They publicly humiliated him. Jesus was given a robe, a crown of thorns for his head, and a staff in his hand. Soldiers bow down sarcastically, saying, “He saved others, but he can’t save himself!”
It’s interesting that they were right. He couldn’t save himself. If you and I were to be “delivered from evil,” Jesus had to stay right where he was all the way to the end. But Jesus didn’t come to be served; he came to serve and give his life as a ransom for many (Mk. 10:45).
What was Jesus’s response instead? “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Lk. 23:34). While suffering and torment, Jesus extends forgiveness. They didn’t understand.
Jesus spoke seven final words from the cross. His last was, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Then, about the ninth hour (3 pm), Jesus breathed his last breath and died.
By 6 pm Friday, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took the body down from the cross and laid it in a newly cut tomb.
Friday’s events are recorded in Matthew 27:1–62, Mark 15:1–47, Luke 22:63–23:56, and John 18:28–19:37.
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Don’t give up. There is more to come. See you tomorrow.