Good Friday

By Elliot Ritzema

Scripture Reading: Luke 23:1-53, Hebrews 10:10

Good Friday is a day when we practice holding many different emotions together. What we call in English “Good Friday” is called in other countries “Holy Friday” or “Black Friday” or “Long Friday.” All of them are appropriate names in their own way. It is a somber thing to think of the agonies Jesus suffered and at the same time a comforting thing to think that He undertook these sufferings for us—that He was not just a tragic victim of the forces of this world but a conquering King whose reign required suffering.

In churches that have Good Friday services, the preachers will often focus on one or more of the seven last words from the cross, the seven things that Jesus said while dying. In these seven sayings, gathered from across the four Gospels, Jesus quoted Psalms twice. These quotations seem remarkably different, and appropriately express the complicated emotions of this day. Matthew and Mark’s accounts of the crucifixion both say that Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” a quotation from Psalm 22:1 (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34). They also say that Jesus gave a second loud cry immediately before his death (Matt 27:50, Mark 15:37), but they don’t give its contents. Only Luke includes the saying, “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit” (Luke 23:46), a quotation from Psalm 31:5, one of the last of the traditional seven sayings.

In these different perspectives, we have on Jesus’s lips expressions of forsakenness and of trust and commitment. Neither cancels out the other, but together they express the range of what Jesus experienced on the cross. Always one with His Father, He experienced desolation. Always surrendering His Father, He trusted to the end.

Christians are united with Jesus in His death and resurrection (Romans 6:5). In these two cries, we can see some of what a life modeled after Christ looks like. Peter went on to spell this out in his first letter, using the same Greek word as Jesus does in Luke 23:46: “So then, let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust themselves to a faithful Creator while doing what is good” (1Peter 4:19 emphasis added). God is faithful and worthy of our trust even when suffering comes.

In “The Hands of the Father,” George MacDonald writes, “The last act of our Lord in thus commending his spirit at the close of his life, was only a summing up of what he had been doing all his life. He had been offering this sacrifice, the sacrifice of himself, all the years, and in thus sacrificing he had lived the divine life.” Some of Jesus’s last words before His death, entrusting Himself to His Father, were aligned His entire life. Let us also entrust ourselves to our loving Father, even in the midst of suffering, confident that He is able to conquer even death.

Written by Elliot Ritzema