How and why is it called Good Friday?

This specific day started as Holy Friday. A less popular version is God’s Friday. 

There is no one person or specific pointing to how or why it became Good Friday, but that good is meant to mean holy. 

There are layers to Christ’s crucifixion that gets glazed over if you will. 

I’m not meaning to make this about us, but want to ensure we understand the depth of our depravity, but even more the volume, the vastness, of God’s love and grace. 

The horrible physical suffering Christ endured as our perfect sacrifice on this day.  Flesh ripped from His body, by a people He loves.  Our God, Creator, left the hallways of heaven, to be with us, not just for 33 years, but making a way for all eternity. 

This beating and murder in progress leads us to the cross, where Christ is nailed to it. This leads Him to a point where He says, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?”

Here it is.  Christ never once cries out during the beatings or hanging on the cross, but He does at the point of separation from His Father. 

This term, act, of separation is worth looking into. Our Triune God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, separated? For our Triune God to be separated, brings in a lot of questions, and really isn’t possible. So we in the smallness of our minds and understanding try and resolve this as best we can. I think of the red thread hanging in Rehab’s window that brought salvation to her and her family when the Israelites attacked. I believe beyond our understanding, our holy and righteous Father has it worked out a red thread here as well, and it’s part of the mystery Ephesians 5:32 speaks to. 

The ultimate sacrifice. The payment for God’s wrath and judgement poured out on Jesus, so as to make a way for us. Because of our Fathers great love for us. Abundant beautiful grace. 

Part of the human condition can be for us to make something so horrific more palatable, more comfortable for us to live with, to rectify in our own mind. 

Christ’s actions on this day should not be one of them. We should desire to understand the depth, the pain, physical and spiritual, as best as we can, to help us know more the depth of sacrifice our Lord and Savior endured this day many years ago. 

Ephesians 3:17-19 

“…so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

No judgement here, but encouragement to grow closer and deeper to the One who saves. 

Jesus is His name.