Today is Good Friday. It’s the day we remember with joy and gladness the greatest injustice ever perpetrated by humans. Why would such a thing prompt joy and gladness in us? Because that gross injustice was the death of the God the Son, and by His sacrificial death, our sins were covered, making possible a right relationship with God. This is a day to reflect on our sin with repentant hearts. It is a day to reflect with soberness on the seriousness of sin and the lengths our God went to remove it as an obstacle to our being with Him. At my church we always have a special service on Good Friday, and this year will be no different. Here’s part of what I will say to the group tonight. Blessings on your day.

It took a lot of work to put Jesus to death. You would think that killing someone would be a lot easier, especially when He wasn’t going to be resistant to your efforts. But the chief priests of the Jews and the members of the Sanhedrin just about wore themselves out getting the job done. There was a betrayal to organize, a trial to perform. They had to coordinate the schedules of all of the members of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin. They had to go to Pilate…twice. Pilate sent Jesus over to Herod, so that took some time. Finally, Pilate just flat out didn’t want to do it. This was really a problem because Roman law didn’t allow them to just handle the job themselves. I mean, they could have engineered a lynch mob to get the job done, but they knew taking that route or perhaps the route of a quiet, back-alley job wasn’t going to be enough to stamp out His movement. They were going to need Rome to do the job so that an example could be made of Him. Don’t follow that guy, or you’re going to end up just like Him…on a cross. 

And yet, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, every single thing that happened to Jesus in this final stretch leading up to His being nailed to a cross was happening according to plan. All of it was allowed on purpose. None of it was happening according to chance. Let’s take a look at how this final phase of His journey to the cross played out. 

It all started with a trip to see Pilate. Pilate was the Roman Governor of Judea. That is, he was one of the highest authorities in the land. This seems like it might have been a good thing for him, but the post was one of the least desirable in the whole Roman Empire. Nobody wanted to go to Judea. It was like the armpit of the Empire. If you were assigned there, it’s because you did something to tick off a superior. Not only was Jerusalem a long way from any of the cultural centers of the Empire, but the Jewish people were famously troublesome. They were constantly complaining about this or that and rebelling and talking about how their God was bigger and badder than the Roman gods which obviously wasn’t true because here they were, ruling over His people with an iron fist. Pilate hated the Jews and looked for every opportunity He could to torment them. If that meant putting large numbers of rebels to death on crosses, great. If that meant refusing to play ball when they actually wanted to execute a criminal, he was good with that too. 

The Jewish religious authorities took Jesus to Pilate and made their charge clear in Luke 23:1: “Then their whole assembly rose up and brought him before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, ‘We found this man misleading our nation, opposing payment of taxes to Caesar, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.’ So Pilate asked him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ He answered him, ‘You say so.’ Pilate then told the chief priests and the crowds, ‘I find no grounds for charging this man.’ But they kept insisting, ‘He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he started even to here.’” 

As soon as he heard “Galilee,” Pilate knew he had an out. Jesus wasn’t from Judea, so He wasn’t Pilate’s problem. Herod, who was in town for the Passover Celebration, had jurisdiction over Jesus, so that’s where he sent Him. For his part, Herod was thrilled to finally get the chance to meet Jesus. He had heard so much about all the miracles Jesus had been performing and he wanted a show. But Jesus wouldn’t play ball, so Herod got bored, had Him beat up, and sent Him back to Pilate. 

Pilate was still convinced Jesus was innocent and didn’t want anything to do with putting Him to death. This was probably more so because he loved messing with the Jewish religious authorities, but you have to think at least some part of it genuinely from a recognition of Jesus’ moral innocence. But the crowd gathered there outside the government building where Pilate lived and worked wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. Luke tells us that “they kept up the pressure, demanding with loud voices that he be crucified, and their voices won out. So Pilate decided to grant their demand and released the one they were asking for, who had been thrown into prison for rebellion and murder. But he handed Jesus over to their will.” 

From here, Jesus was bound for the cross and there was no turning back. And yet, even as I say that, let’s not forget that Jesus actually could have turned things back. He was still fully God. At any point in the ensuing process, He could have called an immediate halt to things and gone on about the rest of His physical life on earth. But God had a plan, and Jesus was going to walk that path. He was going to do it because He loved us that much. 

And we see this love on display as Jesus makes His way to the cross. He stumbles past a group of women who were already grieving the death they knew was coming. Jesus shows them compassion instead. On the cross itself, when the crowds were mocking and heaping scorn on Jesus and even one of the other two crucified alongside Him joined in the fray, the other criminal, facing a justly earned sentence, defended Him and sought grace from Him. Jesus immediately gave it. We know from the other Gospel accounts that Jesus made provision for His mother while He was hanging there dying. He forgave the very ones who were killing Him while they were actively doing it. For all the pain and torment and agony He faced, His first thoughts were for those around Him. 

Once they got to the hill of Calvary, they crucified Jesus. It is interesting that in all four Gospels, the actual crucifixion and Jesus’ death are treated almost like a sidenote to everything else that was happening around that time. It’s almost like they knew their audience already knew enough about the grisly act, so they just kind of passed over it. But let’s not do that tonight. 

After a long and difficult journey from Pilate’s headquarters to the hill called Golgotha, Jesus would have collapsed in a heap from pain and exhaustion. Once the executioner squad had the cross beam assembled to the pole, they would have dragged Jesus over and stretched Him out on the frame. They would have pulled one arm in place, taken a large nail, and hammered it through the bones in His wrist. This placement would have held His arm in place even when He couldn’t hold it there any longer. It would have also been excruciatingly painful. That word, by the way, was made up specifically to describe the kind of pain someone would experience on a cross. Ex-crucio—out of a cross. Once one arm was firmly in place, they would have done the same thing to the other. Then His ankles were crossed, one over the other, and another nail was driven through them and into the pole to hold them in place. 

Once a body was firmly fixed to a cross, the executioners raised it in place. Crucifixion was intended to be a public display. Victims were humiliated, They were generally crucified naked. They were hung in places where everyone could see them. The whole thing was intended to send a clear message to everyone who saw it: Don’t do what this guy did. And the whole thing had been perfected down to a grotesque artform. The victim was kept alive as long as possible to draw out the agony as long as they could. The victims would hang there sometimes for days. They would slowly asphyxiate, each breath they took renewing the pain and anguish they were experiencing. That Jesus died in a matter of hours was a great mercy, and a testament to how badly He had been beaten before going to the cross. When Jesus finally cried out, “Father, ‘into your hands I entrust my spirit,’” quoting Scripture even with His dying gasp, He did so knowing full well that His work was done. He had taken the full weight of sin—of your sin and mine—on His shoulders and paid its price to the uttermost. 

In the end, darkness fell. The sun’s light was hidden. Back in Jerusalem at the temple, the veil was torn. This was the great curtain that separated the holy place from the rest of the temple. It was torn from top to bottom—an act only God could have accomplished. Matthew tells us that even the ground shook as creation itself cried out in agony with the Son of God, now dead on a tree. 

And so, Jesus died. And the world was silent. Jesus died because the world was silent. It was silent about sin; silent about injustice; silent about oppression and violence; silent about suffering and hurting; silent about envy and hatred. The world had turned its back on all that was good and true and beautiful. And we were broken for it. All of us. None of our hands were clean. They still aren’t clean apart from Christ. That’s why He died. As the apostle Peter wrote, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness.” Everything Jesus did was for us. We were His only concern. If He had been concerned for Himself, He could have put on the brakes and engineered a different end. But He didn’t because otherwise we were helpless. We were without hope. Only a Savior could make any difference, and He was that Savior. He died because of and for our sins. It was as if we were the ones holding the nails. And, in the end, they laid His lifeless body in a tomb. His life sacrificed for our sins. In Him now, we have life.