Today is Good Friday. We are going to open five different Resurrection Eggs: a cross, dice, a spear, a piece of linen cloth, and a stone. Not surprisingly, all four of the Gospels include this momentous event. Using the Gospel of John as the foundation, I have included to it any additional information that the other Gospels mention, rather than reading all four. (Note: John is in regular black ink, Matthew is in green, Mark is in red, Luke is in blue.)
John 19:16-42 So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. 17 Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).
As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:26-31).
There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it (Mathew 27: 34).
18 There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.
It was nine in the morning when they crucified him (Mark 15:25).
Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
19 Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: jesus of nazareth, the king of the jews. 20 Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. 21 The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”
22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
23 When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.
24 “Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.”
This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said, “They divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.” So this is what the soldiers did.
And sitting down, they kept watch over him there (Matthew 27:36).
Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 come down from the cross and save yourself!” (Mark 15:29). “If you are the Son of God! … He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’”(Matthew 27:41-43). In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! 32 Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him (Mark 15:31-32).
The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself” (Luke 23:36-37).
One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:39-43).
25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.
And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah”(Mark 15:33 -35).
28 Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” 29 A jar of wine vinegar was there, so someone ran, they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said (Mark 15:36).
30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46 ). With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. The centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:51-54).
The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away. But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things (Luke 23:47-49).
…They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons (Matthew 27:55-56), Salome. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there (Mark 15:40-41).
31 Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. 32 The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. 33 But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. 35 The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. 36 These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken,” 37 and, as another scripture says, “They will look on the one they have pierced.”
As evening approached, there came a rich man (Matthew 27:57), a member of the Council, a good and upright man, who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea, and he himself was waiting for the kingdom of God (Luke 23:50-51). [He] went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph (Mark 15:43-45).
38 Later, with Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. 39 He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. 40 Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. 41 At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. 42 Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
[It was] his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb (Matthew 27:60-61).
Luke 23:56 Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.
The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.”
“Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard (Matthew 27:62-66).
There ends the Gospels’ accounts. Could you see it in your mind? I feel like I have a better picture of all that happened. One thing that surprised me is the brief mention of Jesus being crucified. Yes, the entire scene is being described in detail, but I mean the actual act of crucifixion. All four of the writers say very little.
Matthew 27:35 says, “When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots.”
Mark 15:24 says, “And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get.”
Luke 23:33, “When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left.”
John 19:18 says, “There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.”
All four of these Gospel chapters are silent on what crucifixion entails. There are no more details given. None of these chapters even mention that Jesus was nailed to a cross. They merely state that He was crucified. John tells us in 20:24-25 that Jesus was nailed to the cross, but he includes that not so much to inform us it happened, but because he is quoting Thomas. John tells us, “Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’
But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.’”
Then in Acts 2:22-23 we read, “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”
Also, Colossians 2:13-15 says, “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
From these other verses, we begin to imagine what crucifixion was like. From history, we can learn about the specifics. There are detailed descriptions of this horrific means of death. I don’t know why all the Gospel accounts skip the graphic details, but I know if I watched my loved one be tortured and killed, I wouldn’t want to write down all the gory details. Maybe the writers all assumed that their readers already knew what crucifixion was, for it was common during that time, and they saw no need to explain it. The same way a writer could say a person was killed by hanging and would not need to describe it. Or maybe the Lord didn’t want crucifixion to be described in Scripture because God doesn’t want us to focus on the horror. He might not want the violence to be glorified. Maybe the reason there isn’t more detail is because the torture is not what was is important. Maybe it would overshadow the significance of what Jesus did.
If these Gospel accounts focused on the suffering, we might marvel at the depth of sorrow and pain that Jesus experienced, and yet completely miss the important thing: the reason Jesus died on the cross. The important thing is the fact that Jesus died unjustly, unmerited, and undeserved. He was faultless. He was innocent of all sin. This is important, because if Jesus had been a sinful man, His death would have been a tragedy, but nothing more. Because He is the only begotten Son of God, truly God and truly man as the Athanasian Creed describes Him, He could live a sinless life. That is why He could be, as John the Baptist prophesied, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
Jesus died this unfair death for us. He died in our place. If we consider Jesus’ death on the cross, but do not consider why He died, we miss the whole point of His death. My guess is if we polled random people, the majority will say that Jesus lived and He died on a cross. Most people seem to acknowledge that as truth. What they don’t understand is why. This was God’s will that Jesus should die. This was the plan all along. Why did God want Jesus to die?
1 Peter 2:24, quoting Isaiah, says, “’He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed.’”
All the way back to the time of Isaiah, 700 years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah foretold of Jesus and how, through His death, we would be healed. That Jesus should come to earth, live a sinless life, and be crucified was all part of God’s amazing plan to bring salvation to all of us who would receive Him as our savior.
A holy, perfect God cannot overlook sin. We deserve punishment for the wrong things we have done. Instead of continuing the system of going to a priest to sacrifice an animal to atone for our sin, Jesus became the ultimate atoning sacrifice. His sacrifice was so complete that even when we still sin today, His death covers our sins.
When my youngest was almost four, she made up a song. She sang:
Jesus died on the cross because we did bad things
Him died on the cross because we did some bad things
We pulled hair and kicked each other, poked someone in the eye
Jesus died on the cross because we did bad things
I have always thought that her song perfectly captures the truth of it. We do bad things, and that is why Jesus died on the cross for us. All that we have to do to partake in the benefit of Jesus’ atonement, in His covering of our sin, is modeled to us by the thief next to Jesus on the cross. Let’s look again at what he said: But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:39-43).
The first thing the thief did was confess his sin. He said that he is a sinner and he is getting what he deserves. Then he acknowledges Jesus is innocent, and that Jesus is Lord, by saying that Jesus is going to His kingdom. By saying that, he is making a confession of faith in Jesus, for only God has a heavenly kingdom. He is saying Jesus is God. That is all we must do, too. We must confess our sin and proclaim Jesus is Lord. As 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” This message of salvation is for everyone! As Romans 10:13 states, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
We call this day Good Friday because Jesus did what we could not do for ourselves. He took our punishment, proclaims us forgiven and covers us in His righteousness. That is good, indeed!
Pray: Lord Jesus, it is hard for us to even imagine the level of suffering You endured for us. Yet, You endured it willingly. It is hard for us to imagine the level of love that You have for all of us. Thank You for loving us and thank You for dying on the cross for us. Please help us to never forget what You did for us.
Stricken, smitten, and afflicted, See Him dying on the tree! ’Tis the Christ by man rejected; Yes, my soul, ’tis He, ’tis He! ’Tis the long-expected Prophet, David’s Son, yet David’s Lord; Proofs I see sufficient of it: ’Tis the true and faithful Word.
Tell me, ye who hear Him groaning, Was there ever grief like His? Friends through fear His cause disowning, Foes insulting His distress: Many hands were raised to wound Him, None would interpose to save; But the deepest stroke that pierced Him Was the stroke that Justice gave.
Ye who think of sin but lightly, Nor suppose the evil great, Here may view its nature rightly, Here its guilt may estimate. Mark the sacrifice appointed, See who bears the awful load: ’Tis the Word, the Lord’s anointed, Son of Man, and Son of God!
Here we have a firm foundation; Here the refuge of the lost; Christ, the Rock of our salvation, His the name of which we boast. Lamb of God, for sinners wounded, Sacrifice to cancel guilt! None shall ever be confounded Who on Him their hope have built.
Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted by Thomas Kelly, pub.1804
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