Good News for Good Friday

Encouragement for Holy Week

Happy Friday, friends. 

It’s not just Friday, it’s Good Friday. And it’s not just another week, it’s Holy Week. Today is the day we look with somber focus at the cross and acknowledge gruesome and glorious death of Christ. I’ve also spent the majority of this Holy Week writing a paper on the nature of atonement, answering the question why did Christ die and what exactly did his death accomplish, and thinking on Ecclesiastes 9, specifically verse 11 – 

“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, not bread to the wise, not riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.”

Holy week, my paper and Ecclesiastes study were all unrelated, but at the risk of sounding morbid, the combination has led to having death on the brain. Christ’s death, my death, the finality of death in general and why remembering that we will die actually gives us a lot of insight on how to live. I will say, thinking on the topic of death without the current entanglement of grief does make this endeavor much easier. If you are one who is currently grieving death in some way or another and need to scroll on down, that is the power of email, friend, just scroll on down. 

Under the sun the race doesn’t go to the fastest, the strongest, the most wise or intelligent among us. More often than we would like, the righteous perish and the evil prevail. To quote my friend Mary, “the nice guy really does finish last.” 

We need only look at our own lives to know this is true. We can (and many of us have tried) to do all the right things and still don’t get the outcome we were hoping for. We’ve done all we know to do to the best of our abilities, and still don’t get into the school or get the job or have the husband or the kids. We pursue health and still our bodies fail. We safeguard and still disaster strikes. Time and chance happen to us all. Death is the only guarantee under the sun. It is final, unpredictable, and tragic no matter how or when it comes, but we live certain that death is coming. It can’t be avoided. It can’t be beat. 

Yet, that is exactly what Christ did on the cross. Christ our Lord defeated death, the powers of the enemy, sin, and darkness and rose to LIFE from that grave. For those that follow Jesus, we know this to be true. The resurrection is the cornerstone of our faith. Death, the great equalizer, the always looming, unavoidable, inescapable end, could not hold Christ. Jesus Christ died. On a Cross. To save us from our sins. Because He loves us. Even the youngest among us can recite this fact, but have we paused recently to think about the fact that Christ was dead and now he is alive? About what that means about our God? About what that means for you, today? 

For me, one of the difficult parts of reading Ecclesiastes is that it can be hard to find Jesus in it’s pages. The through-line to the gospel feels a bit tangled up. But, Christ came full into focus this week when a friend pointed out that instead of being frustrated that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, not bread to the wise, not riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, we need only remember that death came to the Righteous, in order that the wicked may live.

How quick I am to identify with the righteous, without first remembering that there was once a time when I was wicked, dead in my sin, and an enemy of God. May that reality not be lost on us this Good Friday. May we remember that God, the Son Incarnate, took on death to destroy the power of sin and bear the penalty of sin, so that we might know life and righteousness of God. Let’s rejoice that death was no match for Jesus Christ our Lord and that while it will still be a reality that we each of us face, it will also be no match for those who follow Jesus. 

Sunday is coming, friends! Happy Easter!