Today is Good Friday, and what does that mean? Or why do we say that this Friday is "Good" in the Christian calendar?
It's not because we Christians are so good, only ever doing and saying what is right and pleasing to God. If we had been really and truly good there would have been no need for a Savior in Christ Jesus. Yet "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
Good Friday marks the day when Jesus was crucified. And that may be a puzzle and riddle, but it has an answer.
Few things are more opposite "good" than the wrongful accusation, arrest, trial, flogging, mocking, and execution of good men. Yet that is what we celebrate on Good Friday. So how can we?
We call this good, in short, because God is good. It was due to His goodness relative our lack of goodness that we who are in Christ are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, the only perfect sacrifice which could have been offered to ultimately atone for our sins against the Holy and Righteous God.
Non-Christians often struggle with the fact of the imperfection of Christian life and thought, sometimes imagined and other times real. But they miss the point that the promises of God are contingent not on our faithfulness and ability but on the faithfulness and ability of God to fulfill His promises.
To be sure, the response from faithful and obedient Christians to the imperfection of the Church body and individuals is not to shrug but to repent; not to "sin that grace might abound all the more," but to press on in pursuit of the high calling we are blessed to answer in Christ.
In light of that calling we do repent when we sin against God and our neighbor, and only in light of that high calling is restoration and fellowship possible.
"Why do you call me good?" Luke's gospel account tells us Jesus asked the man who came to him calling him "good teacher." And the reason for the question followed immediately after. "Only God is good."
Just so, that is also the reason we celebrate Good Friday and call it a good day. "Only God is good."
That goes for Mark Driscoll as well as JD Hall, and that goes for you as well as for me.
