Good Friday
Good Friday was not “good” for Jesus. He was brutally beaten, mocked, nailed to a cross, and left for hours to die a slow, painful death. Good Friday was a day of suffering for Him.
Good Friday, however, was definitely a good day for us. Good Friday was the ultimate demonstration of God’s love for you and for me.
GOOD FRIDAY
In 1 John 4:9-10, the apostle John helps us to see how good Good Friday was for us.
9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
The cross is the ultimate demonstration of love, and the apostle John makes sure we know here in these two verses that we don’t ever have to wonder if God really loves us.
John says that God “showed” His love among us. The Greek word that is translated “showed” here literally means “to reveal, to make clear.”
So, John is telling us that God made it clear to us exactly how He feels about us, and there are 3 reasons that we can know God loves us based on these two verses.
God loves us because He sent Jesus to give us life.
In 1 John 4:9, the apostle John says that the reason He sent Jesus into this world was “that we might live through Him.”
Scripture tells us that we are spiritually dead because of sin in our lives (Eph. 2:1). And being spiritually dead leaves us empty, separated from God, and having no real core identity or purpose without Him in our lives. That is why we are always searching to be filled in some way.
So, our problem here on earth isn’t that we need to learn how to become better people, but rather, we need to be born again. We need to experience a resurrection from death to life.
This, of course, is our own fault. We are the ones who sinned against God and turned our backs on Him. God doesn’t owe us anything.
He didn’t have to do anything to get us out of the situation we put ourselves in. He could have just left us in our spiritual deadness and said, “Hey, they are getting what they deserve.”
But that is not what God did. God shows us that He truly loves us in that He sent Jesus to bring us the life that we could never gain back on our own.
He doesn’t do this because of anything we have done to make Him act that way. He does it completely as His own initiative. That is what John gets into next in verse 10, and that’s the 2nd reason for how we know God loves us.
We know God loves us because God loved us first (Self-initiated)
In verse 10, John says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us…”
In other words, God doesn’t show you love as a result of something you’ve done for Him.
He wasn’t sitting up in heaven waiting for you to have some kind of emotional feeling of love towards Him so that He could say, “Oh ok, now I love them because they feel love towards me.”
He wasn’t waiting for us to demonstrate our love for Him through our obedience or some way we served Him so that He could step in and say, “Ok, now I love them because they are showing me that they love me with their actions.
No, John says He loved us first. He loved us before we ever loved Him.
He loved us before we ever cleaned our act up. He loved us while we were still sinners.
And if He loved us first, then He’ll always love us. His love is not based on anything we’ve done but rather on His unconditional, self-motivated attribute of love.
But there’s one more thing here that is the most important thing in these verses.
We know God loves us because Jesus died as a sacrifice for our sins
John finished out verse 10 by saying this, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
The word translated “atone” in this verse describes an act of “removing an offense through sacrifice.”
Our sin is offensive to God and His holiness. It is impossible for God to turn a blind eye to sin and just pretend it didn’t happen.
He must judge sin. He is a holy and just God.
But John tells us here that out of God’s love for us He sent Jesus to remove the offense through the sacrifice that He would make on our behalf.
What we see then is that this isn’t just an emotional kind of love but an action-oriented love.
God allowed Jesus to be beaten with a whip that had lead and sharp objects in it 39 times across his back.
He allowed people to spit in his face.
He allowed them to drive nails in his hands and feet and then hang Him on a cross for hours, while He suffered in intense pain and was mocked and ridiculed the entire time.
Consider the contrast of where Jesus came from and where He was at that moment.
He had been in heaven, this place of perfection, beauty, and life, where He was being worshiped and glorified constantly; and now He was hanging on a cross, bleeding, suffering, in pain, and being mocked and humiliated.
And God subjected Jesus to all of that out of His love for you. This is how much God loves you. There can be no doubt about how He really feels about you.
Conclusion
If you have trusted Jesus to be your Savior by putting your faith in Him to forgive your sins, then Good Friday is a day to thank Jesus for His sacrifice.
Good Friday is a day for you to thank Him for His love for you.
Good Friday is a day to rest in His love for you and soak in the forgiveness you have in Christ.
Good Friday is a day for you to experience the life that He came to give as you live in a relationship with Him.
And if you have never trusted Jesus to be your Savior, He is inviting you to receive His love into your life. He made that possible through His death on the cross to forgive your sins, and He offers it to you as a gift.
There is nothing you can do to earn it. It’s just something you receive by placing your faith in Jesus’ work on the cross to be enough to forgive your sins and as the only way to receive eternal life.
Turn to Him today and receive the gift that He purchased for you with His life.
