By Natasha Payton // Holy Week // EEW Magazine Online

They twisted together a crown of thorns and placed it on his head. He was beaten, spit on, mocked and tortured. Our bruised and battered Savior carried His cross alone to Golgotha’s hill and was nailed to a tree.

Jesus suffered in agony and “became a curse,” as Galatians 3:13 says, to take away the curse and reproach of sin from mankind. So, why then, do we commemorate a time of intense suffering and death with the word “Good”?

Language experts say the name comes from an antiquated meaning of good, more closely translated holy.

This is a holy day, hallowed and set apart to meditate on all Jesus went through to procure eternal life for mankind—God’s prized possession and sinful creation.

So it does not make us Christians feel good in the literal sense to imagine our perfect, sinless, loving Lord humiliated and hurt. This day makes us deeply reflective. We focus on the graciousness of God who loved us enough to send His only begotten son to die as John 3:16 reminds us.

We think about how awesome it is that Christ, who had the power to get off the cross, willingly laid down His life and submitted to death to redeem us back to God.

Jesus said in John 10:18, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."

What is good, is the fact that the soberness with which we approach Good Friday will, on Sunday morning, known as Resurrection Day, be replaced with joyful celebration.

Jesus did not stay in the tomb!

On the third day, He rose.

In the words of the angel inside the tomb in Matthew 28:6, “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said…”

Christians rejoice that the grave could not hold Him.

Jesus said in Revelation 1:18, “I am he that lives, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for ever more, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.”

He rose with all power in His hands and the keys that give each of us access into His Kingdom through faith in the redemptive work of the cross and His resurrection from the dead.

And that’s the good news.

*Scriptural translations taken from NIV, NKJV