This is part of a series of meditations on what Scripture teaches about each day of Holy Week, which goes from Palm Sunday until Easter, in which Christians everywhere mark the culmination of Jesus Christ’s ministry, His death on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead.

Previous posts:

• Prelude
• Palm Sunday
• Holy Monday
• Holy Tuesday Part 1
• Holy Tuesday Part 2
• Holy Wednesday
• Maundy Thursday

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?  O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest….But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people.  All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads: ‘He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!’  Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.  On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God….I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.  For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet—I can count all my bones—they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.”

-Psalms 22:1-2, 6-10, 14-18, ESV

I sometimes wonder what thoughts were running through David’s mind when he finished Psalm 22.  He had just received the Davidic Covenant, a glorious promise of God that his offspring would rule forever.  Psalm 110 is clearly a response to this, with David describing his Lord sitting at God’s right hand and crushing His enemies, but the tone of Psalm 22 is vastly different.  Instead of a reigning king, this psalm depicts immense suffering and agony.  Could both of these psalms really be talking about the same person?  We have the advantage of being on the other side of the cross and seeing the true meaning that the Holy Spirit intended by inspiring David to write the words of Psalm 22.  Other than Isaiah 52-53 I know of no passage with such a density of Messianic prophecies as Psalm 22.  In just the first 18 verses, we see predictions of Jesus being rejected (v. 6), mocked (v. 7), trusting in God the Father from birth (v. 9), surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies (v. 12-13), exposed to significant injury (v. 14) causing great agony that leads to bodily failure (v. 14-15, 17), having His hands and feet pierced (v. 16), and the soldiers casting lots for His clothes (v. 18).  Therefore Psalm 22 was fulfilled on Good Friday.

The Servant Suffers

This darkest day in history started out with Jesus being taken from His mock trial before the Sanhedrin to Pontius Pilate the Roman governor.  Pilate saw right through the Jews’ plot and did not go along with it at first.  He tried Jesus and found Him innocent, but the Jews began to stir up the crowd against Him.  Pilate tried to absolve himself of the situation by sending Jesus to Herod, but when Herod refused to try Him the problem ended up right back in Pilate’s lap.  Finally, the Jewish leaders were able to do what they had failed to do before, whipping the crowd into a frenzy against Jesus such that it threatened the peace.  As a result, Pilate ultimately went along with the Jews and allowed them to crucify Jesus.  After being beaten beyond human semblance (Isaiah 52:14), Jesus was led to Golgotha and crucified along with two others. 

Since crucifixion involves death by suffocation, it would have been very difficult for Jesus to even breathe—and even more difficult to speak.  Therefore, He chose His words very carefully.  So as the prophecies of Psalm 22 were being fulfilled all around Him, it should come as no surprise that He quoted Psalm 22:1 by saying, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” to show everyone that He was fulfilling it.  Then, they unknowingly fulfilled verse 8 by mockingly calling on Him to save Himself.  He most certainly could have, as He told His disciples He could summon twelve legions of angels (72,000 angels if we take the statement literally) if He so desired (Matthew 26:53)—an army more than adequate for the task.  And that’s not even considering the fact that according to the interpretation of the Old Testament “Angel of the LORD” as a Christophany—to which I subscribe—it was pre-incarnate Jesus who killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night during the days of Hezekiah (2 Kings 19:35, Isaiah 37:36).  He could have easily not only climbed down from the cross but also instantly killed every Jew and Roman that stood against Him, so why didn’t He?

God’s Will to Crush Him

Clearly no one could kill Jesus without His express permission (John 10:17-18), so His death was both willing and necessary.  First, it was completely voluntary.  This was not “cosmic child abuse” as is so often charged, but was part of the complete desire and will of Jesus Himself.  It was also necessary.  If Jesus had physically saved Himself, He could not have saved us by taking the wrath of God for our sin on our behalf and dying the death we deserve.  Saving Himself would have also been disobedient to the Father, thus erasing the perfect life of obedience He had lived on our behalf so that God could justly declare us righteous in His sight.  Jesus’ death wasn’t a deviation from the original plan or some grotesque but necessary plan B implemented after the Fall.  Jesus’ death WAS the plan from before Creation (Ephesians 1:4) and predicted all the way back in Genesis 3:15 with the promise that He would be wounded but would crush Satan’s head in the process.  His life of sorrow and grief on our behalf (Isaiah 53:3) reached its climax on a cross at Golgotha where Jesus was marred beyond recognition (Isaiah 52:14) and faced the worst oppression and affliction (Isaiah 53:7), pierced for OUR transgressions and crushed for OUR iniquities (Isaiah 53:5-6) because WE had gone our own way and not God’s (Isaiah 53:6a).  Jesus bore our griefs and sorrows (Isaiah 53:4) because God put the burden of our sins on Him (Isaiah 53:6b) such that He was killed for OUR transgression (Isaiah 53:8).  Our sin caused all of Jesus’ agony, from the physical pain of the worst execution method ever devised to the full weight of God’s wrath for sin that caused Him to be cut off from God the Father.  While Jesus in His divinity could not be parted from the invisible God, Jesus in His humanity was cut off from God as He bore our sin, which in a way meant the temporary severing of the perfect relationship of the Trinity.  Just as Jesus endured the agony of being crushed for our sin, God the Father endured the agony of having to crush His beloved Son for our sin.  Yes, our sin is that bad! 

Good Friday

But God is also that good!  It was God’s Will to crush Jesus (Isaiah 53:10a) so that He could be the offering for guilt (Isaiah 53:10b) that would sprinkle clean from sin people from many nations (Isaiah 52:15).  In this way, Jesus accomplished salvation so comprehensively that He died crying “it is finished!” (John 19:30).  When they laid the body of Jesus in the tomb of a rich man as prophesied (Isaiah 53:9), no one really knew all that had been accomplished that day.  After living a life just like ours yet so different in that He was without sin, Jesus died a death like ours yet so different in all that it accomplished.  His body laid lifeless in the tomb like ours awaiting the resurrection that would reunite body and soul to make Him the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1:18, Revelation 1:5).  So let us remember just how bad our sin is and how it made this a gory and ugly Friday.  But the utter darkness of that day should make the light shine all the brighter, leading us to worship the God who accomplished the salvation that makes this grotesque Friday truly Good Friday. 

“Guilty, vile and helpless, we; Spotless Lamb of God was He; Full atonement! Can it be? Hallelujah! What a Savior!”

-P.P. Bliss, “Man of Sorrows, What A Name”, 1875

And of course, I would be remiss if I failed end by quoting Tony Campolo and S.M. Lockridge: “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s comin’!”