Today is Good Friday. A day that symbolically commemorates the day of Jesus’s death on a cross. The most gruesome death imaginable. Where he was draped over wooden beams and forced to hang by nails in his hands and feet. Often people hung on a cross do not die by bleeding out but by asphyxiation or suffixation. That painful imagine is hard to even think about without wincing. So that begs the question, how is Good Friday good?

To understand how the gruesome death of a man can be labeled as good, I want to look at the story of a man who interacted with Jesus just before he died.

Barabbas.

Barabbas finds his way into each of the four Gospels. His story takes place as Jesus is in Roman custody. During Jesus’s trial before Pilate, he was not found guilty by the law. Pilate even says, “what evil has He done? I have found no reason for death in Him. I will therefore chastise Him and let Him go” (Luke 23:22). Which lawfully would’ve been the right thing to do, for Jesus had done nothing wrong according to Roman law. Pilate gave the Jews an opportunity to release Jesus, but they refused. Saying, “Away with this Man, and release to us Barabbas” (Luke 23:18).

So who was Barabbas? In Matthew, it calls him a notorious prisoner. In Mark, it says he was in prison for rebelling and murdering during his insurrection. Luke delivers the same message as Mark. And in John, he adds that he was a revolutionary. Barabbas was not a good guy by anyone’s standards. And while some Jewish people would have supported his efforts to escape the rule of Rome, none would support murder. By Roman law, Barabbas’s punishment was death. However, the crowd of people still chose to free him and put Jesus in his place.

Recently I have been listening to the song, I am Barabbas by Josiah Queen. The song walks through the story of Barabbas. The first few times I heard the song I thought it sounded good, but was weirded out as it repeats the line “I am Barabbas.” If I am singing along, why would I claim to be this bad guy? It wasn’t until this week that I realized the true meaning of this song.

A few of the lines of the song go:

"I am Barabbas
You took upon my cross
I was that prisoner
Till you bought my bond with blood"

Barabbas was guilty and deserving of death, but Jesus literally took on the cross he deserved. He was a prisoner, but Jesus paid for his imprisonment with his own blood. I am Barabbas. I am guilty and deserving of death for my sins, but Jesus has taken up my cross. Trapped by the shackles of my sin, but Jesus broke me free with his own blood. I guess my story and Barabbas’s aren’t as different as I thought.

A Good Good Friday.

That is how we can say that the day Jesus died was good. Because believing in Jesus means that our sins were paid for fully on the cross. We are no longer chained down with our sin, but freed by Jesus’s death that he took on willingly. He could have escaped this death at any moment, saying this to his apostles as they tried to defend him from the his arrestors, “Do you think that I cannot call on my Father, and he will provide me here and now with more than twelve legions of angels?”(Matthew 26:52). Yet he chose to show us love and lay his life down for us. And he said, “No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:3).

So we should react somberly to the reality that a man died, and there was a cost for destroying the shackles of sin. We also must rejoice that we have a God who loves us so much that he would lay his life down so that we would be able to be with him. And even this is not the end of the story! 3 days after Jesus’s death he came back to life, destroying the grip of death for all time. So that all who believe in him may have eternal life with God.

So this Good Friday remember that should have been us on the cross where Jesus hung, as a punishment for our sins. But he came and took our spot, freeing us from our human fate and giving us a new purpose in him. So let’s worship him.

By: Aaron Hershberger