Good Friday: The Day Our Salvation was Hung on the Cross due to Our Evil

Good Friday admonishingly reminds how cruel we can become against each other and how God responded to this human evil at its worst. In fact, we have projected the ugliest of the ugly evil of the humanity against God the Son, Christ, incarnated in the human flesh of Jesus. So, he suffered in utmost agony and died as painfully as a human can, as the Passion Gospel of Good Friday (John 18:1-19:42) describes.

Seeing how our sins have led to the suffering and death of the incarnated Christ on this day, we do need to look deeply and thoroughly into ourselves if there is anything that can make us as evil as those had plotted to have him killed and as evil as those who shouted to Pilate to “crucify him”.

The Gospel Reading (John 18:1-19:42), in particular, John 18:38-19:16, tells how powerful people’s desire to have Jesus killed. Pilate declared Jesus to be innocent (John 18:38) though they had brought him to this Roman governor to be executed according to the Roman law. But they kept pressing Pilate to kill Jesus, telling that he would not be a fried of Caesar if he did not have Jesus killed when he tried to release him (John 19:12).

What had made them so fanatic in wanting Jesus to be killed? Many of them gave hero’s welcome, waving palm branches and spreading cloaks for Jesus to enter the holy city, Jerusalem (Matthew 21:8), while shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest”(Matthew 21:9), recognizing Jesus as the prophesized Messiah King riding on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9). They recognized Jesus as the Son of David, the Messianic King, and welcomed him so enthusiastically. But within the same week, they had become so fanatic in their hatred toward Jesus.

In fact, this is a textbook phenomenon of mass persuasion to turn the crowd who welcomed Jesus into the murderous mob. It was the small group of religious leaders who had wanted Jesus to be killed out of envy (Matthew 27:19) managed to persuade them (Matthew 27:29). These leaders were the ones who brought a bogus charge against Jesus by putting false witnesses against him in order to justify killing Jesus (Matthew 26:59-60). Though these evil-hearted religious leaders charged Jesus with blasphemy (Matthew 26:63-68; cf. John 19:7), they pressed a different charge against him: being king of the Jews (John 18:28-38; 19:2-22). Because it did not matter to the Roman authority whether Jesus had committed blasphemy to the God of the Jews, and the Jews did not have the authority to execute anyone, the wicked religious leaders had to come up with a charge that could be regarded as a violation of the Roman law. By pressing charge against Jesus as a threat to Caesar for being king of the Jews, they had hoped that Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the province of Judea, would execute. However, Pilate declared Jesus to be innocent. So, they mobilized the crowd to pressure Pilate by saying, “If you release him, you are not a Friend of Caesar. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar”(John 19:12). And the evil chief priest said to Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar”(John 19:15), though he and his colleagues persuaded the crowd to release Barabbas, who led a violent attempt to rebel against the Romans, in order to have Jesus killed, instead (Matthew 27:20).

This Good Friday story is not just about the evil of the wicked religious leaders and the murderous mob persuaded by them, tenaciously pressuring Pilate to have Jesus killed. It is a story about an ugly side of the humanity being exposed and projected to God the Son. But, in the eyes of God, this had to happen for good to overcome evil. For this reason, God sent His only begotten Son to us (John 3:16), incarnated (John 1:14) in the human flesh of Jesus through Mary the Immaculate Conception and the Blessed Virgin, by the power of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:28-35). So, he has dwelled among us (John 1:14) as our great high priest obedient to God the Father so that he becomes the source of our salvation, as the Second Reading of Good Friday (Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9) describes.  And he endured the utmost agony and died on the Cross as the suffering servant of God the Father in order to fulfill the prophesy, which is the First Reading of Good Friday (Isaiah 52:13-53:12).

Jesus the incarnated Christ suffered and died greatly not only because of the evil that we inflicted on him but because he nevertheless loved us.  And through his suffering and death, Jesus hoped that our God-given capacity to love is awaken and activated by his greatest love to draw us to God. In other words, Jesus, suffered and died, as the Lamb of God who takes away our sin (John 1:29), washing whatever makes us evil with his blood (1 John 1:7-9; cf. John 19:34; Hebrews 9:22 cf. Revelation 7:13-14), and as our merciful high priest (Hebrews 2:17).

Whenever we hurt someone, we are hurting Jesus, again and again. Whenever an innocent person is killed, whether this person is still in one’s mother’s womb or out of the womb, Jesus is crucified again and again.

How many times do we need to let Jesus suffer and be crucified to truly love one another?  Remember, on this day which we commemorate the death of the incarnated Christ, we hung our salvation on the Cross.