Today is the Friday that, for centuries, the Church has called “good.” It is a strange designation, and yet, most appropriate. Without it, what hope against Sin, Death, and Satan would there be?

I’d say, “The Good Friday hour is upon us,” if that were sufficient. But it isn’t. It’s better to say, “The hours are upon us.” This is to say that the Lord’s death for mankind’s sin wasn’t swift. It didn’t happen in a flash. It didn’t come peacefully during sleep. It was preceded by ethereal misery.

When the Lord submitted Himself to the Devil’s viciousness, saying, “Now is your hour” (John 22:53a), and then allowed the fullness of Sin’s curse to crush Him, adding, “and the power of darkness” (v. 53b), unspeakable suffering began. There are no words to describe it. Which is why the Gospel writers really don’t even try. Like emotionless correspondents, they report the events. They speak simply.

For scope, Mark’s Gospel tells us the betrayal in Gethsemane occurred at midnight. That’s when it began. Beyond Gethsemane, Mark records:

“Then some of them began to spit on him; they blindfolded him, struck him, and said to him, ‘Prophesy to us, O Christ, who is it that struck you?’ The guards beat him…” (Mark 14:65).

All the inspired writers tell you these kinds of things. Within the limitations of human language, they present unfathomable cruelty in the plainest details.

“Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged” (John 19:1).

They don’t describe the event’s flaying nature. They don’t share the supernatural turmoil—the unseen grappling, the invisible but slicing dreadfulness occurring as the unholy trinity of Sin, Death, and Satan meet with God’s own flesh.

“When [the soldiers] had woven a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and a reed in his right hand, and they knelt before him and mocked him…. They spat on him and took the reed and struck him on the head” (Matthew 27:29-30).

The hours go on. Things get worse. But the writers scribble dryly. They don’t describe the bruising, the torn flesh, the streaming blood that pools whenever and wherever the Lord might stop to rest. Instead, He receives His cross and continues on.

“Carrying his own cross, he went out of the city to a place called Skull Hill, in Hebrew, Golgotha” (John 19:17).

The following is peculiar:

“As they led him away, they laid hold of Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, who was coming in from the country. On him they laid the cross that he might bear it after Jesus” (Mark 15:21).

Has the visible and invisible cruelty become too much for even the unholy trinity and its agents to stomach? We can’t see or describe it. But they can. They know every drop of its tarry horror. Beholding the Lord’s exhaustion, are they becoming sympathetic? Are they relenting a little?

No. Simon of Cyrene is of little consequence except to ensure that Jesus makes it Golgotha. Simon will be their ignorant mule.

“And there they crucified him” (John 19:18).

The writers are succinct. It’s a gory scene—ghastly all along—but they do not describe its carnage. Some might say it’s because the reader already knew a crucifixion’s harshest details, and to describe them would be a waste of precious papyrus. That may be somewhat true. However, it’ll never be the only reason. The Gospel writer John tells his readers that to record and share in print everything Jesus said and did would require more library real estate than the earth can provide (John 21:25). But if the world unexpectedly grew a thousand times larger, and the books suddenly appeared, some containing the Passion’s accounting within, what’s written would still be an atom-sized jot incapable of describing the Lord’s fullest work.

And so, our loving God has taken something massively incomprehensible and made it simple.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Peter 3:18).

“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

“He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

“[Jesus said] For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:17-18).

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13).

I could go on and on sharing more and more of God’s simplified yet preferred renditions of His great love for you accomplished through the person and work of His Son, Jesus Christ. But I won’t. However, I will encourage you to join with the faithful for Good Friday worship. I urge you to immerse yourself in the Church’s consolidated remembrance of the hours in which our Savior labored to set the whole world free from the grip of perpetual night.

For the readers beyond my congregation’s borders, if your church does not observe Good Friday, find one that does. Go there. Settle into a pew. If you can, spy a crucifix. See there a hint to Sin’s weight. “Here may view its nature rightly,” the great hymn whispers solemnly, “Here its guilt may estimate” (“Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted,” LSB 451).

Even so, listen to God’s Word being read. Take in the Gospel preaching. Hear and rejoice that the Lord endured the horrible hours willingly. Take into yourself that His divine mind was thinking of you. You could not do it. But He could. And He did, all for you.

It was all for you.

P.S. If you need a place to go for Good Friday worship, here at Our Savior, we offer a 1:00 p.m. Tre Ore service and a 6:30 p.m. Tenebrae service. Consider joining us.