The other night over dinner, my girls and I were talking about the upcoming Easter break from school.
I said “You know, school is closed on Good Friday too”. My daughter Lauren said “Why do they call it Good Friday? There is nothing “good” about it, that was the day they crucified Jesus”.
Don’t you just love when you get such a good teaching moment?
I took a deep breath and said “honey, the crucifixion was the best event ever to happen in human history, it was the day that all of creation had been waiting for. That without the cross there would be no salvation. That “…without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins [Hebrews 9:22]. From our perspective we don’t see how this could be “good”; to die this kind of death.
Then I read her this:
“The cross of Christ proves that God’s plans are good. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was the most evil deed ever committed on this planet. God’s own perfect Son was put to death by wicked men. What could be more evil than that? At the same time, however, the crucifixion of Jesus was the best thing that ever happened on this planet. As we shall see, the cross has brought salvation to the world…it was the place God’s love and God’s holiness embrace. Here is the love of God. God the Father sent his Son, his only Son, to suffer and die for our sins…The cross of Christ is necessary to preserve both God’s love and God’s holiness in the salvation of God’s people. The German theologian Emil Brunner (1889-1966) explained that the cross of Christ “is the event in which God makes known his holiness and his love simultaneously, in one event, in an absolute manner…The cross is the only place where the loving, forgiving, merciful God is revealed in such a way that we perceive that his holiness and his love are equally infinite.”

quote taken from “The Heart of the Cross” by James Boice and Philip Ryken
Without the cross, there would be no Christianity. My daughter Lauren thanked me for helping her understand more about her Savior. I thank God for giving me the opportunity to share the gospel with her.
That in the cross of Christ, God performed that which we could never, ever do–satisfy His own righteous, holy standard. And that what God required of us, He also provided for us in the cross of Christ. That’s the gospel.
On this Resurrection Sunday may we praise Him who “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have the redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” [Colossians 1:13-14]