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Let’s be honest. The only ones breathing who can call Good Friday, “Good Friday” are the covenantal Reformed. Roman Catholics can’t say that. Wesleyans, Nazarenes, and the Arminians can’t say that. Pentecostals can’t say that. Reformed Baptist can’t say that. Even Lutherans can’t consistently talk about “Good Friday.”

And why is that?

Because Good Friday is only “Good” because “Jesus paid it all.” For all other expressions except the covenantal Reformed Jesus didn’t pay it all or if He did pay it all, it all depends at which point in their systematic theology they are teaching from. This is just a way of saying that their theology is contradictory. At one point some will teach that “Jesus paid it all” while at other points man likewise has to pay along with Jesus.

The semi-Pelagians and the Arminians can’t consistently talk about “Good Friday,” because they insist — even if not explicitly so — that they must add their good works in order for Good Friday to be really “Good.” I know this is true because once upon a time I studied their theology closely. I read their theologians. The grace found in Arminianism is the taking advantage by dead men of a grace proffered. Dead men don’t respond to offered grace. Dead men are dead. There is very little “Good Friday,” in Wesleyan schemes of “Good Friday.”

The Reformed Baptist can’t talk about “Good Friday,” because whatever it is that an adult can bring to be considered saved and so worthy of Baptism that an infant can’t bring to be Baptized is a work that makes Good Friday not really good.

Lutherans can’t talk about “Good Friday,” because in their insistence that Jesus died for every one we find the distinguishing difference between those who are saved and those who are not saved is a something that the saved did that the unsaved didn’t do whereby they are saved. You see in these schemes fallen man is the one who really makes his “Good Friday,” “Good.” Anyone who believes that Jesus died to pay the sins of every man and woman who has ever lived does not believe that “Good Friday” is really “Good.” Anyone who believes what Lutherans believe can’t say “Good Friday” with all the gusto that the covenantal Reformed can say when the covenantal Reformed say “Good Friday.”

Roman Catholics don’t believe that “Good Friday,” is really “Good.” Their system especially empties the goodness out of “Good Friday.” For Rome Jesus doesn’t really pay for sins. Rome calls that idea “a legal fiction.” Rome is a soul-eating machine that forever casts man back upon the search for his own goodness. In Rome, Jesus paid it all as long as the penitent continues to eat and drink Jesus in the Mass, as long as the penitent continues to go to confession, as long as the penitent does some time in purgatory, as long as the penitent prays to dead people and as long as the penitent brings adds their own performance to Jesus’ work. Roman Catholicism is Arminianism formalized. Roman Catholicism is the high octane version of Arminianism. No “Good Friday” allowed.

Good Friday is “Good” because I, who could never add anything contributory to my salvation, don’t need to worry about that because Jesus is all my goodness. Jesus Christ because of His work on the Cross did all the saving and all that there is left for me is to relish in the goodness of that first Good Friday.

None of this is to say that Wesleyans, or Reformed Baptists, or Lutherans are not saved. Praise God that God can save us despite our theology that is amiss from His express Word. However, we can and do say that such expressions of Christianity are really sub-Christianities not worthy of the name Christianity.

So… how Good is your Good Friday today?

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Romans 5:10

When we think about the Cross of Christ one of the motifs that we find is the idea of “reconciliation.” Reconciliation is the idea that two parties being at war with one another need to be reconciled to one another. However, we tend to think of reconciliation in terms of man being reconciled to God. And of course, in order for man to be right with God sinful fallen man must be reconciled to God. HOWEVER, reconciliation is not first and foremost about sinful fallen man being reconciled to God but rather reconciliation is first and foremost about a just and holy God who is our enemy because of sin being reconciled to fallen sinful man. The problem that the Cross resolves in terms of reconciliation is not so much man’s need to be reconciled to God as it is the work to reconcile God to man.

The Cross of Jesus Christ answers both of these necessary reconciliations. The death of Christ reconciles God’s enmity towards the elect and the death of Christ reconciles man’s enmity towards God. The death of Christ satisfies the Father so that He is approachable again for elect repentant sinners and the death of Christ works to melt the hardness of men whose minds heretofore had been at enmity with God. So, because of the finished work of Jesus Christ, we can have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Reconciliation is knowing that God has been reconciled to the Elect in the death of Jesus Christ so that the elect can sue for peace with God and so discover that they have been reconciled to God in the work of Christ.

There is a reason they call it GOOD FRIDAY.

Evangelicals are forever talking about “having a relationship with Jesus.” They sing songs like “What a Friend we have in Jesus.” They sing about how “he (Jesus) walks with men and He talks with me and He tells me I am His own.”

And we concede that there is truth in the idea of having a “relationship with Jesus.”

However, the Cross was not primarily about making it so you could have a relationship with Jesus. Even the idea of having a relationship with Jesus is strained by the fact that if such a relationship exists it is a very different usage of the word “relationship” than we normatively use with that word. I mean, we don’t sit down to breakfast every morning with Jesus hearing Him ask us to “pass the juice please.” We don’t take Jesus to the beach with us so we can toss the frisbee with Him and go swimming in Lake Michigan. We don’t buy an extra ticket to the concert so Jesus and I can go to the concert together. These are the types of things that “having a relationship with someone” usually means. So, if we have a relationship with Jesus it is a very very different kind of relationship that we have with someone else.

So, Jesus doesn’t die for us in order to establish a relationship as the idea of relationship typically means in our effeminate culture. Jesus dies on the cross for us as our legal representative in order to bear the penalty of sin done against God and His Law-Order. Christianity is primarily a forensic/judicial faith and is only secondarily “personal.” Jesus is our Lawyer who successfully pleads our case before the bench. It is true that one can have a relationship with their Lawyer but what one is most concerned about in a Lawyer is that they can successfully defend them in court. Jesus, in His work on the Cross, where He takes our sins to Himself and bears the burden of the penalty our sins deserved is our chief Advocate.

I bring all this out in order to urge Evangelicals to move away from the “relationship” language which allows Evangelicals to reduce the Christian faith to “me and my pal Jesus,” in hopes that Evangelicals will start learning about their Advocate with the Father. Evangelicals who emphasize relationship tend to know nothing about the great juridical themes of the cross — propitiation, expiation, reconciliation, redemption, sacrifice, substitution, ransom, imputation, active and passive obedience, etc. The reason they don’t know much of this is that they are too busy being caught up in being in a “relationship with Jesus.”

Having said all that I do realize that speaking of having a “personal relationship with Jesus” can be drawn from Scripture. Abraham was known as “the friend of God.” Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” and then turned around and died for his friends. So clearly we can speak of having a relationship with Jesus. My plea is that we take the time to scour Scripture to understand what the Scripture teaches regarding the person and work of Jesus Christ who we call our friend.

Romans 3:25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

Propitiation is not a word we commonly use but there is no understanding of the Cross work of Jesus Christ apart from understanding “Propitiation.” In the Cross, the Son offered up Himself as the means ordained by the Father in order to turn away the Father’s just wrath against sin.

Scripture teaches that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. The shedding of blood was the means by which God eternally ordained to be necessary in order for forgiveness to be gained. Christ’s death was that shedding of blood that propitiated (turned away) the Father’s wrath.

Some have noted the close relation between propitiation and the pagan idea of “appeasing the gods.” There is indeed some correlation but there is also a major difference that bars us from using the idea of appeasement. In the pagan understanding, the gods are angry and only can be satisfied by some kind of blood reckoning offered up by an innocent victim. Once the victim is offered up the gods are appeased. The difference between pagan appeasement and the Christian doctrine of propitiation is that while in Paganism the gods pay no price in being appeased in Christianity God Himself lays upon Himself in the incarnate 2nd person of the Trinity the penalty demanded by God. God demands the price and the God-Man meets the price. What God requires God gives.

There is a reason it is called “Good-Friday.”

Liberals do not like the word “propitiation” because the word implies the wrath of God and the necessity for God’s wrath to be turned away. Indeed in many bibles where we find the Greek word for “Propitiation” (Hilaskomai / Hilasterion) we get translations like “expiation,” or (in the NIV) “sacrifice of atonement.” This is done so as to avoid certain theological implications bound up in the proper translation “propitiation.”

However, having said that, we must understand that in the Cross work of Jesus Christ expiation is one dynamic. The Son, on the Cross not only turns away the Father’s wrath by meeting the just demands of a righteous and holy God but the Son also expiates the Father. Expiation and propitiation work in harmony. You can’t have one without the other. As we have said Propitiation is the turning away of the Father’s wrath by the just demand upon the penalty of sin. Expiation, however, is the taking away of sin. Christ in His work on the cross not only pays the penalty for sin but He also does the work of taking away sin.

All this was prefigured in the old and worse covenant where on the Day of Atonement two goats would provide atonement. One goat would be sacrificed as a propitiation to turn away the Father’s wrath. This goat’s blood would then be sprinkled on the Mercy seat. The second goat — called the Azazel goat or scapegoat — would have the sins of the people confessed over it by the High Priest and then would be led into the desert to be released. This was to picture the idea of sins taken away (hence expiation). Atonement required both propitiation (God’s just wrath being turned away by blood sacrifice) and expiation (Sin being removed from God’s people).

Jesus Christ on the cross was both our propitiation and our expiation. Jesus Christ takes away our sins as he, like the Azazel goat, bears our sins away in a desolate place.

There is a reason they call it “GOOD FRIDAY.”