It was Good Friday 2008. Our Hindu neighbor, who we were visiting, asked me the question. We had shared that we follow Christ, and she had a knowledge of Catholicism from the Catholic school she attended as a young girl.
"This is the day of Jesus' resurrection, that is why it is Good Friday, right?", she asked.
I said, "Good Friday is when Jesus was crucified and died on the cross."
"How is that good?" she asked.
I really didn't expect that question, from anybody let alone a Hindu woman in South Asia. What came next was from the Holy Spirit, not me.
"This is the day that Jesus died to take the punishment for the sins of the people of the whole world. What is more good than that?"
She smiled and seemed to agree, though we don't know if she has accepted Jesus as her only Lord. We gave her a Bible in her language, which she put in her puja room, along with her other gods. They jokingly would say that they follow Jesus and many other gods, though I was never able to confront that statement- that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to God but through Jesus. (John 14:6) Not Krishna, not Ganesh, not Shiva, not Hanuman- no one comes to God but through Jesus.
An amazing display of how much love God has for us- Jesus, God's one and only Son enduring torture and agonizing death to take our punishment on the cross. Taking punishment for my sins, your sins, sins of all Americans, Africans, Mexicans, Europeans, Russians, Indians, Japanese, Chinese- the sins of the whole WORLD. How do we know this? What kind of proof do we have? Anyone can take punishment for someone else. People sacrifice animals for sins all the time. Even human sacrifices have been and are made to please gods and atone for sins. But, the way we know that Jesus' sacrifice was THE sacrifice for the whole world, once and for all- God raised Jesus three days later. There has never been another sacrifice that has been brought back from the dead. Only Jesus- and there is testimony to the fact that he has risen, there is a book written about it (the Bible) where witnesses talked with him, ate with him and even touched him after he was killed and rose again. Jesus, the one and only atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. With that sacrifice, we can escape the coming judgement of God, because of the love of God.
"Just as man is destined to die once, and after that face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take the sins of many people." Hebrews 9:27-28.
"This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ," Romans 2:16
"He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification."
Romans 4:25
"But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8
The sins of the whole world were paid for through the suffering and death of Jesus, on what we call Good Friday. On the cross- the wonderful cross.
