“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:6-8 NIV

Good Friday is my favorite holiday. That might sound weird to some. Obviously Sunday is the better day for celebrating, but I’m a rather nostalgic, melancholic, reflective that appreciates the masses joining me on this day of somber remembering.

Easter Week can be a confusing time, even for those of us who believe. We often don’t embrace the meaning because we don’t truly comprehend what Jesus did. We don’t have many examples in our own lives of people who loved like Him. And the ways He went about loving defies our expectation. He upended the conventional. Topsy turvy’d the status quo. On this day, Good Friday, even the name itself seems odd. How could a day of bloody death be considered in any way, good?

We better understand when we realize that when Jesus came, He chose to make himself nothing and come to earth as a man (Philippians 2). While it can be less of a mind job to believe His divine nature made this whole task supernaturally easier for him, the truth was that while fully God, He was somehow also a real man who experienced real pain – physically as He was beaten, and emotionally as He was falsely accused by the very ones He came to save, and even abandoned and betrayed by His closest friends.

Hebrews 12 says He did it for the joy set before Him. It was fixing His eyes on this joy that allowed Jesus to endure the pain of the cross, scorning all it’s shame. And the joy set before Him – that was you and it was me, and it was what His obedience in laying down His life would mean in terms of our lives, now and everlasting. This reflecting we do on Good Friday is not sadistic. It provides a stark truth of the extent of sacrifice, and in turn, the extent of His love for us.

Romans 5 says for a good person, someone might dare to die. But Christ died for us while we were still entrenched in all our mess. He died willingly. Painfully. Shamefully. Sinlessly. Perfectly. We don’t really understand love like that. Because we don’t usually love like that. We often love in response to loveable actions, but God loves, simply because He IS Love.

I am so glad for what Jesus did and how He did it. I would have screwed it all up:

If I were in His sandals, I probably would have cried out, “This is so unfair!” But Jesus said, “Father, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42)

I can imagine appealing to Pilate with a long list of defenses and some personal references to back me up. But Jesus came like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He did not open his mouth. (Isaiah 53:7)

I would have been happy to let the apostles fight for my freedom, but Jesus tells them to put down their swords: “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how would Scripture be fulfilled?” (Matthew 26:53) And then he heals His attacker’s ear.

If I had been tipped off that Judas was going to betray me, I probably would have kicked him out of the small group. I definitely wouldn’t have invited him to my dinner party. Jesus not only included him for dinner, but also knelt down and washed his grimy feet beside all the others (John 13).

And Peter, oh how my heart would have been especially broken over this friend – one of my closest confidants who promised to always protect me and never leave me, no matter what. But in reality, Peter couldn’t even stay awake long enough to pray! He fled the scene the very second things got scary. With so many failed expectations, it would have been hard for me to ever trust again. But instead, the resurrected Jesus came to Peter that day on the beach, first restoring their relationship, and then restoring Peter’s fractured identity. And it was upon this man of so many broken promises that Jesus made the firm promise to build His church. (John 21:15-17)

This isn’t how we usually do things. I’m so glad it’s how He did things. And Good Friday is the day I gratefully remember in a way I don’t every day. This day also reminds me of the promise in 2 Peter 1:4, that I can partake of the divine nature. But it requires a surrender as well – identifying with Jesus in his death. (Romans 6:5).

To become more like Jesus is to be a person led by the love of the Father, trusting God as their defender. Someone so secure in their identity that nothing can shake it even when the whole world seems to be shaking. It’s a person walking in humility. Someone who knows there is no reason to be afraid of evil, for God is with them, what can man do? And a person serving as a conduit of restored relationships, with God and between one another.

Jesus was able to walk in power and in love and He invites us to identify ourselves with His death through our own sacrifice of self. As we do, we are also promised resurrection with Him, filled with His power and love to offer to a world that needs it. But the extent of it is proportionate to the extent of our own surrender. And I realize that on most days, the disparity between where I am and Jesus is quite wide. But it’s these days of remembering, days like Good Friday, that grow an ache in my heart to narrow that gap. Who else but God could grow desire in a human heart to surrender everything? Who else could hide such beauty in a day so dark?

I am thankful that unlike the disciples, I have the peace from knowing that Sunday is a-comin’. But today I sit with them in Friday and I remember.