Today is Good Friday. When I was younger I was confused by this because what was so good about Jesus dying? Shouldn’t it be called Bad Friday? Over the years, I have grown in my understanding of the gospel, and how the bad news is what makes the good news truly good. The bad news of my sin necessitates the badness — the excruciating pain and suffering — of the cross, the cross that is my cross. But the story doesn’t end there. When all hope is lost, Jesus willingly takes my place. And in that Great Exchange, something so terrible becomes something wondrous, beautiful, and Good with a capital “G.”

One of my favorite parts from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe captures this in the way that only C.S. Lewis can:

…”though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”

-Chapter 15, “Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time”

I was moved by this video Passion City Church made for their Good Friday Service a few years back*. Thankful for the creative people who can communicate the power of the cross to make Death itself start working backward, and turn bad news into truly good news.

*They have several other Good Friday videos that are just as moving.