As Easter approaches, I think back to a Sunday school lesson from my early childhood.

Our teacher asked us to choose from among a pile of brightly colored eggs that sat in the middle of the classroom table. My classmates and I held the eggs close to our ears, shaking them to see if we could guess what was inside.

When our teacher told us to open our eggs, we found a handful of slender thorns plucked from the rosebushes outside the church—not sharp enough to prick us, but also not the candy we’d all been hoping for.

“Is this what you were expecting to see?” our teacher asked.

Twenty little voices cried out, “No!”

“Would you say that these thorns are a good thing to find inside an Easter egg?”

Again, even louder: “No!”

Our teacher smiled, then began to tell us the story of Good Friday—how something as unexpected and awful as the death of Jesus Christ turned out to be the greatest gift that God could have given to us.

FOUR VERSES THAT POINT TO THE “GOOD” IN GOOD FRIDAY

For Jesus’s disciples, Good Friday was the opposite of everything they expected. Instead of becoming the king who would end Roman oppression and free the Jewish people, Jesus wore a crown of thorns and died a shameful death on a cross. How could anything good come from such a terrible day?

With the resurrection, the disciples’ perspective of that day changed. Today, we can look back at the story of redemption and see how Good Friday reveals God’s loving plan for his people. Here are four passages from Scripture that help us see the “good” in Good Friday as we prepare our hearts for Easter.

Good Friday was first promised in Genesis.

You might be surprised to learn that the first glimpse of God’s redemption plan is in the very beginning of Genesis. After Adam and Eve fell into sin, God promised that their offspring would someday conquer the serpent. As God’s plan was revealed through the life and work of Jesus Christ, this early prophecy of redemption has been understood to reference Jesus’s death on the cross and resurrection—the fulfillment of God’s promise to Adam and Eve.

[God said to the serpent:] “I will make you and the woman hate each other; her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite her offspring’s heel.”

Genesis 3:15 (GNT)

Good Friday fulfilled the Old Testament’s prophecies.

Throughout the Old Testament, prophets like Isaiah foretold a wounded healer who would receive the punishment deserved by sinful people. On Good Friday, we see Jesus willingly undergo this suffering, making us whole by the wounds he received.

But because of our sins he was wounded,
beaten because of the evil we did.
We are healed by the punishment he suffered,
made whole by the blows he received.

Isaiah 53:5 (GNT)

Good Friday finished the work of redemption.

On Good Friday, Jesus fulfilled the words of Scripture and finished the work of redemption. His final words on the cross communicate the completion of God’s redemption plan: payment for our sins with his blood.

Jesus knew that by now everything had been completed; and in order to make the scripture come true, he said, “I am thirsty.”

A bowl was there, full of cheap wine; so a sponge was soaked in the wine, put on a stalk of hyssop, and lifted up to his lips. Jesus drank the wine and said, “It is finished!”

Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

John 19:28-30 (GNT)

Good Friday made us friends with God.

On Good Friday, Jesus completed the work to not only save us from our sin but also bring us back into fellowship with our Creator through Jesus’s sacrifice. As we look forward to Easter, we remember Good Friday as the day that opened the way for our friendship with God to be restored. This is the good news about Good Friday we can share with everyone around us!

For when we were still helpless, Christ died for the wicked at the time that God chose. It is a difficult thing for someone to die for a righteous person. It may even be that someone might dare to die for a good person. But God has shown us how much he loves us—it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us! By his blood we are now put right with God; how much more, then, will we be saved by him from God’s anger! We were God’s enemies, but he made us his friends through the death of his Son. Now that we are God’s friends, how much more will we be saved by Christ’s life!

Romans 5:6-10 (GNT)