Why We Call Today “Good Friday” – A Reflection

It is Good Friday, and while the word “good” has always seemed an odd companion for the darkest day in human history, it is precisely the right word — because what happened at Calvary was the single most consequential act of love the world has ever known.

At Truth in Love, much of our work brings us into the deep and broken places of the human story. We sit with those who have been sinned on, those whose sense of self has been buried beneath years of manipulation and pain, and those who wonder whether healing is even possible.

Whether through the resources we create, the training we provide for counselors and church leaders, or the one-on-one care we offer to those in crisis, everything we do is aimed at bringing the sufficiency of Scripture to bear on real suffering. That work matters immensely.

But it only matters because of what we remember today: that the Son of God willingly bore the full weight of sin, suffering, and death so that no wound, however deep, would have the final word.

The cross is not merely the backdrop to what we do; it is the foundation. Every conversation we have, every session we walk through, every truth we speak into a broken life draws its power from the finished work of Christ.

Without the cross, we are simply well-meaning people offering well-meaning words. With it, we are ministers of a hope that has already conquered the grave.

We often remind those we serve that abandonment, betrayal, and abuse are all redeemable, and the reason we can say that with confidence is that God Himself brought redemption into the world through abandonment, betrayal, and abuse.

Jesus was abandoned by His closest friends, betrayed by one who had shared His table, and subjected to the most brutal and shameful abuse the Roman world could devise. The very evils that shatter human lives are the evils He absorbed and overcame. That is not a coincidence; it is the gospel.

Isaiah 53:5 reminds us: “He was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on Him, and we are healed by His wounds.” That verse does not merely describe a theological transaction; it describes the heart of a Savior who looked at the full scope of human brokenness and said, “I will go there for them.”

And the heart of it all is reconciliation. At Truth in Love, we zero in on this reality: being reconciled to God in and through Christ is the very center of the gospel.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:19–20, “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, certain that God is appealing through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, ‘Be reconciled to God.'”

That is the message the cross proclaims, and it is the message we carry into every broken story we are privileged to enter. Before there can be healing, before there can be restoration, there must be reconciliation with the God who made us and who, on this day, paid the unthinkable price to bring us home. And He has made the way possible because that is His loving desire for each of us.

Today, wherever you are, I would encourage you to pause. Not simply to remember the cross as a doctrine, but to stand beneath it as a person. Let the shadow of it settle over you, and then let the grace of it lift you. The One who hung there knows every wound you carry, every burden you bear in ministry, and every doubt that whispers in the quiet hours. He is not distant from your pain. He entered it.

We will celebrate the empty tomb on Sunday. But let us not rush past Friday. The resurrection means everything precisely because the cross cost everything.

From our entire Truth in Love family to yours: may this Good Friday anchor your soul in the love that would not let us go.

Soli Deo Gloria