Quotes to Note 15a: Why “Good Friday”?

This week I’ve been reading through Adrian Warnock’s new book Raised with Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything (Crossway). The following selection is both amusing and instructive. It may serve to help us turn our minds toward the events this day commemorates.

As a young child I asked my father a series of questions one evening as he put me to bed. This is the conversation as I remember it:

“Why is Good Friday called ‘good’?”
“Because Jesus died for us.”
“But why was it called good when someone died?”
“Because he came back to life.”
“But why is it not Bad Friday and Good Sunday then?”

I somehow instinctively knew that the cross could not be good news without the resurrection….

Many times when I heard the gospel explained in later years, the resurrection was either omitted altogether or briefly discussed in passing. When I began to share the Christian message with others individually and while preaching, to my shame I often did so without mentioning that Jesus is alive. The resurrection had become an afterthought to the message that Jesus died for our sins.

I think Adrian Warnock is on to something here. I posted an excerpt from a recent interview he did earlier. You may also want to check out another interview he did with my good blogging friend Jason Skipper.

You can preview or purchase his book from Westminster Bookstore at this link. Stay tuned to RaisedwithChrist.net for more info on the book. I’ll be posting my review in the next week or two.