Read: Mark 15:1–32

For younger children, consider reading “The Snake Crusher Is Crushed for Us” in The Biggest Story Bible Storybook (pages 418–25).

Reflect

Good Friday is a day we remember that Jesus was crucified as a rebel, with rebels, for rebels. The official charge against Jesus before the Roman government was that he was claiming to be a king, an act of rebellion against Rome. With Jesus’s death-sentence, Barabbas, a popular revolutionary and rebel was set free. They hung Jesus on a cross between two rebels (probably a better translation than “robbers”).

Jesus went to the cross for rebels against God like you and me. Each of us is born into the revolution of the darkness against the light. Yet, Jesus came and took the just sentence of death that we rebels deserved so that when we trust in him, we might be set free. Good Friday is good because it is a day in which God’s gracious love for rebels is displayed in the sacrifice of the Son.

Reflection Questions:

1. What do these verses teach us about Jesus?

2. What do they teach us about our response to Jesus?

Listen to: “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” (Norton Hall Band)

Pray

My Father,

Enlarge my heart, warm my affections, 

    open my lips, 

  supply words that proclaim ‘Love lustres [shines]

    at Calvary.’ 

There infinite punishment was due, 

  and infinite punishment was endured. 

Christ was all anguish that I might be all joy, 

  cast off that I might be brought in, 

  trodden down as an enemy 

    that I might be welcomed as a friend, 

  surrendered to hell’s worst 

    that I might attain heaven’s best, 

  stripped that I might be clothed, 

  wounded that I might be healed, 

  athirst that I might drink, 

  tormented that I might be comforted, 

  made a shame that I might inherit glory, 

  entered darkness that I might have eternal light. 

O Father, who spared not thine only Son that thou 

    mightest spare me, 

All this transfer thy love designed and 

    accomplished; 

Help me to adore thee by lips and life. 

Go forth, O conquering God, and show me 

  the cross, mighty to subdue, comfort and save.

Selections from the prayer “Love Lustres at Calvary” in The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions (Click the link for the full prayer).