Good Friday Devotional

Psalm 22, Isaiah 52:13–53:12, Hebrews 10:16–25, John 18:1–19:42

Summary of the Texts

Psalm 22 opens with the cry that Jesus would quote from the cross: my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The psalmist describes himself as scorned and despised, surrounded by mockers, poured out like water, mouth dried up, encircled by enemies. Yet underneath the lament runs a persistent trust. God has not abandoned him. He calls on God to be near because trouble is close. The psalm ends not in despair but in proclamation — future generations will hear what God has done.

Isaiah 52:13–53:12 is the fourth and final Servant Song, the most sustained portrait of a figure who suffers on behalf of others. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us. He was despised and rejected, a man of suffering. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. He was led like a lamb to slaughter and did not open his mouth. He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.

Hebrews 10:16–25 declares that the new covenant has been established. God will put his laws in their hearts and remember their sins no more. Because of what Christ has done, we can draw near to God with full assurance. Then the passage turns outward: let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess. Let us consider how to spur one another toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, but encourage one another all the more as the day approaches.

John 18–19 is the full passion narrative — the arrest in the garden, the trials before Annas, Caiaphas, and Pilate, the crucifixion, the death, and the burial. Jesus is in control throughout. He steps forward to identify himself to the soldiers. He answers Pilate’s questions with precision. He speaks from the cross to care for his mother. He says it is finished, and he breathes his last. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus come to claim his body and prepare it for burial.

Overview of the Conversation

This final devotional of the Lenten season carried the weight appropriate to Good Friday. The conversation didn’t try to resolve anything. It sat in the darkness and tried to help us understand why that matters.

My God, My God

The conversation opened with an insight about how Jesus’s cry from the cross should be understood. When Jesus says “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” he is quoting the opening line of Psalm 22. In the ancient practice of identifying psalms by their first words, quoting that line was a way of invoking the entire psalm. And when you read all of Psalm 22, what you find is not a declaration of abandonment but a prayer of desperate trust. The psalmist calls out from anguish, names his suffering in vivid detail, and keeps returning to the conviction that God is near and has not turned away. The cry from the cross, read in that light, is not Jesus losing faith. It is Jesus praying the prayer of a suffering person who still knows where to turn.

That reframe is pastorally important. It means the cross is not a moment when God withdraws. It is a moment when God, in the person of Jesus, enters fully into the human experience of feeling forsaken, and prays through it rather than away from it.

Isaiah and the Weight of the Suffering Servant

The Isaiah passage has shaped Christian worship more than almost any other text in the Old Testament. Much of Handel’s Messiah draws directly from Isaiah 53. The language of being pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, healed by his wounds — these phrases have made their way into hymns, liturgies, and worship songs across centuries precisely because they name what happened on the cross with a specificity that feels almost impossible for a text written centuries before it.

The conversation named something worth holding onto here. The suffering in these texts is not incidental. It is not something to rush past on the way to the good news. The servant is described as despised and rejected, familiar with suffering, one from whom people hide their faces. That description matters. It means Jesus does not approach human pain from the outside. He enters it. He knows it from the inside. And that changes everything about how we understand what God is doing in our own hard places.

The Weight We Skip

One of the most consistent themes in the conversation, returning for perhaps the last time in the series, was the cost of moving from Palm Sunday to Easter without stopping. The cross only carries its full weight if we let it be heavy. Acknowledging the darkness is not giving it power. It is stopping the pretense that it isn’t there. Pain is part of human experience. Jesus went through it. The church has always asked its people to stand at the foot of the cross before running to the empty tomb, not to stay in grief but to let the resurrection mean what it actually means — which requires first reckoning with what was overcome.

Good Friday is the one service of the year that does not end in hope. You leave in the dark. That’s not a liturgical oversight. It’s a pastoral gift. Some people are in seasons where hope feels far away, and the church’s willingness to sit in darkness without forcing a resolution is one of the most honest things it can offer.

John’s Jesus in Control

The conversation noted how differently John tells the passion narrative compared to the other Gospels. Jesus is not a helpless victim in John. He steps forward in the garden and identifies himself, and the soldiers fall back. He manages his exchanges with Pilate. From the cross he arranges care for his mother. He declares it is finished on his own terms. John is at pains to show that nothing is happening to Jesus that he is not allowing. The cross is not defeat. It is the completion of a purpose he came to fulfill.

Pilate and the Question That Hangs

The exchange between Jesus and Pilate generated some of the most reflective conversation of the whole session. Pilate is a man caught between his integrity and his position, and you can feel him searching for a way out. He doesn’t want Jesus to die. He keeps asking questions, keeps probing, keeps looking for an angle that lets him escape the choice in front of him. And when Jesus says that everyone who belongs to the truth listens to his voice, Pilate responds with what may be the most haunting question in the entire Gospel: what is truth? He doesn’t wait for an answer. He turns and walks away.

The question lands differently on Good Friday than it would on any other day. Truth is standing right in front of him, and he can’t afford to let himself see it clearly.

Joseph and Nicodemus

The conversation closed with an observation about who claims Jesus’s body. Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple, comes forward. And Nicodemus — the Pharisee who came to Jesus at night, who couldn’t quite say who Jesus was in the open, who carried his questions in the dark — Nicodemus comes too. He brings a hundred pounds of spices. Both of them do this publicly, at personal and professional cost, at the moment when every other disciple has scattered. The ones who couldn’t fully commit while Jesus was alive are the ones who show up when it costs the most. John includes this detail for a reason.

Questions for Reflection

Jesus’s cry from the cross was a prayer, not a surrender. When you are in your darkest seasons, what does it look like to cry out to God rather than away from God?

The suffering servant in Isaiah is described as despised and rejected, familiar with pain. How does knowing that Jesus entered fully into human suffering change how you experience your own?

Nicodemus came at night and finally came fully into the light at the cross. Where are you still holding your faith in the dark, and what would it cost to bring it into the open?