“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!” (Revelation 5:12)

On the calendar we call today “Good Friday.” But it is only good in retrospect.

Today Christians remember the death that Jesus Christ suffered on the cross and the way he paid for our sins that we can have eternal life in heaven. He could do it because he was perfect, innocent, completely sinless. The Bible sometimes refers to Jesus as “The Lamb” because in ancient Judaism, God had told his people to sacrifice animals, perfect ones, to cover their sins. In Romans 6:10 it says, “The death [Jesus] died, he died to sin once for all…”

And it is also Good Friday because he’s alive. He didn’t stay dead. Romans 6:23 says “The wages of sin is death…” Jesus couldn’t stay dead because he hadn’t sinned. Acts 2 puts it this way: ^“This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.”

And now, we travel closer to Sunday, the day when the stone was rolled away from his tomb, and he rose from the dead… Continuing with Romans 6: “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” So we, too can go from death to life–eternal life–if we believe in Jesus’ sacrificial death on our behalf on the cross and his resurrection.

We can say again, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”