Here in the Philippines, two images of Jesus dominate, namely those of Santo Ninyo and the Black Nazarene. These images stand out so strongly that other images of Jesus seem not as convincing.

The best way to learn about real Jesus is by reading what his disciples have said about him, that is, how Jesus came to be known to us through the Gospel records. We have four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Because each gospel records the life and work of Jesus Christ in a slightly different way from the others, all four gospels enrich our understanding of Jesus Christ.

If you were to ask me what I thought of Jesus based upon the reading of the Gospels, I would describe him in the following:

• He was a master teacher about life.
His famous teaching Sermon on the Mount was so good that it even attracted a Hindu pacifist Mahatma Gandhi. What he taught about the Kingdom of God, how to love God and how to love our neighbor as ourselves were enough to draw Gandhi. What stopped him from becoming a Christian was the actions of the so-called Christians who came to colonize India. Jesus told profound lessons through parables. He was indeed a master teacher of life.

I remember before I became a Christian I was reading Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's gospel. It quickly became my favorite reading.

• He was a compassionate person.
Out of his compassion, he healed the sick, fed the hungry, and cared for those in need. Jesus had emotions just like us. He laughed. He cried. He became indignant. He felt the need to be alone ... etc. But the most important emotion was his compassion for the needy and the lost. He never forgot about that in his public ministry.

• He was a friend to the marginalized.
He befriended prostitutes, tax-collectors, immoral women, children, and whoever wanted to be with him, especially the twelve disciples he chose.

Jesus often got into trouble because he made deep friends with the people who were not welcomed by the society.

• He was a harsh critic of bad religion.
He criticized the religious leaders of his day for being corrupt and misleading the people. He did not spare anything when criticizing those in leadership because they did not really care for the people.

It is this Jesus who loved mercy and justice that I fell in love with, so to speak, ever since my university days and I have served him ever since. It is this Jesus that I want to introduce to you.

But the most important description of Jesus comes in answer to the question, 'What did Jesus do for us?'

• He was a sacrifice for our sins.
Jesus in one occasion told his disciples,

The Son of man came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45)

Soon Jesus died on the cross and then rose from the dead. It is in his suffering, death and resurrection that we find the supreme meaning of his life for us two thousand years later.

Let Us Ask the Most Important Question: Why Did Jesus Die?
The most important question you and I can ever raise in relation to Jesus and to Christian faith is, 'What has Jesus' death on the cross on Good Friday have anything to do with my life 2,000 years later?'

Let us look at his death more closely. During the Holy Week in the Philippines, millions of people express their religious devotion in many ways. They range from attending mass to being the flagellantes who whip themselves on the back and endure great pain, and, yes, even being crucified on the cross. In this year's Holy Week ceremony, I am told that 26 people, including three women, chose to be crucified.

What is Good Friday? Why is it called Good Friday? What is so good about the Good Friday? Why did Jesus have to die? We have heard from many sources that Jesus died for our sins so that we can all go to heaven one day. But what does it mean to say that Jesus died for us? Our common sense tells us that if we want to go to heaven, our good deeds must outweigh all the wrongs we have done in this life. Some say that in order to go to heaven we need to do the following things:

• Be baptized
• Avoid sins as much as possible and confess all your sins before you die
• Pray to saints for help
• Do many good things for the church and for others

The basic idea here is that hopefully our good deeds can be stacked up against all the bad things we have done so that God will be more compassionate to us and shorten our stay in Purgatory. Some will go even further and choose to pay for their own sins by suffering.

In Pampanga, there is a man who chooses to be crucified every year. Until the Passion Week, he lives rather freely. He gets drunk often and in his drunken state he does many things which he regrets when he becomes sober. On Good Friday each year, he tries to pay for his sins by volunteering himself to be on the cross. His hands and feet are tied to the crucifix. Three-inch nails pierce through his hands and feet. He screams in sheer agony. But he knows that this pain is good for him. He hangs on the cross for a while and then the mock trial is over. After being brought down, he washes his blood-stained body in the river in Pampanga. He senses magical power in that water. He prays for a special blessing for himself and for others, especially for his uncle who is not a good Christian. The man believes he has now paid for the sins he has committed during the past.

Are his sins really forgiven? He may think so, for the act of dying on the cross gives him a strong sense of assurance that God will take his pleas seriously. What do you think? Is he crazy?

In summary, many believe that in order to go to heaven, we need to believe in Jesus and also do good works.

JESUS PAID FOR ALL OR SINS.
One of the least understood and most neglected teachings of the Bible is the truth that Jesus paid for all of our sins, completely, once and for all. Even though it is plainly written throughout the pages of the Bible, this teaching has not been well understood in the Philippines as well as other parts of the world.

Let me read from Hebrews 10:11-12,

Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifice, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

This is where Jesus comes in. The perfect, sinless Son of God paid the penalty of our sins, once and for all. That means 'what Jesus did on the cross is ENOUGH. Sapat na! Tama na!.

The message, while deceptively simple, has been misunderstood and misapplied throughout many centuries in the Church. Somehow, we were led to believe that what Jesus did on the cross was NOT enough. Therefore, we were taught that we needed to be baptized, to believe in Jesus as Savior AND we needed to do a lot of things to go to heaven, rather than to hell, and not to stay forever in purgatory.

But the message of the Cross, when it is properly understood, it truly becomes 'the good news.'

Please notice two important things about this passage.

By 'this priest' the author refers to the personal sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It was Jesus who paid the penalty of our sins with his own life. That means no other sacrifice can possibly take on the same level of importance in the sight of God. Our prayers must therefore be directed to God through Jesus Christ only and through none other.

I know that here in the Philippines people pray to Jesus, Mary and to saints. We prefer to pray to the saints with the hope that our prayers will eventually go to Jesus and to God. We would think that the saints could function as our mediators, since Jesus is too holy and too good for us. However, that kind of thinking is very foreign from the Bible.

God's intention is to have Jesus as the intermediary between the Holy God and sinful people. That is what Paul wrote,

'For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men — the testimony given in its proper time.' (1 Tim 2:5)

You can also see why we need not put ourselves on the cross. God does not approve of it and he is least interested in our suffering for the sake of penance.

Moreover, he offered one sacrifice, to be contrasted with the Jewish sacrifice which was year after year. Whereas the most solemn Jewish sacrifice, offered on the Day of the Atonement (Yom Kippur) was designed to be offered once a year after the high priest had gone through the purification rite to cleanse himself.

The writer of Hebrews calls it, 'an annual reminder of sin.' In other words, there is a limit to the whole practice of sacrifice: it may temporarily deal with our sins but it does not take away our sins so that we can be pure and holy.

By contrast, Jesus' sacrifice is considered once for all time. There is no need for Jesus to go back to the cross over again over again. Nor is there a need for anyone of us to go to the cross to pay for the penalty of our own sins. No, Jesus died on the cross once and for all — meaning his death accomplished its purpose once and for all.

From this, we learn that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross is a finished work.

WE REST UPON THE FINISHED WORK OF CHRIST
Jesus said on the cross, 'IT IS FINISHED' (Naganap na. Tapos na!). Indeed, because of his complete work on the cross, we must learn how to value this finished work.

Lieutenant Onoda was the last Japanese soldier to withdraw from the Philippines. Even though Japan surrendered in 1945, Lt. Onoda did not believe that the war was over. He held his post on Lubang Island near Mindoro until 1979. The Philippine Army came near him and tried to persuade him to come out of the jungle but he refused. They had to go to Japan to look for Onoda's superior to give him the command to come out. As far as Lt. Onoda was concerned, the war was not finished until the commander said so.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wonder if some of us have missed the 'commander's voice' that 'it is finished.' When Jesus died on the cross for our sins, he really meant that we did not have to fight the sin ourselves, that we did not have to pay the penalty of our sins ourselves.

'Finished work of Jesus' means the absolute sufficiency of Jesus' payment for our sins. No matter how many and deep our sins are before God, Jesus has paid for them all. It is sufficient. Jesus is enough. That means that when we put our complete trust in what Jesus has done on the cross, his sacrificial death for us, then we are no longer condemned as criminals and that we will be transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… (Rom 8:1)

For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col 1:13-14)

'I tell you the truth. Today, you shall be with me in paradise' (Luke 23:43).

Yes, when we place our complete trust in Jesus as our Savior, we KNOW that Jesus will take us to heaven, neither to hell, nor to purgatory.

Such a thought gives us tremendous confidence and freedom in approaching God.

Moreover, his finished work means that we need not rely on any other person or saint in order to come to God. Jesus is enough! By adding further duties for penance, we are making mockery out of what Jesus has done. In effect what we are saying is that 'Christ's death is not sufficient for the forgiveness of sins' (A. Pezzotta, Truth Encounter, 58). That is not true, for there is absolutely nothing that we need to do or can do.

Good Friday is good because of what Luther called it 'happy exchange,' that is, Jesus dying on the cross in our place. We were grateful that Jesus paid the penalty of our sins.

It is Good Friday because what Jesus has done is truly good to us.

You see, then, how foundational the cross of Jesus Christ is to a Christian. Without the cross, the Christian has no reference, no anchor, no 'birthplace' so to speak. Good Friday is indeed the reason behind the Good News!

HOW DO WE APPLY THIS KNOWLEDGE?
The apostle Paul taught us clear that we are saved by grace (it is a gift!) through faith, not works:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. (Eph 2:8,9).

In fact, I am convinced that if we had to earn our way to heaven there is no one who could make it to heaven on their own. I don't believe that other saints can help us because they, too, could not be holy enough to save themselves.

How do we apply this precious knowledge (that Jesus died for our sins) into our lives? We do it through FAITH.

Faith involves two elements: understanding and trust. It is not enough to have the understanding that Jesus died for us. We must also trust in what we have come to understand. That is faith.

There was a daredevil who thrived on attempting the impossible. One day he told the crowd that he would cross the Niagara Falls on a tight rope. (I lived just two hours from the Niagara Falls and have seen the force of the fall many times. I can assure you that only the crazy would do something like that!) Two poles were built on each side of the Fall and a tight rope was installed. Then, the daredevil inched his way through the fall. At first, he seemed nervous. But by the time he got to the middle of the distance, he seemed quite relaxed. When he finally reached the other side, the crowds cheered in motion. Now on his way back, he pushed a wheelbarrow with load in it. Again, he showed grace. You can imagine the absolute wonder in the eyes of the crowds. Over an hour has gone by the time he made the return trip.

After the cheering was over, the daredevil asked the crowds, 'Do you believe that I can cross the Niagara Falls?'

'Yes,' they roared.

'Do you believe that I can push a wheelbarrow and cross the Falls?'

'Yes,' they responded even louder.

'Do you believe that I can push a person in a wheelbarrow and cross the Falls?'

'Yes,' they all said.

'Alright, then, let's have a volunteer,' he demanded.

There was a dead silence. Nobody moved. The daredevil then looked at a young boy and said, 'hey, you, come here.' The boy ran away.

Did the boy believe that the daredevil can walk across the Falls? Yes, he did. But did he trust him with his own life? No, he did not. Therefore, the boy's faith in him was not complete.

We apply the wonderful knowledge (that Jesus paid for all our sins) into our life with both understanding and trust. That is a real faith.

For Christians who put their complete trust in the death of Jesus Christ, the message of Good Friday becomes the anchor of their faith. Each time they commit sin, they go back to the Calvary where Jesus died, and they receive the assurance that Jesus' sacrifice was ENOUGH. Gratitude fills their hearts after meditating upon this truth.

Moreover, Good Friday does not end in the grave. It ends in the empty grave. That is where Christians' real hope lies. Christians know that the risen LORD is powerful enough to forgive all their sins.

Now you know why it is called Good Friday.