Everything about Good Friday looks like failure.
Not symbolic failure.
Not misunderstood success.
Actual, visible, undeniable defeat.
The One who spoke with authority is silent.
The One who raised the dead now hangs dying.
The One proclaimed as King is crowned with thorns.
If Maundy Thursday unsettled our understanding of power,
Good Friday shatters it completely.
The Collapse of Every Human Category
Look at the Cross through the eyes of those present.
To Rome, it is routine.
To the priests, it is necessary.
To the crowd, it is spectacle.
To the disciples, it is catastrophe.
No one standing there sees victory.
Because every human category of power has just collapsed:
Political power → Rome still rules
Religious authority → the Sanhedrin has prevailed
Military strength → there is none
Popular support → it has vanished
If Christ is King, this is the worst coronation imaginable.
And that is precisely the point.
“If You Are the Son of God…”
The taunts at the Cross are revealing:
“If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” (Matthew 27:40)
This is not mockery alone—it is theology.
The world assumes:
Power proves itself by escape.
If you are powerful, you avoid suffering.
If you are divine, you overcome visibly.
If you are King, you do not die like this.
But Christ does not answer.
Not because He cannot come down.
But because coming down would mean losing.
The Paradox of Restraint
Here is the hidden center of Good Friday:
Christ is not powerless.
He is restraining His power.
“Do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53)
That is power.
But it is not used.
This is where the Cross ceases to be tragic and becomes terrifying.
Because it means:
God is not defeated here.
He is choosing not to defend Himself.
That is something far more unsettling than weakness.
The Silence of God
One of the most haunting elements of Good Friday is not the suffering.
It is the silence.
No angel intervenes
No voice from heaven speaks
No miracle breaks the scene
Even the cry:
“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46)
This is not doubt.
This is Psalm 22—yes—but it is also the experience of abandonment under judgment.
Here, Christ stands where man should stand.
Not merely suffering physically,
but bearing the weight of separation.
And the heavens remain closed.
The Real Victory (Hidden in Plain Sight)
To human eyes, this is defeat.
To theological reality, this is conquest.
But the conquest is not over Rome.
It is over something far deeper.
Sin is judged
Death is entered
The curse is borne
As St. Paul writes:
“Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.” (Colossians 2:15)
Notice the irony:
The Cross is meant to shame Christ publicly.
Instead, it becomes the place where the powers themselves are shamed.
But no one sees it in the moment.
Because this victory is not visible.
The Inversion of Glory
In the ancient world, glory meant elevation.
To be lifted up was to be honored.
John’s Gospel deliberately uses that language:
“And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.” (John 12:32)
But this “lifting up” is the Cross.
Glory and humiliation are fused.
Shame becomes the vehicle of triumph.
And this is the final rupture:
God reveals His glory not by ascending above suffering,
but by descending into it.
Why This Matters Now
The Church still struggles here.
We accept Maundy Thursday more easily than Good Friday.
We like servant leadership.
We like humility.
But Good Friday demands something harder:
the acceptance that God’s greatest work may look like total loss.
Faithfulness that leads to suffering
Obedience that leads to rejection
Truth that leads to crucifixion
This is where many turn back.
Because we still expect God to vindicate us before the Cross, not through it.
The Pattern Cannot Be Broken
Maundy Thursday set the pattern:
Power gives itself away.
Good Friday completes it:
Power allows itself to be broken.
But here is the truth that must be held:
It is not actually broken.
It is being poured out.
There is a difference.
Broken power is defeated.
Poured-out power is purposeful.
And Christ’s final words make that clear:
“It is finished.” (John 19:30)
Not: I am finished.
But: The work is finished.
On Maundy Thursday, the King knelt.
On Good Friday, the King is lifted up—not to reign, but to die.
And yet, in that death:
Power is not lost.
It is perfected—
not by resisting the Cross,
but by going through it.
The Rev. Dr. Ronald H. Moore
3733 County Road 100, Corinth MS 38834 USA
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