Good Friday might strike you as a strange name for the annual celebration of the death of Jesus.

As you mull that over and pursue the good news flowing through Good Friday, you might also stop to consider the un-goodness of our world.

Looking across the planet, Australia or your own backyard, you don’t have to search hard or long to discover the opposite of good.

Sydney Anglican Archbishop Kanishka Raffel is aware of this too. He told Hope Mornings that the assured hope of Easter offers the ultimate response to the injustice and unloving actions of humanity.

“Especially the news we have been getting from Ukraine has been so distressing, we are confronted with the horror of human evil,” Kanishka said.

“But in the death and resurrection of Jesus, we have a declaration to the world that God is just.

“He will not tolerate human sin forever, so he has sent his son into the world to die on a cross.

“To bear the punishment that human evil deserves.

“The cross also is a demonstration of God’s love because… Jesus bears this penalty out of love for the world, so the world can be redeemed.”

Could not God have gone about this some other way? Did Jesus have to die so horribly in order that human sin could be properly dealt with?

“Forgiveness is such a wonderful gift and it is a gift that comes at a cost,” – Sydney Anglican Archbishop Kanishka Raffel

“Forgiveness is such a wonderful gift and it is a gift that comes at a cost,” Kanishka said about the necessity for Jesus’ death and resurrection to perfectly bring about forgiveness being extended to us from God.

“Anyone who has forgiven another person knows that the forgiver bears in themselves the cost of the wrong done to them.

“They don’t make the other person pay. They absorb that cost into themselves.

“Now, Jesus died for the sins of the world.

“He takes into himself what our sin deserves and what justice demands.”

Listen to the full interview with Kanishka Raffel in the player above.

Article provided with thanks to Hope 103.2