The Best Inspirational Good Friday Quotes

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The death of Jesus on Calvary is the most sorrowful day in Christian history. However, it is also one of the most eventful days in the Bible. The first four books in the New Testament have narrated the story of Christ’s ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection. Each gospel accounts for the life of Jesus until His death and resurrection. This day was also the day that changed the course of history and was the beginning of Christianity. The first Good Friday was the day when prophecies about the sufferings and sacrifices of the Messiah were fulfilled. It was the day when the will of the Father for the Son of God was revealed. Likewise, the plan of God for the world was also brought to light after immense darkness covered the earth. This day will be forever remembered. Various Good Friday quotes remind us of this crucial day of atonement.

Today, the observance of this significant day termed as Good Friday still reminisces the work of Christ on the cross. As part of the Christian tradition, Christians around the globe celebrate the Good Friday. This is no ordinary day for it is the anniversary of the greatest sacrifice done by a king for His servants. To help you grasp deeper the importance of Good Friday remembrance, here are the best inspirational Good Friday quotes from popular Christian authors, spiritual leaders, and the Bible itself.

Good Friday Quotes on the Wonder of the Cross

Photo by St. John’s in wellesley

Whenever we see the cross, we remember Jesus. We remember both His humility and power. In the same way, this reminds us of His suffering and triumph. Additionally, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the crucifix or cross became a significant Christian symbol. It symbolizes His unconditional love, death, and victory. On the cross, Jesus paid the price of death for the sins of the world, taking our place so we may live eternally (Galatians 3:13-15). There’s a kind of love too indescribable to grasp, a love perfect enough to be a ransom for spiritual and moral offenses. There is no one like this love but Jesus. His crucifixion on the cross is the best picture of this amazing love. Though the shape of a heart symbolizes love, the best symbol of love is not the heart but the cross.

A Good Friday quote by Henrietta Newton Martin, a legal and Christian author of popular books including the Rudiments of International Humanitarian Law, wrote that the beauty of the cross and the crucified Lord is unfathomable by the human mind. It is the spirit that can fully acknowledge the wonders of the cross. Wisdom of man cannot measure the love poured on the cross. It is simply too vast for man’s knowledge. The will of God is far different from the mind of man, which is why we need grace. Because apart from God, it is impossible for us to understand his great love and sacrifice. Various Good Friday quotes give us a sneak glance on this significant symbol of Divine Love. What the mind can’t comprehend; the heart can perceive. Let God’s love impress on your heart as you read the following Good Friday quotes.

“Exalt the Cross! God has hung the destiny of the race upon it. Other things we may do in the realm of ethics, and on the lines of philanthropic reforms; but our main duty converges into setting that one glorious beacon of salvation, Calvary’s Cross, before the gaze of every immortal soul.”

― Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

“The Cross! There, and there only though the deist rave, and the atheist, if Earth bears so base a slave; There and there only, is the power to save.”

― William Cowper

“The Cross was the manifestation of Divine love without reserve or limit; but it was also the expression of man’s unutterable malignity.”

― Sir Robert Anderson

“On the eve of the cross, Jesus made his decision. He would rather go to hell for you than go to heaven without you.”

― Max Lucado

“People referred to the symbolism of the empty Cross more than once on its journey. It would seem obvious to point to our faith in Jesus’ resurrection. It’s not quite so simple though. The Cross is bare, but in and of itself the empty Cross does not point directly to the Resurrection. It says only that the body of Jesus was removed from the Cross. If a crucifix is a symbol of Good Friday, then it is the image of the empty tomb that speaks more directly of Easter and resurrection.”

― Chris Ryan MGL

“The beauty of the cross and our crucified Lord cannot be easily fathomed by human mind or by barely reading scriptures in bits, but by careful reading of entire scripture in the spirit which will in turn engulf one with wisdom in love.”

― Henrietta Newton Martin

“The cross was two pieces of dead wood; and a helpless, unresisting Man was nailed to it; yet it was mightier than the world, and triumphed, and will ever triumph over it.”

― Augustus William Hare

“By the cross, we, too, are crucified with Christ; but alive in Christ. We are no more rebels, but servants; no more servants, but sons! ‘Let it be counted folly,’ says Hooker, ‘or fury, or frenzy, or whatever else; it is our wisdom and our comfort. We care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath sinned, and that God hath suffered; that God has made Himself the Son of Man, and that men are made the righteousness of God.'”

― Frederic William Farrar

Good Friday Quotes: How Good is Good Friday?

Photo by Burlington Gazette

Good Friday is sometimes called Black Friday because of the painful suffering of Jesus on this day. On the day of Jesus’ death, He was not only aching with physical pain, but He was also enduring the wrath of God. When Jesus was on the cross, he bore the sins of the world. Therefore, by taking our place, Jesus has also taken the anger of God’s judgment for us. What happened on the cross was Jesus became the propitiation for the sins of the world (1 John2:2).  He became a substitute for sin. This makes Good Friday good indeed. The agony of Christ’s crucifixion is good news for those who believe in Him. Because of this act on the cross, we have the gift of eternal life.

T.S. Eliot, a famous poet, essayist, and playwright said that despite the blood of Jesus dripping on the cross, and His body hanging from it, we still call Good Friday good; because beneath our shame, lies the truth of the greatest love we can receive. On another account, Charles Spurgeon, an English Baptist preacher preached that the atoning death of Jesus that brings glory to God marvels the heaven and the earth. Of course, heaven wept the death and agony of Jesus but it also magnified the name of God. Different Good Friday quotes bring us other interesting points of why there is still triumph in Christ despite the sufferings of Jesus. The misery of Christ did not call us to grieve alone, instead, it calls us to confession and faith to God. For other edifying Good Friday quotes, here are some notable phrases from famous authors and preachers.

“The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think that we are sound, substantial flesh, and blood– Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.”

― T.S. Eliot

“Good Friday is not about us trying to “get right with God.” It is about us entering the difference between God and humanity and just touching it for a moment. Touching the shimmering sadness of humanity’s insistence that we can be our own gods, that we can be pure and all-powerful.”

― Nadia Bolz-Weber

“Maybe the Good Friday story is about how God would rather die than be in our sin-accounting business anymore.”

― Nadia Bolz-Weber

“I am wholly deserving of all the consequences that I will in fact never receive simply because God unashamedly stepped in front of me on the cross, unflinchingly spread His arms so as to completely shield me from the retribution that was mine to bear, and repeatedly took the blows. And I stand entirely unwounded, utterly lost in the fact that the while His body was pummeled and bloodied to death by that which was meant for me and me alone, I have not a scratch.”

― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Unless there is a Good Friday in your life, there can be no Easter Sunday.”

― Fulton J. Sheen

“It is the resurrection that makes Good Friday good.”

― Ravi Zacharias

“The highest act of love is the giving of the best gift, and, if necessary, at the greatest cost, to the least deserving. That’s what God did. At the loss of His Son’s life to the totally undeserving, God gave the best gift – the display of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.”

― John Piper

“The marvel of heaven and earth, of time and eternity, is the atoning death of Jesus Christ. This is the mystery that brings more glory to God than all creation.”

― Charles Spurgeon

A Dreadful Day for Endless Good Days

The momentous time of Christ’s shedding tears and blood on the cross for the world made a way to God. This day marks our salvation and true freedom. The Lord himself suffered, was crucified and died for the salvation of the world. The passion of Christ on the cross will forever bring us into worship and adoration of the great Savior. For a day of sorrow contained the heaven that the world will rejoice on the perfect moment. Not just a moment essentially but ceaseless days in eternity.

Salvation and love is the message of crucifixion. For the forgiveness of all sins, the sacrificial Lamb of God was given. Because of Christ’s misery, we can share with Him a life of eternity. Though our flesh will wither, our soul will rest in God’s presence with everlasting joy (Psalm 91). Good Friday remembers the anguish day of Christ yet at the same time reminds us of the greatest love lavished on us selflessly.

The Bible tells us that greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). Not only did Jesus lay his life down for his friends, but he lay down his life for the world. In an even greater act, He laid down his life even when we were still sinners, even when we were not yet friends but enemies (Romans 5:8). We have been reconciled to the Lord because of Jesus’ work. Our sins were no more sins for by His stripes all our deadness to sin has been washed away.

Here are some famous Good Friday quotes describing how wonderful is the greatest day in history that turned sorrow into joy:

“Crucified Love lives with us today and till the end of times as He promised. Amen. The beauty of the cross and our crucified Lord cannot be fathomed by human mind or by barely reading scriptures in bits, but by careful reading of entire scripture in the spirit which will in turn engulf one with wisdom and love.”

― Henrietta Newton Martin

“He drained the cup of God’s wrath bone dry, leaving not a drop for us to drink.”

― Richard Allen Bodey

“Good Friday is a day of sorrow mingled with joy. It is a time to grieve over the sin of man and to meditate and rejoice upon God’s love in giving His only Son for the redemption of sin.”

― David Katski

“Good Friday is the mirror held up by Jesus so that we can see ourselves in all our stark reality, and then it turns us to that cross and to his eyes and we hear these words, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. That’s us!”

― Robert G. Trache

“Who his own self-bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.”

― 1 Peter 2:24

“Death is the justification of all the ways of the Christian, the last end of all his sacrifices, the touch of the Great Master which completes the picture.”

― Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine

“All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more. Rome and Jerusalem and Athens and everything else were going down like a sea turned into a slow cataract. Externally indeed the ancient world was still at its strongest; it is always at that moment that the inmost weakness begins. But in order to understand that weakness we must repeat what has been said more than once; that it was not the weakness of a thing originally weak. It was emphatically the strength of the world that was turned to weakness and the wisdom of the world that was turned to folly.

― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Good Friday Quotes on Crucifixion and Resurrection

According to Ravi Zacharias, a famous Christian preacher, the good thing about Good Friday is the resurrection of Jesus. The miracle of Christ didn’t end on the cross. Three days after His brutal death and burial, He rose again. And when He rose, He overcame all the principalities of the darkness. Jesus defeated the powers of death. They were no more, as a result, had authority over us. From being enslaved to sin, a new life with Christ has been given as a free gift. Martin Luther who is famous for the Reformation has this remarkable Good Friday quote. He said that God has written the promise of resurrection not in books alone but every leaf in springtime. This, again, reminds us of the Easter season. A time of remembrance of Jesus’ resurrection.

Good Friday remembers the Crucifixion so we can never forget the day of Jesus’ atonement for sins. Of all the narrative in the New Testament, the story of Christ’s cross carrying the whole weight of the world is unbearable to neglect. How can we disregard the darling of heaven being crucified because of our own iniquities? Why would we want to overlook the highest love that embraced us by neglecting our sinful nature and clothing us with renewed life? There is so much on that cross and three days after it, that we simply cannot ignore it.

There are various ways to observe this day to keep us grounded in the greatest grace. Allow ourselves to dig deeper into the true meaning of Jesus’ sufferings through reading His word, listening to Good Friday preaching or contemplating the following Good Friday quotes.

“It was inevitable that Jesus Christ should be crucified. It was also inevitable that He should rise again.”

― H. R. L. Sheppard

“It is the resurrection that makes God Friday good.”

― Ravi Zacharias

“Practice mercy and forgiveness throughout as a lesson that symbolizes the love shown through his crucifixion.”

― Unarine Ramaru

“Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone but in every leaf in springtime.”

― Martin Luther

“Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.”

― Watchman Nee

“Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia!

Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia!

Who did once upon the cross, Alleluia!

Suffer to redeem our loss. Alleluia!”

― Charles Wesley

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.'”

― John 11:25-26

“We may say that on the first Good Friday afternoon was completed that great act by which light conquered darkness and goodness conquered sin. That is the wonder of our Saviour’s crucifixion. There have been victories all over the world, but wherever we look for the victor we expect to find him with his heel upon the neck of the vanquished. The wonder of Good Friday is that the victor lies vanquished by the vanquished one. We have to look deeper into the very heart and essence of things before we can see how real the victory is that thus hides under the guise of defeat.”

― Phillips Brooks

Good Friday Quotes on Sorrow, Sin, and Sacrifice

Photo by Chad Ashby

There was a great paradox for the Theologian and English Anglican priest John Stott about sin and salvation. He said that the concept of substitution for men and for God had a contrasting context. For man, the concept of substitution, that is sin, is choosing one’s self before God. It is substituting himself for God. Man is a slave of his own. Normally, we tend to follow what our desires want, what our flesh needs, and even what we think is good for us even if it means sinning against God. Adam and Eve fall into this trap when they are tempted in the Garden of Eden. The serpent lures them into the temptation of being like God (Genesis 3:15). After the fall, we all want to be like God, ruling our own lives. We hardly know that reigning over our lives will lead us to destruction.

On the other hand, the substitution of God for man is the essence of salvation. It is the concept of substitution that will forever astound the world. Galatians 3:13 tells us that God redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us- for it is written, ‘cursed is anyone hanged on a tree’. Jesus exchanged His life that we may receive eternal life. In the same way, he exchanged his righteousness for our sins so that God will find us righteous.

The Book Isaiah also tells us that Jesus bears our grief and sorrow so there will be no more mourning in heaven. Christ was wounded so that healing may come upon us. The Lord accepts us because the world rejected Him. This is the beauty of Christ’s sacrifice and substitution (Isaiah 53:4-6). We became everything impossible for us to be through grace. Great is the Lord for His amazing plan. There are also still great Good Friday quotes about the sorrow and sacrifice of Jesus. Here are some of them:

If Christ is God, He cannot sin, and if suffering was a sin in and by itself, He could not have suffered and died for us. However, since He took the most horrific death to redeem us, He showed us in fact that suffering and pain have great power.

― E.A. Bucchianeri

The concept of substitution lies at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.

― John Stott

What is good about Good Friday? Why isn’t it called Bad Friday? Because out of the appallingly bad came what was inexpressibly good. And the good trumps the bad, because though the bad was temporary, the good is eternal.

― Randy Alcorn

Good Friday and Easter free us to think about other things far beyond our own personal fate, about the ultimate meaning of all life, suffering, and events; and we lay hold of a great hope.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“How great is the love of God! He loved me long before I knew His name. .He wooed me, chased me, enthralled me, and captured my heart. He didn’t prove His love at a candlelight dinner. There were no long-stemmed roses, but there were thorns. Yes, there were thorns.”

― Katherine J Walden

“For he says, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.”

― 2 Corinthians 6:2

I am convinced that when we bring our griefs and sorrows within the story of God’s own grief and sorrow, and allow them to be held there, God is able to bring healing to us and new possibilities to our lives. That is, of course, what Good Friday and Easter are all about.

― N. T. Wright

Inspirational Good Friday Quotes

When Jesus died on the cross, He died for you and for the rest of the world. As  Jesus overcame the world, we can also overcome the world. When He defeated the grave, we also defeated it. The idea is simple, a child inherits everything his father owns. In the same manner, we inherit everything that God has completed. After being reconciled to God, he does not consider us as enemies, but friends (John 15:15). Therefore, we can always rely on God’s eternal power and ever-present help. The Book of Romans Chapter 8 tells us that there is no more condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Because we have been set free, we can lean on God’s promises. He promised us that He will be with us till the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).

In the Book of John, Jesus cheered the disciples by saying that they will have tribulation in the world, but Jesus has overcome the world so they can have peace in Him. Our lives may at some point be really frustrating or confusing. There are battles that we think are too difficult to handle. Some temptations also keep us from growing in love and in faith. No battle is comfortable. It always proves our endurance and faith. But when Jesus overcomes His battle on the cross, we also can rest on the truth that He will never give battles that are beyond our limitations(John 16:33). Aside from prayer and constant devotion to God, the following Good Friday quotes can help you find encouragement in this Holy Week season.

“The lesson of Good Friday is to never lose hope or at least give it 48 hours.

― Robert Breault

Don’t be afraid, says Yeshua. Far more can be mended than you know.

― Francis Spufford

“It tells us that the new life of God surprises us, comes at a moment we cannot expect, and reminds us that experiences of pain, grief and dying are suffused with the presence of Christ, the One Who was crucified and is now risen.”

― Chris Ryan MGL

“We focus on Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, but we forget to pause in the stillness of the days between. Find time today to be present in that place of waiting. There is treasure to be found in the sacred peace that comes as you breathe in that place of quiet surrender. Don’t rush through the space called “Between.”

― Katherine J Walden

“Good Friday was when the Good was crucified but then on Easter the Good arose back…. So wait to realize that be it God or be it human the good never perishes it’s rises above.”

― Amit Abraham

“But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible but with God all things are possible.’”

― Matthew 19:26

Good Friday is a day of hope. It is a day where we look forward to a brighter tomorrow. Many things have happened to change the course of our lives, but it has not shaken our faith.

― Rev Dr Peola Hicks

“No matter what the storm clouds bring, you can face your pain with courage and hope. For two thousand years ago-six hours, one Friday-Christ firmly planted in bedrock three solid anchor points that we can all cling to. (And) For the heart scarred with futility, that Friday holds purpose. (And) For the life blackened with failure, that Friday holds forgiveness. And for the soul looking into the tunnel of death, that Friday holds deliverance.”

― Max Lucado

Carrying the Cross

Mark 8:34
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

Jesus said in His words that if anyone wants to follow Him, they must deny themselves, take up His cross, and follow Him. Quite tough? Well, the road that Jesus took carrying His cross with occasional beating was also tough. Good Friday will not only remind us of the Cross of Christ. It also must remind us of the cross we are to carry for God. God has paid the price through his blood and life. We, since brought from death to life should live a life separated from darkness. The cross which Jesus wants us to carry is a sacrifice.

When Jesus gave His life for our salvation, we saw the perfect example of sacrifice. Denying one’s self means rejecting the desires of the flesh. Following Christ means forgetting the world. It is the sacrifice we ought to observe not just on Good Friday but as we live the days of our lives. Taking up our cross is living a life worthy of His calling.

There is no need to worry however, about the weight of your cross. Jesus said in Matthew 11:29-30 that His yoke and burden is gentle and light. If God gave everything to save us, what then can He not give to sustain us. Why would He give you something you cannot carry? The Lord is saying to all His children, which will be the last Good Friday quotes you should reflect on: Do you desire to come after me? Do you want to be with me? Come, take up your cross and follow me.