At the time of his execution, Jesus was about 33 years old. His ministry, which lasted approximately three years, was marked by widespread popularity. However, this popularity led to opposition from religious and political authorities. They resented his influence and feared his growing power. In response, they held a sham trial and condemned Jesus. They then obtained the approval of the Roman governor to have him executed by crucifixion.
What did the crucifixion accomplish?
Jesus came, he insisted, “not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Jesus faced the looming cross in Gethsemane with an agony of prayer characterized by the repeated petition “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36). The cross was the only means by which God’s Son, Jesus Christ, sacrificed himself, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18). The author of Hebrews affirmed, “But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26).
The New Testament emphasizes the crucial nature of the substitutionary aspect of Christ’s death. In Romans 3:23-26, the apostle Paul writes, “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement [propitiation], through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:25-36). Jesus is presented as the sole bearer of the wrath which sinners deserve established in Romans 1:18-3:20. It is precisely because of his propitiatory sacrifice (“his blood”, v. 25) that God can be both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (v. 26).
“He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor 5:21). Our Lord announced that this was all accomplished when he said (John 19:30): “It is finished.”
D.A. Carson wrote, "It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father's will—and it was his love for sinners like me." Good Friday is “Good” because Jesus died as a substitute for sin. He died for you and me.
I need no other argument,
I need no other plea;
It is enough that Jesus died,
And that He died for me.
This is the ground of our faith. “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:25). Receive him by faith.