Spring is nearly here. That means preparing for spring retreats, mission trip sign-ups, and summer break. It’s tempting in the lead-up to skip over the hard parts of Holy Week and jump straight to Resurrection Sunday. But this year, make sure you don’t brush past Good Friday.
As we mobilize students with the Gospel, Good Friday serves as a crucial reminder of what’s at stake: the eternal destinies of souls. It reminds us of our own need for deliverance from sin and can be a catalyst for students to share the hope of Christ with others.
That’s because Good Friday sits at the center of the Christian faith, not simply as a somber day of remembrance, but as the fulcrum of redemptive history. It shows the depth of our brokenness and the magnitude of Christ’s love. If we misunderstand or lessen the importance of Good Friday, we weaken the very Gospel message we’re called to carry. But when we grasp its depth, we gain clarity, confidence, and urgency for evangelism.
At the heart of Good Friday is a single, astounding truth:
Jesus paid our ransom.
A ransom we’re unable to pay ourselves. A ransom not measured in gold or silver, but in blood—the blood of Jesus Himself! Understanding the ransom of the cross and what it accomplished reshapes our posture toward both the message of the Gospel and those who still need to hear it.
The Costliest Rescue
To understand why Good Friday fuels our mission, let’s start with the problem it exposes.
Throughout Scripture, there are plenty of passages that describe a captivity that every human finds themselves under: captivity to sin. It began in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, bringing sin into the lives of humanity ever since. Being human means that we’re all born with this sinful nature, which holds us captive.
Paul writes that:
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Later, in Romans 6, Paul highlights how we’re all slaves to sin (Romans 6:6-7) and subject to death.
For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Our fate is sealed. There’s nothing we can do to break free from that captivity and reclaim our relationship with God.
But God is the author of this story. And because of His love for us, He chose to send His one and only son, Jesus—God in the flesh—to Earth to live a sinless life, pay the penalty for our sin, and die the death that we deserved.
In short, Jesus didn’t just come to pay the ransom. Rather, He was the ransom. The ransom we needed to free us from captivity to sin. Good Friday reminds us that the cross is the site of the costliest rescue mission in history.
Infinite Ransom
Ransom stories make for great movie plots. One of my favorites is the well‑known story Les Misérables. In it, Jean Valjean receives a warm bed and a hot meal from a priest, only to turn around and steal the church’s silver, knock the priest down, and flee into the night.
When he’s caught and dragged back by the police, Valjean expects judgment. Instead, the priest does the unthinkable:
Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil. With this silver I bought your soul. I’ve ransomed you from fear and hatred. And now I give you back to God.
Scenes like this may move our hearts. But when we’ve been ransomed for real, that has the power to truly transform our lives.
That’s the power of Good Friday.
Peter says it plainly:
For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.
Something’s value is determined by what you’re willing to pay for it. In the case of Good Friday, the payment was infinite—the shedding of the Son of God’s innocent blood.
Because God is perfectly just, sin requires payment, and throughout Scripture that payment is made through the shedding of blood. It began with animal sacrifice, and it was finished with the shedding of Christ’s blood. Jesus did what only He could do: satisfy a holy God and pay the ransom we couldn’t pay.
Only Jesus was qualified to pay for the sins of humanity. As a perfect human, He could die for other humans. And as the eternal God, His payment for mankind’s sin was infinite. The cross is where God’s divine justice and His unmerited love for us collide.
As a result, when we put our trust in Jesus, we’re declared righteous and holy before Him. Redeemed and rescued from the captivity and guilt of our sin.
If this ransom has personally transformed us, then keeping the truth of it to ourselves is unthinkable. Instead, sharing it becomes our urgent responsibility.
Compelled to Share
So how can you equip your students to effectively share this message of the Cross?
Here are some practical ideas:
- Share with your group how the message of the Cross has personally impacted you.
- Share a lesson about being held captive to sin, and how Jesus paid the ransom for that sin.
- Prompt your students to identify friends that are still in captivity, write their names on a sheet of paper, and lay that piece of paper at the foot of a cross. Then devote time to pray for them in small groups.
- Use Dare 2 Share’s Walk to the Cross video. It’s a one-lesson teaching tool that describes the different elements of Jesus’s crucifixion, culminating in a clear and bold Gospel invitation. Download it for free!
- Host an interactive prayer station focused on different elements of Passion Week, complete with Scriptures, reflection questions, and hands-on elements to help your students approach the crucifixion from a different angle.
- Involve students in your church’s Good Friday service. Student involvement can bring a different perspective to Good Friday and the Gospel.
Captives Set Free
The cross reminds us that God doesn’t need us to do anything to restore our relationship with Him because Christ paid the ransom that we never could so we can be brought back into that relationship. Your debt has been paid. Forgiven. Erased. And on Good Friday, He invites us back to the cross—to come and remember the forgiveness we’ve been given, the new life we’ve been offered, and how important it is to share the hope of the Gospel with those who are still held in captivity to sin.
As you lead your students this Easter season, lead them to the foot of the cross. Then lead them in the mission field it sends us into.
