Good Friday is observed on the Friday before Easter Sunday. On this day Christians commemorate the passion, or suffering, and death on the cross of Jesus Christ. Many Christians spend Good Friday in fasting, prayer, repentance, and meditation on the agony and suffering of Christ.
On Good Friday, Christians focus on Jesus Christ’s death. The night before he died, Jesus and his disciples took part in the Last Supper and then went to the Garden of Gethsemane. There, Jesus spent his last hours praying to the Father while his disciples slept nearby:
“Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.'” (Matthew 26:39, NIV)
“This cup” was death by crucifixion, one of the most dreaded and painful methods of execution in the ancient world. But “this cup” also represented something even worse than crucifixion. Christ knew in death he would take on the sins of the world—even the most heinous crimes ever committed—to set believers free from sin and death.
