The Advantages of Examining Good Friday Sermons
Within the aims of the series The New Birth In Exile, Good Friday sermons are receiving careful scrutiny precisely because they often reveal what a preacher believes lies at the very centre of Christianity itself. The Cross is where Scripture’s doctrines of God, sin, wrath, justice, covenant, substitution, judgement, resurrection, and redemption converge most intensely. Consequently, the way a preacher handles Good Friday frequently exposes his deepest assumptions about the human condition and the meaning of salvation. More specifically, The New Birth in Exile project asks whether these sermons establish the doctrinal necessity of the new birth. Do they portray mankind as condemned in Adam, spiritually dead beneath divine judgement, and therefore in need of sovereign regeneration by the Spirit? Or do they primarily present humanity as wounded, burdened, and emotionally searching? That question increasingly governs the analyses which follow.
Accordingly, these articles are not sermon reviews in the regular sense.
A covenantally Reformed Good Friday sermon should not merely narrate the sufferings of Christ or invite emotional gratitude toward Him. It should place the Cross within the entire covenantal structure of Scripture so that the hearer understands why Christ had to die for them personally and why fallen sinners must be born again.
At a minimum, a covenantally Reformed Good Friday sermon should contain several essential interconnected doctrines.
First, the holiness and righteousness of God. The Cross is fundamentally about God vindicating His own righteousness. Romans 3:25-26 is central here:
“whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
The Father does not simply overlook sin because He is loving. The Cross demonstrates that God remains “just, and the justifier.” Without divine holiness, Good Friday quickly collapses into sentimentality.
Second, Adamic headship and covenantal guilt. A Reformed sermon should explain that humanity stands condemned in Adam before it ever arrives at Golgotha. The Cross is not primarily God helping wounded people cope with life. It is God dealing judicially with covenant breakers who were made in His image and already under wrath. This is why Romans 5, and the Adam/Christ dichotomy, matters so profoundly in Good Friday preaching.
Third, divine law and judgement. Christ dies beneath covenant curse. Galatians 3, Deuteronomy 27–28, and Isaiah 53 become essential categories. The preacher must explain not merely that Christ suffered, but why judgement fell upon Him. The hearer should feel that the Cross reveals what sin justly deserves.
Fourth, penal substitution and propitiation. Christ bears wrath in the place of His people. His blood satisfies divine justice and cleanses conscience. Hebrews 9–10, Romans 3, and the sacrificial system are indispensable. The Cross is not merely demonstration; it is accomplishment.
Fifth, resurrection as vindication. Even in a Good Friday sermon, resurrection must remain visible on the horizon. The resurrection is the Father’s public declaration that the Son’s obedience has been accepted and the debt truly paid.
Sixth, union with Christ and the necessity of regeneration. A covenantally Reformed Good Friday sermon should naturally force the question: how does a condemned sinner participate in the benefits of Christ? The answer is not mere moral admiration or emotional response. The sinner must be united to Christ through the sovereign work of the Spirit. “Ye must be born again.”
This is precisely where many contemporary Good Friday sermons appear thin. They often move from suffering directly to comfort without first leading the hearer through the terrifying landscape that makes Calvary necessary at all: divine holiness, violated law, covenant curse, Adamic condemnation, spiritual death, and the righteous wrath of God against sin. These doctrines all demand that we be born again. The congregation is invited to stand close enough to the Cross to feel its emotional warmth, yet not close enough to feel the heat of divine judgement that fell there. Sometimes Christ’s sufferings are described vividly, but the judicial necessity behind those sufferings is frequently softened or assumed rather than unfolded. The hearer is encouraged to feel loved before being shown why he stands condemned in Adam and under wrath apart from Christ. Consequently, the Cross risks becoming a therapeutic symbol of acceptance rather than the place where God publicly vindicated His righteousness through the judgement of sin in the flesh of His Son. In too many Good Friday sermons, the sinner may leave emotionally moved, grateful even, yet without ever having been brought consciously beneath the sentence of death that makes the new birth absolutely necessary.
Interestingly, the historical hesitation among Presbyterians regarding Good Friday services may actually illuminate this issue. Many earlier Presbyterians, especially within the Scottish and Puritan traditions, resisted the ecclesiastical calendar because they feared isolating the Cross into a sentimental annual observance detached from the ordinary means of grace and the full counsel of God. They preached Christ crucified every Lord’s Day. There was concern that special holy days could encourage dramatic meditation upon the sufferings of Christ while quietly weakening doctrinal precision.
That concern now appears rather perceptive. Modern Good Friday sermons often gravitate toward atmosphere, emotion, imagery, and pathos. The danger is that the Cross becomes an event to behold rather than a covenantal judgement to stand beneath. A congregation may leave emotionally moved while never having been brought consciously under Adamic condemnation, divine wrath, covenant curse, or the necessity of regeneration.
A covenantally Reformed Good Friday sermon therefore should not simply ask, “Do you feel grateful that Christ died?” It should press a far more searching question: why did the Son of God need to endure divine judgement for me at all, and what does that reveal about my condition before a holy God apart from the new birth?
Since “the wages of sin is death”, The New Birth in Exile series seeks to draw attention to where modern Presbyterian sermons in my home state of Victoria, Australia, no longer press the doctrinal, judicial, and experiential realities of sin deeply enough. Easter sermons bring that deficiency into focus. And where that happens, we are really saying "Life in Adam is all we need".
