Good Friday is the center of the Christian Experience. It is the moment when 500 years of prophesy come to fruition. There are 326 messianic prophesies that come to pass in a 36 hour period—from the Garden to Jesus’ death. The odds of this happening are, statistically, near impossible; and yet, it happened! Good Friday marked the end of the Old Covenant and the beginning of the New.

There was one potentially witnessed the entire 36 hours that lead from the Garden to Christ’s death. He was the Centurion overseeing the execution. Centurions were the hardest of the hard. The commanded 100 Roman Soldiers. Romans were the most skilled and most deadly military force on the earth at the time. To command these soldiers, he would have had to be particularly hard. He would have been there through the arrest, Pilate’s attempts to free Him, and His beating.

Romans had a sort of sense of justice; they would beat their prisoners into confessing least they sentence the wrong man to death. Jesus, however, was silent. He was silent through it all. He did not beg or plead for His life while being sentenced. He allowed Himself to be lead away—as it was prophesied in Isaiah that He would be lead away like a lamb to the slaughter. He did not say anything during His beating; they were trying to get a confession, but He had nothing to say, so they kept beating Him!

Jesus was crucified around 9 in the morning. In the first three hours, He is in full salvation mode. The Centurion watches as He asks God to forgive all those doing this to Him, makes sure His mother is taken care of, and forgives the thief (the first salvation of the New Covenant was a crucified criminal; that tells us all we could ever need to know about the heart of God!). Then, at noon, the high-noon sun is blotted out. The sky goes dark, the earth shakes, grave split open, and the dead begin walking around! It is here that God begins to pour out all the judgment for every sin every committed by any human who lived or will live. 2 miles away, thousands of Jews are preparing their Passover sacrifices while the Final Sacrifice is being killed. 3pm, in the midst of chaos and darkness, Jesus says, “It is finished.†Thousands of years of Law, Tradition, and working to gain God’s favor are over! He bows His head (Greek word used translates to “Pillowedâ€), breaths His last, and gives His life; they did not take it; He GAVE it. The veil in the Temple rips from top to bottom—signifying to tearing of the barrier between God and man—and the Temple erupts into chaos!

Through all of this, the Centurion is watching. When it is all over, he says, “Surely this was the Son of God.†Good Friday is the greatest moment for us; it is the beginning of 2000 of Jesus pouring out His grace and mercy, forgiving our sins, and bringing us to Him. It is the mercy that softens the hearts of criminals and centurions. It is the Heart of God!