Good Friday: Deliver Us - Tim Horman
Have you ever wondered why we call it "Good" Friday?
On the surface, there's nothing good about a day that commemorates torture and execution. Nothing good about watching an innocent man nailed to pieces of wood and left to suffocate slowly in front of a jeering crowd. Nothing good about a day when hope seemed to die and darkness appeared to win. Yet Christians around the world pause on this day each year to remember this brutal, tragic event—and we dare to call it good.
The question goes deeper still: How has the image of the cross—once the ultimate symbol of Roman imperial terror and absolute power—become the immediately recognizable symbol of Christian faith worldwide? Why would anyone worship a crucified God? And how could the suffering and death of one man two thousand years ago possibly bring salvation to the world?
This Good Friday, Tim Horman explored these profound questions through the lens of the Lord's Prayer, specifically the line we often rush past: "Deliver us from the evil one." In doing so, he helped us understand the cross not just as a beautiful act of love (which it is), but as the decisive victory of God over the demonic powers of evil, suffering, and death.
You can watch Tim’s message above and listen to the audio recording of it below.
Note: If you’d like to see a recording of our full Good Friday service you can watch it here on Youtube.
The Scandalous Weirdness of Christianity
Tim began by acknowledging something we don't often reflect on: Christianity is profoundly, utterly weird. Scholar Fleming Rutledge notes that until the gospel burst upon the ancient world, no one in the history of human imagination had conceived of such a thing as the worship of a crucified man.
"The early Christian preaching announced the entrance of God upon the stage of history in the person of an itinerant Jewish teacher who had been ingloriously nailed up alongside two of society's cast-off criminals to die horribly—rejected and condemned, discarded on the garbage heap of humanity, forsaken by both the religious elite and the common people."
This wasn't a dignified death. There was no honour, no glory, no power on display—at least not in the way the world understands those things. Jesus left behind only a terrified, discredited handful of disciples with no status whatsoever. As historian Tom Holland writes in his book Dominion, that a crucified man might be hailed as a god "could not help but be seen by people everywhere across the Roman world as scandalous, obscene, and grotesque."
No wonder Paul acknowledged that the message of the cross was both an offensive stumbling block to Jews and utter foolishness to Gentiles. Yet he also declared it to be the power of God for salvation. How can both be true?
Deliver Us from the Evil One
The answer lies in understanding what Jesus accomplished on the cross. Tim focused on the often-overlooked final petition of the Lord's Prayer: "Deliver us from the evil one." Note the definite article—Jesus isn't talking vaguely about evil in general or the personal sins we occasionally commit. He's talking about a malevolent and destructive power that stands behind and animates all the evil, pain, suffering, and injustice we see in the world.
Scripture calls this power by many names: the devil, the Satan, Lucifer, the powers. Jesus' favourite term was Beelzebub—literally "Lord of the flies"—a deliberately insulting name evoking images of death and decay, because nothing good is happening wherever large numbers of flies have gathered.
Tim acknowledged that many of us struggle with this concept. When we hear "devil," we think of horror movies like The Exorcist or medieval caricatures of a creature with horns and a pitchfork. Some of us don't believe in the devil at all—believing in God is hard enough without adding supernatural evil into the mix.
But Tim emphasized that we cannot understand Jesus' mission, the coming of the kingdom, or especially the meaning of the cross without acknowledging the presence of the devil in this story. Consider:
One of the first things Jesus did was come face to face with Satan in the wilderness temptation
A huge portion of Jesus' ministry was dedicated to freeing people from the power of Satan
Jesus said he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:18)
Revelation 12 describes the fall of Satan's kingdom through Christ's victory
1 John 3:8 states plainly: "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil"
While Satan is still present and active in the world, Tim explained, because of the cross and especially because of the resurrection, his days are numbered. His end is coming, and he will be finally destroyed when Christ returns to heal and restore all things.
Enemy-Occupied Territory
To help us grasp this vision of Jesus' mission, Tim turned to C.S. Lewis, who described it brilliantly as "a great campaign of sabotage." In Mere Christianity, Lewis writes:
"Christianity thinks this dark power was created by God and was good when he was created, but rebelled and went wrong. As a result, the universe is now at war... We are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy-occupied territory. That's what this world is. And Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling all of us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage."
This is not a campaign against people—Jesus didn't give us that option. Instead, he calls us to love our neighbours and especially to love our enemies. Even while being crucified, Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing."
Jesus' mission targets the malignant power behind everything that corrupts the goodness, love, beauty, and peace God intended for this world. And while we may not be comfortable with the language of "Satan" or "the devil," Tim suggested we all recognize evil when we see it—when something happens that causes us to cry out, "That is wrong! That is unjust! That should not happen! The world should not be this way!"
The Scope of Evil
Tim painted a sobering picture of evil's reach. On the personal level, it's what holds our lives in its grip—the impulses and desires we cannot fully escape or control, making us perfectionists, procrastinators, liars, abusers, addicts, bullies, adulterers. Jesus wants to deliver us from all of that.
But Jesus is also addressing the global, systemic evil that Scripture calls "principalities and powers"—the destructive forces that take hold of nations, empires, political systems, ideologies, and religions. This is the evil behind:
The Stalinist gulags and Nazi gas chambers
Endless global wars fueled by greed, religion, or the logic that might makes right
Sweatshops and forced labour
Human trafficking and sex slavery
School shootings and mass violence
The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of so few while millions struggle to survive
And perhaps most disturbing: our seeming powerlessness to stop these patterns from repeating despite all the lessons of history. This is what we call the Satan—the opposite of everything Jesus represents.
Why the Cross Was Necessary
This brings us back to the central question: Why didn't God just show up in power and glory and crush his enemies? Why not extend his mighty arm and squeeze the devil like a pimple, taking out all the corrupt nations and evil people along with him?
Tim offered two crucial reasons:
First, none of us are innocent. We have all participated in evil, whether by things we've done or failed to do. We all have blood on our hands. Pilate thought he could wash his hands of Jesus' blood, but he couldn't—and neither can we. If God had taken out all the evil people, all of us would have had to go as well.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, Jesus could not defeat the devil's tactics by using the devil's tactics. If God had exerted his will over his enemies and forced them to obey at the threat of violence or death, it would have led to our dehumanisation and absolute enslavement. We would have simply traded one violent overlord for another—and God would have become another Satan by another name, only infinitely worse.
"Jesus could not defeat the devil's tactics by using the devil's tactics. It had to be another way. It had to be the way of nonviolence. It had to be the way of suffering and surrender. It had to be the way of death. It had to be the way of the cross."
Because Jesus is love—because God is love—he willingly took into his own body all the worst that human and demonic power can unleash. He submitted himself to a humiliating and dehumanising death, even death on a cross. The cross is where the decisive battle between Christ and sin was fought. It's the place where the wages of sin (which is death) were accepted on behalf of the whole human race. And in their place, God offers us mercy, freedom, forgiveness, and new life.
Why Not Just Forgive?
But couldn't God have just forgiven us without all this? Couldn't he have simply said, "Your sins aren't really that bad. I'm gracious. If you're sorry, I'll forgive and forget"?
Tim was clear: That would make a mockery of justice. If God forgives all the wrong we've done without there being a reckoning, without judgment, then justice is meaningless and evil wins. We wouldn't accept that if someone sinned against us in a gross and violent way—and neither does God.
Fleming Rutledge writes: "Forgiveness without judgment is not enough. Wishful thinking about the intrinsic goodness of every human being is not enough. Inclusion is not inclusive enough as it does not deliver real justice."
There are some things—many things—that must be condemned and set right if we are to proclaim a God of both justice and mercy. And for that to happen, Jesus Christ offered himself to be the condemned and rejected one. In full knowledge of what would happen, in perfect union with his Father, he went to Calvary carrying his own cross. There, despised and rejected, God-forsaken, he hung as the representative of all humanity, suffering condemnation in the place of all humanity to break the power of sin and death over all humanity.
The Triumph Hidden in Defeat
Tim concluded by pointing us to Colossians 2:13-15:
"When you were dead in your sins, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us. He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross, and having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."
Paul is telling us that the moment that looked like Christ's greatest defeat was in fact the moment of his greatest triumph. The moment it looked like the principalities and powers had won was actually when Christ secured his victory. And he triumphed not by exerting violence against them, but by absorbing the violence exerted against him. In this way, Christ disarmed them. He removed their power.
As Hebrews 2 puts it: Jesus shared in our humanity "so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death."
Yes, those powers are still at work in the world. But that is coming to an end. The death and resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the end, and the end is coming.
Living Without Fear
What does this mean for us? Tim offered this encouragement: We do not need to live in fear. There's a lot happening in the world right now that induces fear, but we don't need to give into it. When we put our faith in Jesus, we are joined to him and to his victory. We can now live in hope rather than despair.
All the despair and hopelessness we see in the world can only be healed—not by more conquest, more war, more violence, more political power—but by embracing the self-giving love of Christ, poured out in his blood shed on the cross. This is grace we don't deserve and cannot earn, but it is a free gift to all who call on his name.
All we need to do is ask. Turn to Christ and he will set you free.
One Way to Live It Out This Week
This Good Friday, take time to sit with the cross. Not to rush past it to the celebration of Easter, but to genuinely reflect on what Jesus absorbed on your behalf—all the violence, injustice, condemnation, and evil that you and I could never overcome on our own. Then identify one area of your life where fear, despair, or the power of sin still seems to have a grip. Bring it honestly to Jesus in prayer, remembering that he has already won the victory. Ask him to help you live in the freedom he died to give you.
A Short Prayer
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us. We confess that we live in a broken world, and that we ourselves have contributed to its brokenness. Thank you for not abandoning us to the consequences of our sin, but for taking that judgment upon yourself. Thank you that the cross, which looked like defeat, was actually your greatest victory. Help us to live as people who are truly free—free from fear, free from the power of sin and death, free to love as you have loved us. Grant us your peace. Amen.
Personal Reflection
Before reading this, how did you understand the meaning of Good Friday? Has this sermon expanded or challenged your understanding in any way?
Tim said we don't need to live in fear because of Christ's victory. What fears do you find yourself returning to? How might the truth of the cross speak into those fears?
Where do you see the work of "the evil one"—the systemic, destructive power of sin—most clearly in the world around you? How does understanding Christ's victory change how you respond to it?
Small Group Discussion
Why do you think Christianity has been called "weird" or "scandalous" throughout history? In what ways does the cross still challenge or offend people today?
Read Colossians 2:13-15 together. What does it mean that Christ "disarmed the powers and authorities" by the cross? How is that different from defeating them through violence or force?
C.S. Lewis described Jesus' mission as "a great campaign of sabotage" in enemy-occupied territory. How does this metaphor shape the way you think about following Jesus in daily life?
Tim mentioned that we cannot defeat evil by using evil's tactics. Where are Christians today most tempted to try to advance God's kingdom through coercion, violence, or the misuse of power?
Fleming Rutledge wrote, "Forgiveness without judgment is not enough." Why is it important that justice and mercy come together at the cross? What would be missing if God had simply overlooked our sin?
How does the reality of spiritual evil help you make sense of the suffering and injustice you see in the world? Does it change the way you pray or act?
The sermon concluded with the invitation to "turn to Christ and he will set you free." What does freedom in Christ look like practically? In what areas of life do you most need to experience that freedom?
Spend time praying for one another. Ask God to reveal where fear, despair, or the power of sin still has a grip in your lives, and pray together for Christ's freedom and victory to become more real in those areas.