Two thousand years apart, two questions ask the same thing in different words.
The first was asked by a man named Nathanael, sitting under a fig tree, when his friend Philip ran to tell him that the Messiah had been found, and that he was from Nazareth.
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” – John 1:46
Nathanael wasn’t being poetic. Nazareth was a nowhere town. Overlooked. Ordinary. The kind of place nobody expected anything from. His question was genuine scepticism: surely God wouldn’t show up like this, from a place like that.
The second question gets asked every year, quietly, by Christians and curious onlookers alike, as the Friday before Easter approaches.
If Jesus suffered and died on this day, why do we call it good?
Both questions sound like doubt. But they are pointing, without knowing it, at the same staggering truth.
The Only Good Thing That Ever Came Out of Nazareth
Nathanael’s question turned out to be prophetic in reverse. Because yes — something good did come out of Nazareth. The only truly good thing, in fact, that any town has ever produced.
Jesus of Nazareth was, by the testimony of every account, friend, enemy, and neutral observer alike, a man without fault. Pilate, the Roman governor who sentenced him to death, stood before the crowd and made a declaration that has echoed through history:
“I find no fault in him.” – John 18:38
His disciples, who knew him intimately, wrote that he was without sin. Even the thief crucified beside him, dying in his own guilt, turned and said, “This man has done nothing wrong.” In a world full of flawed, compromised, self-interested people, Jesus stood alone in his goodness.
He healed the sick without charging them. He touched lepers when no one else would. He ate with the people polite society had written off. He forgave those who wronged him. He loved without agenda. If you were to construct the definition of a good person, you would end up describing Jesus.
So Nathanael’s question has an answer: yes. One good thing came out of Nazareth. And what happened to him is the most scandalous part of the story.
The Death Reserved for the Worst
Crucifixion was not a generic form of execution. It was specifically designed for a particular category of person: runaway slaves, enemies of the Roman state, violent criminals, the worst of the worst. It was death by public humiliation; slow, agonising, deliberately visible. The Romans put crosses along main roads precisely so that people would see them and understand the message.
This was not a death meant for good men. It was a death designed to say: this person is beneath contempt.
He was arrested in the middle of the night like a fugitive. He was tried in a process that violated its own laws. He was beaten, mocked, stripped, and nailed to a cross between two actual criminals, as if to complete the picture. As if to make the point.
Isaiah, writing seven centuries before it happened, described it with haunting precision:
“He had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth, yet he was assigned a grave with the wicked.” – Isaiah 53:9
The only good person. The worst death. These two facts don’t fit together, and that’s exactly the point.
Why We Call It Good
Christians don’t call it Good Friday because they are confused about what happened. They call it good because they understand what it accomplished.
The theological word is substitution. Jesus, the only innocent one, took the place of the guilty. The only good man accepted the death meant for the rest of us. And in that exchange, something extraordinary happened: the justice that our wrongs demanded was fully satisfied, and the mercy we could never earn was freely given.
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” – 2 Corinthians 5:21
This is the answer to both questions at once. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Yes. The only truly good person who ever lived. And why do we call his death good? Because that goodness — perfect, undeserved, freely given — was the only thing sufficient to pay what we owed.
The cross is not a tragedy that Christians have learned to make peace with. It is a transaction. The innocent for the guilty. The good for the broken. Nazareth’s finest, dying in the place of the worst.
And that, not despite the suffering but through it, is why we call it good.
Don’t Rush Past Friday
Every year, the temptation is to skip straight to Easter Sunday. To the triumph, the empty tomb, the joy. And Sunday is coming, that is the whole promise.
But Sunday only means what it means because of Friday. The resurrection is the answer to the cross, not a replacement for it. Sit with the weight of what Jesus bore on Good Friday. Let Nathanael’s scepticism and your own questions coexist with the staggering answer they both receive.
Something good did come out of Nazareth. And it changed everything.
🎧 Listen This Good Friday
Looking for a sermon that brings the cross to life this Easter season? We recommend:
Good Friday for Bad People by Marshall Segal
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