The Passion according to John
What does it mean when we say that Jesus died for us, for me, on the cross?
John's Passion account is its own sermon, extending from betrayal at a place across the valley, Gethsemane, to devotion at the foot of the cross; from Peter's three-fold denial to Pilate's three-fold acquittal.
From the many who call for Jesus' crucifixion to the two who remove him from the cross; from those who bind him by force at his arrest, to those who bind him in love at his burial; from the beginning of the end in one garden to the end of the beginning in another.
On this day, like Pontius Pilot, all we have is questions.
Questions about Peter. Peter, the rock on whom Jesus said he will build his church seems to take back everything he has ever said and done with Jesus and abandons him. Peter goes missing. But that is not today’s message.
And Pontius Pilot. It seems like all Pilot had were questions: "Are you the King of the Jews?" (18:33). "What have you done?" (18:35). "So you are a king?" (18:37). "What is truth?" (18:38). "Where are you from?" (19:9). "Do you refuse to speak to me?" (19:10a). "Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?" (19:10b).
All these questions.
But the Good Friday message is always the same and the biggest of all the questions remains the same. What does it mean when we say that Jesus died for us on the cross?
In the gospel accounts, Jesus from the depth of the pain and abandonment of the cross made seven statements. I want to just briefly look at two of them that tell us more about what is happening here on the cross than any other two verses in Scripture.
The first one was prophesied in this morning’s Psalm. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” This cry of lament from Psalm 22 in the mouth of Jesus can’t be avoided even if we wanted to avoid it. A true cry of lament.
Why did Jesus feel forsaken by God? The Bible tells us that he knew he would be at the right hand of God in a few short hours, even if they were pain-filled hours. Throughout Scripture, prophets were all killed in really horrible ways.
Isaiah was sawn in two. In the New Testament dying horrible deaths for Jesus’ sake were welcomed, we may think that perverse, but it is the truth. Fully recorded by non-believing Roman, Greek, and Jewish historians like Josephus.
Steven, the first Martyr, saw Jesus seated at the right hand of God just before his death and welcomed it. Peter was crucified under Nero in c.63AD, but to avoid being compared in any way to Jesus, demanded he be crucified upside down. Paul was beheaded, also under Nero around 65AD and all knew what was coming and welcomed it, Paul wrote “to live is Christ, but to die is gain.”
The roman persecution of Christians began around 25-30 years after Jesus death. These so-called trials of early Christians were much like Jesus’ own trial. ‘Kangaroo courts’ describe them kindly.
Both the Roman and Jewish historians record that these martyrs went to their death willingly. Deaths even worse than crucifixion, if your imagination can picture that. Covered in bitumen and set alight to provide light for the games in the arenas. Sewn inside the bellies of animals and slowly roasted whilst these same people in the arena cheered.
Why wasn’t Jesus like them and almost running to the cross.
Because Jesus, God before time, had never be apart from the Father. We worship God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are one, the triune God. They shared in the same Glory from before time.
Sin means separation from God. Jesus, to atone for the sin of the world had to take all that separation from God onto and into himself on the cross. The lamb without blemish, the sinless human, could be the only acceptable offering.
At the point where Jesus took all our sin into himself; or as Paul and Peter both describe it, “became Sin for us,” he received the full payment for sin, which is death. He was full of our sin when he died on the cross. This was the cup that he didn’t want to drink from. Not so much the cup of temporary suffering, but the human condition of being separate from the Father.
Jesus always called God, Father. Here he calls him God. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” The Father and the Son are one. God himself was crucified for me. God himself. This is why sin is so wretched.
The whole world turned dark between 12 noon and 3pm. An outward sign of the spiritual darkness which enveloped Jesus. What is darkness in John’s gospel but separation from God, “in whom there is no darkness at all” as John puts in in his 1st Letter to the Church (1 John 1:5).
Jesus is the light of the world, but at this specific moment in time and space he absorbed into himself the darkness of all the world from eternity past to eternity future. Into the outer darkness the Son of God plunged for us.
Jesus actually dies! His side was pierced, and he bled. His heart stopped beating and he died.
But even here the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy spirit remained unbroken. At this very same point of death, the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom. This curtain into the Temple’s Holy of Holy’s had for centuries symbolised the alienation of sinners from God, and it no longer existed.
At the very point of death. The sin barrier between God and humans; between God and you and I had been destroyed forever.
This was no death in vain – this death removed all things that would separate us from God; just leaving our repentant and contrite hearts as the acceptable sacrifice, which God will not despise, but honour. The sacrifice has been made once and for all by Jesus.
On the point of death, knowing he had accomplished all that had been required of him in saving the world from itself. Jesus says, “It is finished.” His work was done for all time. He cannot die for us again, nor does he need to.
It is finished forever. The atonement for us is complete. Through faith in Jesus Christ, we are saved from sin and death. We are speechless, there are no more words, no more questions. Let me pray ...