Showdown at the Cross
Introduction: During Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, Satan tempted him to accept glory without suffering. Any one of us would have caved at that choice, but Jesus didn’t. In saying no to Satan, Jesus chose to live for the day of his death. He chose to accept a crown only after carrying a cross.
At one point, Luke records that
“Jesus took the twelve aside and told them, ‘We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.’” (Luke 18:31-34)
The final events leading to Jesus’ death on the cross
Crucifixion was a common form of capital punishment for almost 1000 years. It ended in 331 A.D. through an edict by the emperor Constantine. It is one of the cruelest forms of punishment ever devised. For Jesus, it begins with …
The walk. Beginning in verse 26 we read,
As they led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him.
Jesus turned and said to them, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, “Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!” Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?’ (Luke 23:26-31)
Normally the condemned would carry the crossbeam on their back. Given the beating Jesus had incurred, a bystander is employed to make sure he doesn’t die before they can crucify him. Carrying the cross was symbolic of the reality to come. The person carrying a cross was as good as dead. When Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.”, I believe he was inviting his followers to count ourselves as dead (Luke 9:23).
The crucifixion
“Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals — one on his right, the other on his left.
Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.” (Luke 23:32-34)
It is significant that Luke, being a physician, does not emphasize Jesus’ physical sufferings. Instead, his interest is on Jesus’ final words and the irony of the Creator being crucified by the created. First, he warns the lamenting women that a judgment is coming and that they should weep for their children because it will not be pretty. Now as they hammer nails into his feet and wrists, Jesus graciously intercedes for his executioners: “If they only knew what they were doing … Father forgive them.” Luke’s interest is in what comes next.
The taunts. Some would say that being publicly humiliated and shamed is more severe than the pain associated with death. Jesus receives his share of both. Three times Jesus is taunted while he hangs on the cross. Look at verse 35.
“The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.’ The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’ There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!’” (Luke 23:35-39).
Did you notice the progression? The taunts begin with the Jewish rulers, the white collar establishment. Then the Roman soldiers, blue collar Gentiles, join in. Then one of the criminals, a death row inmate, feels comfortable enough to join the chorus. Like a group of seventh graders picking on the fat kid on the playground, it becomes a frenzied free-for-all.
Before he dies, Jesus has a few more things he will say, but not now. He shows incredible restraint here. As the unholy heckle the holy, Jesus remains silent. Peter tells us in his first letter why that is:
“When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:23-24)
Put yourself in his situation. If the temptations in the desert were difficult, the temptation to be vengeful, to lash out at his hecklers here must have been great. Of course, he could save himself. All he has to do is say the word and twelve legions of angels could swarm in on the situation and leave these guys like burnt toast (Matthew 26:52-54). Sinners are sneering that the Savior of the world can’t save himself. He remains silent. He finally breaks his silence for …
A final act of grace
“One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ But the other criminal rebuked him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.’
Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.’” (Luke 23:39-43)
Sanity returns to the scene when the other criminal speaks up. As a man facing his own mortality, he begins doing remedial work in religion. He begins considering what he will say to God in a few hours when he dies. Fortunately for him, God is close by. He is hanging on a cross right next to him. While the taunting man beats up Jesus with his words, the other humbles himself and asks for salvation to be given to him.
His rebuke of the other thief shows that he fears God. He is open and confesses, possibly for the first time in his life, to the reality that his life falls short. His request reveals that he believes the sign over Jesus’ head. He recognizes that Jesus is a king, that he has a kingdom, and that his kingdom is not of this earth. And he believes that Jesus can save him.
Confidently, compassionately, calmly Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, despite what you see, despite what people are saying, I can you give you eternal life.” It is his last ministry before his death.
The death of an innocent man.
Look with me at verses 44-49.
It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away. But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things. (Luke 23:44-49)
The sixth hour is best understood to be late morning. Where singing angels and the glory of the Lord were the backdrop to his birth, darkness is the backdrop of his death. The sun stops shining because this is not the death of an innocent Jew. It is not the death of a righteous prophet. It is not the death of a good moral teacher. This is not Buddha, Ghandi, Mohammed or Mother Theresa. Since chapter 1, Luke has been making a case that this man Jesus isn’t your normal guy. It is dark because this is the death of God’s anointed, God’s chosen one, the Messiah, the King of the Jews, the King of Kings, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Lord, and the Lord of Lords.
But in the end Jesus was not killed. His life was not taken from him. Instead, he voluntarily gave up his life to his Father. He chooses when he will breath his last breath. Lord over sin, Lord over sickness, and Lord over death.
The burial
Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea and he was waiting for the kingdom of God. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid. (Luke 23:50-53)
The placement of Jesus into the tomb is significant because there will be a contrast between what is put in the grave on Friday and what is not in the grave on Sunday. But that is for next week. As strongly as he can, Luke makes the point that when they took Jesus off the cross, he was dead.
The accomplishments of Jesus’ death on the cross
What was accomplished by Jesus’ death on the cross? When I get into spiritual conversations with people, I will often try to understand who they think Jesus is and why he is so important. Often I will get answers about how “Jesus shows us how to live.” This answer is good, but it leaves a big question unanswered. And then I just have to ask it: “If Jesus shows us how to live, then what was the purpose of his death? Why did he die the way he did?” Often the answer I get is a long pause and then, “I’m not sure.”
Paul summarizes what happened at the cross in a sweet sentence in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) God’s most visible expression of love is seen through what was accomplished by Jesus’ death on the cross. Let’s review some of those accomplishments.
A substitute offers to take our place. If you slow down long enough to reflect on what’s going on in the world, you get this sense that there is something deeply wrong with people. How do explain the Hutu rebels of Rwanda massacring 500,000 people from the Tutsi tribe? Or the Serbians carrying out ethnic genocide against the Bosnians? Or South African apartheid? Or American slavery? How do you explain the “Bossman,” the guy here in St. Louis who knowingly exposed over 100 people to the virus that causes AIDS? What causes people to live this way?
But let’s correct the idea that the problem is “out there” and look inside at ourselves. In the 7th grade there was an overweight kid in my class named Mike. He was the last one to be chosen on all the teams, he was teased and picked on openly and made fun of in gym class. One day the kid who sat behind Mike kicked the desk away just as he was getting ready to sit down. You can picture what happened. The whole class erupted in laughter as they saw Mike on his back, his face red as a beet. Don’t you just want to pound the daylights out of the kid sitting behind Mike?
I was the kid who sat behind Mike. I did it because I knew Mike was an easy target. I knew that if I could make a fool of Mike, my stock would go up in the pecking order. Everyone was laughing except Mike. I don’t know he felt, but I’d guess that shame and humiliation are pretty close. A simple prank? No, I knew what I was doing. You know what I was doing because you’ve done it yourself. You have been the kid sitting behind Mike, only your situations have been and are different. I robbed his dignity for my own benefit.
Now, I could tell you even worse stories about myself. Gratefully I don’t have time. But that twisted sense in us that will rob another person’s dignity for our own benefit is a symptom of what the Bible refers to as sin. Sin is the condition in each of us that rebels against God. It affects everyone. It comes at a cost. The price to be a sinner in God’s eyes is death, according to the Scriptures. This includes physical death but more broadly means temporal and eternal separation from God. This separation shows itself in our broken relationships, the emptiness and despair in our souls, confusion about our purpose, and a hopelessness that Happy Hours just don’t fix.
We deserve to die and receive the sentence for our sins. At the cross Jesus becomes our substitute. Paul wrote that “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) And Peter wrote that “Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” (1 Peter 3:18)
Jesus died instead of you and me. Jesus took upon Himself the wrath of God instead of you taking it. He died in your place so that you no longer have to pay for your sin. He experienced the separation from God so that you can experience relationship with God.
The writer of Hebrews wrote that Jesus’ death was “for all time one sacrifice for sins” (Hebrews 10:12). He is a worthy substitute for all people, for all their sin, for all time. Nothing needs to be added. Nothing can be taken from it.
In becoming a substitute for us, …
God’s anger against us is satisfied. The most complete word to describe God is holy. He is everything we are not. He is perfect, distinct, different, pure and without sin. He is so holy that he is described as “holy, holy, holy.”
Now a holy God and a sinful 7th grader have a problem. God doesn’t lower his standard and shrug his shoulders and say “Well, they’re only human.” All sin violates the dignity of his nature. It would be unjust for him not to respond with anger toward the indignity. God’s anger is just and righteous toward sin and the person who has sinned against him.
At the cross, God’s wrath is satisfied. In the book of Romans, chapter 3 beginning in verse 25, Paul says that
“God presented him [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:25-26; see also Hebrews 2:17; 1 John 2:2, 4:10)
In the movie The Last Emperor, the young child who becomes the last emperor of China is asked by his brother, “What happens when you do wrong?” The last emperor replies, “When I do wrong, someone else is punished.” He demonstrates by breaking a jar which causes one of his servants to be beaten. At the cross, Jesus does the exact opposite of the last emperor. The King of Kings, the eternal Emperor, accepts punishment himself because of the sins of his servants.[i] Since God’s just wrath is satisfied, …
Forgiveness is offered to cancel the debt of our sin. Our sin incurred a debt we owe to God, a debt we could never pay. The debt was paid by Jesus so God could surrender his right to get even.
My friend Chris Heasty, the Pastor-Teacher of Access shared a great insight about human relationships with me this week. He said that “forgiveness is a rare commodity. It is rare because it means that someone has to decide to take the consequences for someone else’s actions. It means that someone else willingly absorbs the blows of another.”
The writer of Hebrews communicates a similar thought that “without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22). Let me give you my translation. “Without someone absorbing the blows, there is no forgiveness in our relationship with God.” Someone has to eat the pain caused by sin. Jesus absorbs the blows. Since he is God in the flesh, God Himself absorbs the blows that people rightfully deserve to receive.
Many of you are Christians as defined by Scripture. But you carry tremendous guilt and shame because of the way you have lived. Or maybe, you have failed morally in some way, you have repented and returned to your first love, but you wonder if God will forgive you. In 1 John, we read
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives … He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 1:9-10,2:2).
With our sins forgiven, …
A broken relationship is reconciled. When there is a relational breakdown in a marriage, it isn’t wise to counsel with just one party because as we say, “it takes two to tango.” There is a relational breakdown between you and God. God did nothing to cause you to be separated from him. You moved away. Reconciliation means to restore harmony to an estranged relationship. Paul wrote about the cross that “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” (Colossians 1:21-22)
God could have justifiably stopped being merciful with forgiveness, but he goes a step further. At the cross, God expresses his love by lavishly giving forgiven enemies an extra privilege—a relationship with him right now. But that is not all. He goes even farther and …
Adoption papers are drawn up. The cross makes it possible for us to not only have a reconciled relationship with God but to have a new kind of relationship with God. Paul writes in the book of Galatians,
“But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” (Galatians 4:4-7)
As Jesus died on the cross, God was, metaphorically speaking, drawing up adoption papers. God doesn’t just invite his enemies to be in relationship with him as a slave. He invites them into his home, to be a part of his family, and gives them full rights as children.
Do you know what privilege the relationship has? How did Jesus address God? Abba, the Aramaic term for Father, a term of endearment, intimacy, and safety. His use of this term for God was one of the things that got him crucified. The privilege former enemies are given is that they now can approach the holy, living God and call him Father.
Only three people in the world call me father. The neighbor kids call me Mr. Stolwyk. My nephews call me Uncle Paul. But when I get home my kids call me Dad. They have a special relationship with me. The cross offers another special relationship.
There are other significant accomplishments that happened when Jesus dies on the cross–the law of Moses is abolished as a rule of life, Satan and his demons are defeated, and reconciliation with other people is made possible. But we don’t have time to elaborate on those today.
The response to Jesus’ death on the cross.
The two criminals who die next to Jesus model our possible responses to what has been accomplished by Jesus on the cross.
You can follow the first criminal and become a mocker. Jesus died to be a savior, but he doesn’t force his work on anyone. He offers his love as a gift. Gifts must be received and opened before they are yours. The first criminal could have asked Jesus to remember him as well, and Jesus would have said the same thing to him. But instead of asking, he taunted. He died with his gift unopened. When he stood before a holy God a few hours later, he stood alone with no substitute, no one taking his place.
Or you can follow the second criminal in repentance and faith. He opened the gift of love and relationship offered by Jesus’ death. You can follow his example by admitting to yourself that you are a sinner, get down on your knees and tell God that you agree with his assessment, and ask him to apply Jesus’ death to your life. Jesus’ death will then cover you. All that was accomplished at the cross will be yours.
Tags:
Cross
Burial
Substitute
Forgiveness
Reconciliation
Adoption
[i]Philip Yancey, What is So Amazing About Grace?, 67.