This is a message given to Tabor combined chapel 4th April 2018.
Easter is the time when we remember the amazing grace of Jesus shown in his death. In his life, Jesus showed grace to the world, to all the outcasts, the sick, the rejected, and to anyone who would come to him. But there is a catch to grace. Grace can only be received by sinners. The events of Easter demonstrate this fact.
On Palm Sunday the crowds hailed Jesus as a king, the Son of David (Matt 21:9; Mark 11:10). A week later they cried out, “Crucify him!” (Mark 15:13). Jesus disappointed them. He was not the one who would overthrow the Romans. He was not the conquering king that they wanted. Jesus allowed himself to be crucified because he knew that the real enemy is not the Romans, since that is the enemy outside us. The real enemy is the human heart. The human heart is, as Jer 17:9 says, “deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” The human problem that needed to be cured by the death of Jesus is that we desire to justify ourselves. We want to make everyone believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with us. We want God to believe this of us as well. We most certainly do not want to admit that we are sinners.
So the real reason why Jesus was crucified, aside from the fact the God had ordained it for the salvation of the world, is that Jesus exposed the truth that human beings are sinners and have nothing to offer God. We are morally and spiritually bankrupt. His very presence among people demonstrated this fact. The religious leaders hated Jesus because of this. Of all people they believed themselves to be upright and pious. They were the ones who surely had no need of forgiveness because they had no sin to repent of. Yet the religious leaders, for all their moral uprightness, were the ones who crucified God’s messiah.
All the hatred that was hurled at Jesus as he went through his passion, the beatings, the spitting, the flogging and the crucifixion itself, was not simply hatred of a weak Jew. It was representative of the hatred that people feel toward God. Humans hate God because we want to run our own lives, to be our own gods, to determine good and evil ourselves. This is what Adam and Eve desired when they chose to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden. They wanted to make their own choices, to be powerful as people, not weak and fully dependent on the Creator. When God came in the flesh, that hatred eventually boiled over when Jesus would not do what people wanted him to do.
Like the pious religious leaders, we despise the weakness of the cross. The cross is an offence to Jews and Gentiles alike. Why is that people despise the weakness of a naked dying Jew, who is at the same time the Saviour of the world? It is because on the cross that man represents you and me. We are the ones who deserve to be upon that cross and we see ourselves and our own just desserts in the man Jesus. He was helpless on the cross. We are helpless before God although we do not want to be. Jesus bore the wrath of God there. You deserve to be under the wrath of God and you know that. I deserve to be beaten, naked and shamed. You are I are the ones who deserve to die. The cross exposes our sinfulness in its utter intensity. This makes the cross something which no one wants to look at. If we look at the man dying upon that Roman cross, then we are reminded of what our sin means. We hate the weakness of Jesus on the cross because it is our weakness before God.
And no one wants to admit to their own sin. If I admit that I am a sinner then I must admit that I am utterly helpless to bring about my own salvation. I must admit that I am pitiable, poor, blind and naked. I have to confess to my moral bankruptcy and I do not want to do that. I prefer to believe that there is something good in me with which to impress God. Somewhere along the line I will come up with a good deed, a religious offering, a mode of worship etc that will put God on my side. It is only a matter of experimenting until I find the thing that I can use to manipulate God into accepting me and hence doing my bidding.
But the cross puts paid to any such nonsensical ideas. If my sin resulted in the Son of God dying on that Roman cross then I really have nothing of my own to bring to the table. I am weak and empty-handed. I am bereft of collateral with God. I must admit to my sin and come humbly and accept the grace of God and his forgiveness of my sin.
This is where Luther’s saying, “sin and sin boldly” is worth considering. Luther wrote: “If you are a preacher of Grace, then preach a true, not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. For he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life in not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says, we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. . . . Pray boldly you too are a mighty sinner.” (Weimar ed. vol. 2, p. 371; Letters I, “Luther’s Works,” American Ed., Vol 48. p. 281- 282) I believe what he is saying is not that disobeying God is a great idea. Rather, he said this because sin is the only qualification that you and I have to receive the grace of God. If I come to God as a sinner in need of mercy I will be justified, because God justifies the ungodly (Rom 4:5). If I refuse to come to God as a sinner then I do not qualify for grace. I will need to justify myself.
You may claim that you are not a religious person but a Christian and hence do not despise the cross. I beg to differ. Our actions betray our own hearts. We so want to do things.
In different Christian contexts self-justification works itself out in different ways. In some churches the Christian life is very oriented towards good works. Do the right thing, bring about justice or social action, witness to strangers and invite people to church. These are not in themselves bad, but if they are done to prove how good you are they are nothing but empty works. When I try to justify myself with works, I am declaring that Jesus is not enough. He only gets me part of the way. I must do something to get there myself.
Then there is the piety of being a Bible College student. After all studying the Bible is very pious as an occupation. It makes you a cut above in terms of your spirituality. It equips you to be the church leader who will be more spiritual than others in church because you are a professional Christian. And going to Bible College is not wrong and neither is it wrong to become a pastor of a church. Yet we can so easily fall into that trap of seeing this as a way of earning the favour of God.
Another means of self-justification is the much more subtle spiritual formula that I have experienced in some Pentecostal churches. This can be a formula for bringing the presence of God to the church service. It used to be three fast songs and three slow songs, back in the day, but now it includes smoke machines and songs welcoming the Holy Spirit. There are also formulas for getting answered prayer. Again, these formulas are part of the human and fleshly plan to come to God without the aid of Jesus, who is the only one who can bring us there. These things pander to our desire to be powerful instead of weak. We do not want to be powerless before God, and yet that is precisely what we are.
The problem with all of these is that it is always Jesus plus something. Jesus plus something equals nothing. It is either Jesus is all that I have before God or I miss out on the grace of God. It can never be Jesus plus something I do. It can never be Jesus and my works or Jesus and my emotions or Jesus and my spiritual experiences or Jesus and my spiritual gifts or Jesus and my ministry. It is Christ alone. Either you acknowledge your utter spiritual lack or you will go on trying to find justification in something else. This tends to impress Christians but God is not fooled.
Self-justification can take another form, a form which seems very pious. There are some people who say things like, I don’t deserve the grace of God. I cannot come to him. He won’t forgive me or accept me. This is a kind of pride that actually says the same thing as the other actions above. It says that Jesus and his cross are not enough for you. You mistakenly believe that somehow there is something you could do to become worthy. There is nothing you can do except admit that you have nothing.
The cross is followed by the glory of the resurrection. The weakness of the Son of God upon the cross and the power of his resurrection from the dead is the guarantee of God’s favour for us. The problem is that to come to the resurrection we must first go to the cross. I am not speaking of suffering here. I am saying that I cannot be raised to life without first giving up all pretence that I am ok. I must allow God to kill me because my sin demands that I die. Only those who know that they are without merit before God will come to Jesus and confess their sinful emptiness and utter weakness. It is only those people who will be resurrected to life.
Every other person, the ones who continue in word and deed to justify themselves, will not see life. We cannot compete with God. If you choose to justify yourself instead of giving up the pretence of your goodness, you will not receive the justification of God. So give it up. Give up your own attempts to gain favour with God apart from Jesus. Jesus is enough and nothing you can do will ever add to that. If you try to add something you will only lose Jesus. Grace is there for the taking but it is impossible to take hold of grace while you are so desperately clinging to your own righteousness.
If we cannot do anything, what about the Christian life? Surely we are instructed to do things. Faith without works is dead, right? Paul answered that question when he wrote: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20 NIV). Once I have given up pretending that I can do anything myself and yielded all my attempts at self-justification, I know that I was crucified with Christ. I am dead but he lives in me. He works in me and through me and my life becomes something that God can and does use for his glory and for his purposes. Jesus is my Christian life.
The key to going forward in the Christian life towards maturity is not moving beyond the cross. There is no beyond the cross. The key is not figuring out the secrets of how to get God to answer your prayers or how to get the presence of God felt in your church. It is not going on more rosters or becoming a missionary. It is none of these things. The key to going on to Christian maturity is to realise that Jesus is enough. He is all in all. I am a sinner and the more I cling to the grace of God the closer to him I become. The less that I try to justify my own life, the more I experience the justification of God. When I give up the pretence that I am OK without Jesus then I can confidently come to God through Christ and know him intimately. So give up all pretence and with Luther “sin and sin boldly.”