A Sermon for Pinjarra Anglican Church on Good Friday 2021

Isaiah 52:13–53:12; Psalm 22; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; John 18:1–19:42

Who is this man who died on a Roman cross 2000 years ago?  If you were there on the first Easter what would you have seen when you looked at Jesus?  Who would you have thought he was?  The reading from Isaiah suggests that we might not have thought much of him.  “For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” (Isa 53:2).  Jesus most likely looked like the average Jewish man in the street, pretty ordinary to look at.  But John’s Gospel allows us to see behind his ordinary appearance.

John’s Gospel begins with telling us who this man is.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (Jn. 1:1-3 NIV).  Within today’s reading, Jesus affirmed the Gospel’s estimation that he is God come in the flesh.  When the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, he asked them “Who is it you want?”  “Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “I am he,” Jesus said (Jn. 18:5 NIV).  In Greek, what Jesus is recorded as saying here is ego eimi, which means I AM.  This is the divine name that God revealed to Moses at the burning bush.  When Jesus uttered the divine name all the soldiers stepped back and fell to the ground.  He repeated his declaration of the divine I AM in verse 8.

This man, Christ Jesus, is no ordinary man, despite appearances.  If an ordinary man had died on Good Friday, how could that have helped you and me?  Thousands upon thousands of people were executed by crucifixion by the Romans.  The death of Jesus was dreadful but what makes it matter for us is who he is.  Only God can save us.  God spoke through Isaiah, saying, “I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from me there is no saviour” (Isa 43:11).  But only a human being could die in the place of sinners.  Therefore, the Son of God became a human being in order to die the death of sinners.

As the Son of God, Jesus chose to give up his life for our sake.  No one forced death upon him.  We see this in today’s reading.  Although Peter tried to rescue Jesus, Jesus told him to put the sword away.  “Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” (John 18:11).  Drinking the cup the Father has given is another way of saying that Jesus would bear the wrath of God, the judgement that should fall upon sinful humanity.  Earlier in John’s Gospel, Jesus told his disciples, “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.  This command I received from my Father” (John 10:17-18).  Matthew’s Gospel confirms this idea that Jesus went to the cross deliberately and intentionally in obedience to his Father.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, he assured his disciples, “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?  But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” (Matt. 26:53-54 NIV).  All this to say that Jesus’ death was no accident.  He could have avoided it, but he knew that it was necessary for our sakes.  He chose to give up his life for us.

But why?  Our reading from Isaiah tells us the purpose of Jesus’ death.

“Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases;

yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way,

and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:4-6).

Isaiah speaks of this man “wounded for OUR transgression, crushed for OUR iniquities”.  Why would the Son of God die for MY sin and YOUR sin?  Jesus did not die for his own sins because he had none.  Today’s reading from John tells us just this.  Three times Pilate told the Jews, “I find no case against him” (John 18:38; 19:4, 6).  Jesus fully submitted his will to the will of his Father in heaven (John 8:28; 12:50).  He said, “I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me” (John 14:31 NIV).  Luke makes this clear in regard to going to the cross.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus put aside his own desires and submitted fully to the Father’s will, praying, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

Who are we, then, that Jesus had to die for our sins?  With the exception of Jesus himself, human beings are universally sinners.  When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, they demonstrated that they did not believe God the Creator trustworthy.  The devil promised them that they would become “like God” if they ate it (Gen 3:5).  Like Adam and Eve, every human wants to be their own ‘little g’ god, to run their own lives, to choose what is good and what is evil.  As Isaiah says in today’s reading, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way.”  Going our own way has made us enemies of God (Rom 5:10).  Jesus had to die for our sins because we have no means by which to fix our sin problem.  In our natural state as sinners, we are rebels against God.  Only the sinless Son of God could rescue us from this state.

The Old Testament sacrificial system involved the death of animals to forgive sins.  The book of Leviticus is full of different sacrifices for sins.  The sinner brought the sacrifice to the priest in the temple, placed his or her hands on the head of the animal to indicate that it would die as a substitute for the sinner, then the animal was killed and the priest put its blood on the altar to atone for sin.  Clearly, this system was not very effective because it had to be repeated over and over (compare Heb 10:1).  The animal was innocent of sin and the actual sinner did not receive the due punishment for sin.  This was but a shadow of what Jesus did when he died.  He is the substitute for us upon the cross.  This is why Isaiah spoke of this man suffering for OUR transgressions and OUR iniquities.  When Jesus died, he was the one on whom all our sin was placed.  Isaiah says, “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

In his death, Jesus bore every sin ever committed.  “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21 NIV).  Luther powerfully expressed it this way:

“Our most merciful Father, seeing us to be oppressed and overwhelmed with the curse of the law . . . sent his only Son into the world and laid upon him all the sins of all men, saying, ‘You be Peter that denier, Paul that persecutor, blasphemer and cruel oppressor, David that adulterer, that sinner who ate the apple in Paradise, that thief who hung upon the cross, and briefly, you be the person who has committed the sins of all men.  See therefore that you pay and satisfy for them.’”[1]

If we are honest with ourselves, we know that we have committed many sins, in thought and action and inaction.  But whatever those sins may be, Jesus took the punishment due to us upon himself in his death.  Luther did not mean that Jesus actually denied the truth or persecuted the church or blasphemed the name of God, or committed adultery or ate the forbidden fruit in Eden.  But for those hours upon the cross, it was as if Jesus, and not me, was the sinner.  As he hung there in the darkness, it was as if Jesus, and not you, deserved the punishment for your sin.  Because he has paid for those sins and satisfied the wrath of God, we can be set free from our sins.  The sentence of eternal death has been commuted to eternal life.

Only by death upon that cross could Jesus bear the punishment that should be ours.  He died the death of sinners, the punishment that belongs to us.  When he cried out in the words of the Psalm, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1), he was experiencing what it is like to be a sinner, far away from God’s comforting presence.  Although he was the Son of God, to him it felt as if God could not hear him or love him.  He felt the existential emptiness of being cast out of God’s presence and abandoned to sin’s power.  Sinners may choose to ignore God now, but at the final judgment it will be God who casts those sinners away from his presence, never to experience God’s goodness again.  Only because of Jesus’ death can sinners be delivered from this state of being far from God.  Jesus experienced that so that those who trust in him do not have to be away from God.

But, you may well ask: Isn’t there some other way to accomplish our salvation?  Can’t we just be reformed into nicer people?  No.  The epistle reading makes the point that the cross seems like foolishness.  How can such profound weakness on the part of Jesus be the power of God?  But the salvation of sinners comes by the proclamation of the cross of Christ.  Only by the death of the Son of God, a death that included pain, shame, and utter weakness, can we be saved.  This is God’s way.  The epistle goes on to say that Christ Jesus “became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Cor 1:30b-31).  Every aspect of salvation is wrapped up in Jesus Christ.  The task assigned to us is to trust in him.  If it were a matter of working harder at being personally righteous, we would have something to boast about.  But instead, because Jesus has already died the death of sinners on our behalf, we have nothing to boast in except the Lord himself.

Ultimately, the reason for the death of Jesus is that we might be reconciled to God, that we might be forgiven of our sins, that we might have unobstructed access to our Father in heaven.  These things are freely given, but we must trust in Jesus that he is the Saviour because of his death and resurrection.  Only through faith in Christ can we access the benefits of his death for us.