Thus far
we have looked at both the actual playing out of the crucifixion historically
and some of its prophetic fulfillment.
·
Last week we
specifically saw John’s one thousand year old prophetic connection between
Jesus and David.
·
The connection
was found in Psalm 69.
·
We saw that Psalm
69 gave us a “type” for the Righteous Sufferer in David.
o
Jesus perfectly
fulfilled this “type”.
·
We also so that
Psalm 69 had a “sour wine” connection with Jesus.
·
Both David and
Jesus as Righteous Sufferers were mocked and “sour wine” was used to do the
mocking.
·
Today we will
examine the theological/spiritual significance of the cross.
1) IT IS FINISHED
John 19:28–30 (ESV) — 28
After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the
Scripture), “I thirst.” 29 A jar
full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a
hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. 30
When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed
his head and gave up his spirit.
When Jesus
spoke the words, “It is finished” (vs. 30), an obvious question presents
itself.
·
What is finished?
·
Putting ourselves
in the shoes of Jesus’ followers who were present at the cross, we can speculate
that they would have been tempted to fear that all hope was finished.
After all,
they had just witnessed:
·
The death of
their Messiah.
·
The death of
their King
·
The death of
their Rabbi.
·
The death of the
Son of God.
·
The death of a
dear friend.
Yet we
know that Jesus’ words were not a “cry of defeat” – D.A. Carson.
·
And in three
days, Jesus’ followers would also know it as well.
·
His words were a
“cry of victory”.
With the completed
work of Jesus on the cross, at least three things were accomplished (there were
many more of course).
·
(1) Jesus had
completed the Father-given mission of bearing witness to the truth.
o
John 18:37 (ESV) — 37b …For this purpose I was born and for
this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth.
·
(2) He finished
laying the groundwork for the now and not yet Kingdom of God.
o
Historical Jesus
scholar Dale Allison puts it like this, “Jesus’ death marked the beginning of
the fulfillment of eschatological expectation…the birth of the new era” – DJG.
o
Jesus Himself
said He must die so that He could send the Holy Spirit (John 16:7).
·
(3) The Atonement
We are
going to dive deeper into the third of these three – the atonement.
Jesus’ own
words introduce us to His thoughts about the atonement.
·
Mark 10:45 (ESV) — 45 For even the Son of Man came not to be
served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
·
John 12:32 (ESV) — 32 And I, when I am lifted up from
the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
Paul’s
words, the earliest written words we have from Christianity, agree with Jesus’
– not surprisingly.
·
Romans 4:25 (ESV) — 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses
and raised
for our justification.
·
1 Corinthians 15:3 (ESV) — 3 For I delivered to you as of first
importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in
accordance with the Scriptures,
So having
seen briefly that both Jesus and Paul saw the work on the cross as essential
for the atonement, let’s see what exactly the atonement is.
2)
THE ATONEMENT – JESUS’ WORK ON THE CROSS
What is the atonement?
·
“The atonement is the work Christ did in his
life and death to earn our salvation”
– Wayne Grudem.
·
“By offering himself as a sacrifice, by
substituting himself for us, actually bearing the punishment that should have
been ours, Jesus appeased the Father and effected a reconciliation between God
and humanity” – Millard
Erickson.
Why is it so important?
·
“The atonement is
the crucial doctrine of the faith. Unless we are right here it matters little,
or so it seems to me, what we are like elsewhere” – Leon Morris as quoted by
Millard Erickson.
·
This is because
the atonement is where the love, justice and holiness of the Father and the
depravity of man find resolution in the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
·
So how one
views God’s love, justice and holiness and how one views the extent of
man’s depravity affects how one views what happened on the cross.
Millard
Erickson teases out the implications of a right or wrong view of the atonement as
follows:
·
“If God is a very
holy, righteous, and demanding being, then humans will not be able to satisfy
him easily, and it is quite likely that something will have to be done on humans’
behalf to satisfy God. If, on the other hand, God is an indulgent, permissive
Father who says, “We have to allow humans to have a little fun sometimes,” then
it may be sufficient simply to give them a little encouragement and
instruction. If Christ is merely a human being, then the work that he did
serves only as an example; he was not able to offer anything on our behalf
beyond his perfect example of doing everything he was required to do, including
dying on the cross. If, however, he is God, his work for us went immeasurably
beyond what we are able to do for ourselves; he served not only as an example
but as a sacrifice for us…If humans are basically spiritually intact, they
probably can, with a bit of effort, fulfill what God wants of them. Thus, instruction,
inspiration, and motivation constitute what humans need and hence the essence
of the atonement. If, however, humanity is totally depraved and consequently
unable to do what is right no matter how much they wish to or how hard they
try, then a more radical work had to be done on their behalf.”
3)
WHY WAS THE ATONEMENT NECESSARY?
God
didn’t have to save us.
·
The
atonement was not necessary.
·
God
was not lonely, lacking love and fellowship – all were perfectly present in the
Trinity.
·
So,
He could have simply dealt with us the way He did with sinful angels.
·
2 Peter 2:4 (ESV)
— 4 For if God did not spare angels when they
sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness
to be kept until the judgment;
But
God did choose to reconcile believers to Him.
·
In
His grace and mercy, He desired to invite us into the eternal fellowship of the
Trinity – Father, Son, Spirit.
·
So
having freely chosen to do this, we have to ask the following question.
Why was Christ’s work on the cross necessary,
can’t an all powerful God just forgive our sins?
·
There
are many reasons why the cross was necessary.
·
We
will look at just a few.
·
We
will organize them into God-Centered reasons and Man-Centered reasons.
God-Centered Reasons:
1)
Jesus Says So
·
Matthew 26:39
(ESV) — 39 And going a little farther he fell on
his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass
from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”
·
Wayne Grudem says of this passage that if Christ was to accomplish what
the Father had sent Him to accomplish, then “it was not possible for Jesus to avoid the death on the cross”.
·
Jesus also alludes to the necessity of the cross on the road to Emmaus, Luke
24:25–26 (ESV) — 25 And he said to
them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have
spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things
and enter into his glory?”
·
John 12:27 (ESV) — 27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall
I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come
to this hour.
2)
God’s Holiness
·
The
very nature of God’s holiness required action to be taken that believers might
be reconciled.
·
Millard
Erickson puts it like this, “The nature
of God is perfect and complete holiness. This is not an optional or arbitrary
matter; it is the way God is by nature. Being contrary to God’s nature, sin is
repulsive to him. He is allergic to sin, so to speak. He cannot look upon it.”
·
The
presence of sin could no more exist in fellowship with a holy God than there
could be a square circle.
The
holiness of God is so absolute and unrelenting it can seem oppressive.
·
The
story of David and Uzzah demonstrates this for us.
·
1 Chronicles 13:9–11 (ESV) — 9 And when they came to the threshing floor
of Chidon, Uzzah put out his hand to take hold of the ark, for the oxen
stumbled. 10 And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and he
struck him down because he put out his hand to the ark, and he died there
before God. 11 And David was angry
because the Lord had broken out
against Uzzah.
·
R.C.
Sproul tells us, “Uzzah assumed that his hand was less polluted than the earth.
But it wasn't the ground or the mud that would desecrate the ark; it was the
touch of man.”
·
God’s
holiness and our depravity are oil and water; they can’t be mixed and God’s
holiness can’t be diluted.
3)
God’s Covenant
·
Our God is a covenant God.
·
And the new covenant of Jeremiah 31 “will be
dependent on [God’s] performance rather than [ours]” – Michael Horton.
·
Jeremiah 31:33 (ESV) — 33 For this is the covenant that I will
make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and
I
will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall
be my people.
Jesus’ work on the cross was part of this new covenant
action of God.
·
And as with the Mosaic covenant, the new
covenant was to be sealed with the shed blood of an acceptable sacrifice.
·
Hebrews 9:22b (ESV) — 22b …and without the shedding of blood
there is no forgiveness of sins.
·
John 1:29 (ESV) — 29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward
him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the
sin of the world!
So
as we pivot from these God-Centered reasons to some Man-Centered reasons for
the atonement, we have to appreciate and recognize something absolutely
foundational.
·
The atonement had meaning for us first and foremost because it had
meaning between Jesus and the Father.
·
“The primary emphasis and the primary
influence of Christ’s work of redemption is not on us, but on God the Father”
– Wayne Grudem.
·
Millard Erickson
also argues that the direct effects of the atonement were first on God the
Father and then on believers.
o
He says that
firstly, “Christ died to satisfy a
principle in the very nature of God the Father.”
When the
Father’s wrath was satisfied and justice was secured, Jesus’ work on the cross
could save believers.
·
Jesus first had
to accomplish the work required by the Father.
·
And only then
could the Holy Spirit apply Jesus’ work to us.
·
This is called
the economy of salvation.
Now
we can look at some Man-Centered reasons for the atonement.
Man-Centered Reasons:
In
addition to the necessity of the atonement as cited above, there also exist at
least 5 perils of the human condition that necessitated action from God (1st
four from Wayne Grudem).
·
(1) We deserve to
die as the penalty for sin.
·
(2) We deserve to
bear God’s wrath against sin.
·
(3) We are separated from God by our sins.
·
(4) We are in bondage to sin and to the kingdom of
Satan.
·
(5) We fall short of the glory of God.
How did the cross remedy the five aforementioned
perils?
Five
Perils Remedied by the Cross:
The 5
perils of the human condition were remedied for believers by Christ’s work on
the Cross in the 6 ways.
(a) Sacrifice – Hebrews 9:26 (ESV) — 26 for then he would
have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is,
he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself.
·
“To pay the penalty of death that we deserved
because of our sins, Christ died as a sacrifice for us” – Grudem.
·
Hebrews also
shows Christ “as the high priest who
entered into the Holy Place to offer sacrifice. But the sacrifice Christ
offered was not the blood of goats and calves, but his own blood” –
Erickson.
·
The priests
offered sacrificed year after year but the nature of Christ’s sacrifice made it
necessary only one time.
·
“What is unique about Christ’s sacrifice, and
very important to keep in mind, is that Christ is both the victim and the
priest who offers it” – Erickson.
(b) Propitiation – 1 John 4:10
(ESV) — 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us
and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
·
“To remove us from the wrath of God that we
deserved, Christ died as a propitiation for our sins” – Grudem.
·
A propitiation is
an appeasement and removal of God’s wrath from believers; Christ took
believer’s wrath on Himself.
·
“‘Propitiation’ is a reminder that God is
implacably opposed to everything that is evil, that his opposition may properly
be described as ‘wrath’, and that this wrath is put away only by the atoning
work of Christ” – NBD.
(c) Reconciliation – 2 Corinthians 5:18–19 (ESV) — 18 All
this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the
ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling
the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and
entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
·
“To overcome our separation from God, we
needed someone to provide reconciliation and thereby bring us back into
fellowship with God” – Grudem.
·
“The death of Christ…brings to an end the
enmity and estrangement that exist between God and humankind” – Erickson.
(d) Redemption – Mark 10:45 (ESV) — 45 For even the Son
of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for
many.”
·
Because “We as sinners are in bondage to sin and to
Satan, we need someone to provide redemption and thereby “redeem” us out of
that bondage”, Christ ransomed Himself to destroy that bondage. – Wayne
Grudem.
(e) Substitution – 2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV) — 21 For our
sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.
·
Galatians 3:13
(ESV) — 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of
the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who
is hanged on a tree”—
·
“Because he has come to be sin, we have
ceased to be sin or sinners” – Erickson.
·
Christ took our
place literally not symbolically.
(f) Participation – John 17:22–23 (ESV) — 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to
them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they
may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved
them even as you loved me.
·
Paul tells us that we fall short of the glory of
God (Romans 3:23).
·
We lack the character and attributes of God –
His glory.
·
Because of the work of Jesus on the cross, we
are afforded the privilege of participating in Jesus’ glory.
·
The glory that He shares with the Father.
·
Our glory deficit is thus remedied.
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