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FIVE
Salvation Procured
We've journeyed from before time began, when God preordained
that Jesus would one day die for the sins of the world, through the centuries
of preparation to the most important weekend in history. The Savior had become
a man and been fully tested for thirty-three years, having lived a life of sinless
perfection. Now His "hour had come." The Lamb of God was ready to
be sacrificed.
On the evening before His crucifixion, Jesus gathered His disciples together
to celebrate their last Passover meal together. He knew He would be dead in
less than twenty-four hours, and that through His death, salvation would be
procured for all who would believe. After that night, there would never again
be a need for anyone to kill another Passover lamb. The Passover would be fulfilled
by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. He would be "smitten of God,"
and we would thus be spared the wrath we deserved. Jesus would become "Christ
our Passover" (1 Cor. 5:7).
Interestingly, Jesus did not instruct His disciples to terminate their practice
of the Passover. Instead, He modified the ritual to suit the revelation that
His death would bring.
At His final Passover meal, He first took bread and broke it, saying that it
was His body broken for them. Next, taking a cup, He instructed them to drink
from it, explaining it was His blood, the blood of the new covenant, shed for
the forgiveness of sins. They were to "do this in remembrance of Him."
The apostle Paul later commented, "For as often as you eat this bread and
drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes" (1 Cor. 11:23-26).
Under the old covenant, God gave numerous rites to the Israelites that He expected
them to practice repeatedly. The Passover was just one example. All of these
rituals served as reminders of spiritual truths and past events that God did
not want His people to forget. Their repeated practice insured that those spiritual
truths and events would be consistently brought to bear on the Israelites' minds.
Even if adults permitted the rituals to lapse into meaningless ceremonies, God
could trust the inquisitiveness of children to evoke discussion as to the spiritual
significance of what was being practiced.
For example, we read God's words in Exodus at the institution of the Passover:
"And it will come
about when your children will say to you, 'What does this rite mean to you?'
that you shall say, 'It is a Passover sacrifice to the Lord who passed over
the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but spared
our homes'" (Ex. 12:26-27).
A Constant Reminder
In contrast to the old covenant, under the new covenant there is only one ritual
given that every believer should repeatedly practice throughout his Christian
life--the Lord's Supper. It reveals to us the one fact, above all others, that
God wants to be brought repeatedly to our minds, lest we ever let it slip away.
The Lord's Supper recalls the one truth that is preeminent above all other truths.
In fact, every other biblical truth is built on this truth's foundation. It is
a reminder of the one event that towers over every other event in history. It
is a memorial to the Lord's death and a revelation of what was accomplished through
His death. God wants us to remember always that Jesus died for our sins. We might
neglect other important facts of the Bible, but this one fact we must never forget.
Is it any wonder that the apostle Paul wrote, "For I delivered to you as
of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures"? (1 Cor. 15:3, emphasis added).
Certainly there are other wonderful truths brought to light in the Lord's Supper,
but primarily it serves to remind us of Jesus' atoning sacrifice. Jesus did not
institute the Lord's Supper at the beginning of His ministry--or in the middle--but
at the last possible moment, just a few hours before His death. When we partake
of the Lord's Supper, we should be thinking about what happened on the cross of
Calvary for us.
The substitutionary aspect of Christ's death was plainly revealed at the Last
Supper when Jesus gave the bread and wine to His disciples while telling them
that the elements were His own body and blood. As they ate what represented the
Lord's body, they were becoming one with Him. His body was thus united to their
bodies, foreshadowing the blessed truth that, from God's reference, when Christ
died we died with Him. We can say with Paul, "I have been crucified with
Christ" (Gal. 2:20a).
Was Jesus Afraid of the Cross?
After supper, Jesus led His disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane, a place where
they had frequently met. The Scripture says that "He withdrew from them about
a stone's throw, and He knelt down and began to pray" (Luke 22:41).
Next, we read something that baffles those who don't understand what would transpire
on the cross. Three times Jesus prayed a prayer that seemed so suddenly out of
character:
"Father, if Thou art
willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done" (Luke
22:42).
This passage presents a problem. Here is the one who had never before exhibited
the least bit of fear. Jesus had faced hostility, hatred, and near-death on other
occasions, yet He had always remained composed. Why now was He praying, albeit
predicated on God's will, that the cup He was about to drink be removed?
Even more puzzling, Luke goes on to say that,
An angel from heaven appeared
to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently;
and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground (Luke
22:43-44, emphasis added).
Certainly contemplating being scourged and crucified would evoke anguish in any
normal human being; but was it the dreaded anticipation of those things that brought
such a degree of emotional torment to Christ? Was this not why He had been born?
Was He not going to the cross because of His great love for humanity? Had He not
wholeheartedly agreed to submit to suffering and death before the world began?
Have not many Christian martyrs faced torture and death fearlessly, even with
exuberance? Then why not Christ? Was He not God in the flesh? Had He become a
coward?
We ask reverently: Were the two thieves who would be crucified with Jesus undergoing
the same kind of agony as they considered their crucifixions? Moreover, we realize
that Jesus, unlike the two thieves, knew what would happen after He died. They
had to fear the unknown; Jesus didn't. He knew that on the third day He would
be resurrected and ascend to His Father in glory. So why this strange episode
in the Garden of Gethsemane?
We must conclude there was something Jesus dreaded that was even more foreboding
than the terrible agony of the cross. And there was. Something far more horrible.
Jesus would endure the full wrath of God.
He would bear upon Himself all the guilt of the human race, accepting liability
for the punishment. God's raging fury against sin would be poured out upon Him.
There is no way we could comprehend or describe the intense agony Jesus endured
on the cross. If you or I could imagine all the combined torments of hell that
the unsaved will suffer forever, then perhaps we could imagine what Jesus experienced
during His crucifixion. The pain in His back, hands, and feet was nothing in comparison
to the "anguish of His soul" of which Isaiah wrote (Is. 53:11).
The Cup
Jesus prayed that if God was willing, that He would "remove this cup."
Of what was He speaking? What was "the cup"?
The cup to which He referred was no doubt "the cup of God's wrath," which is often mentioned in the Old Testament. For example, we read in Isaiah
51:
Rouse yourself! Rouse yourself!
Arise, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the Lord's hand the cup of His
anger; the chalice of reeling you have drained to the dregs (Is. 51:17,
emphasis added).
God commissioned Jeremiah with a message for the nations:
For thus the Lord, the
God of Israel, says to me, "Take this cup of the wine of wrath from
My hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send you, to drink it. And they
shall drink and stagger and go mad because of the sword that I will send among
them" (Jer. 25:15-16, emphasis added).
The identical expression is found in the New Testament as well. For example, we
read in the book of Revelation:
If anyone worships the
beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or upon his hand, he
also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength
in the cup of His anger....And Babylon the great was remembered before God,
to give her the cup of the wine of His fierce wrath (Rev. 14:9b-10a;
16:19b, emphasis added).
The cup from which Jesus recoiled was the cup of God's terrible wrath upon sin.
What you, I, and every other person deserved to suffer, He suffered in our place.
Jesus bore the penalty for our rebellion against God. His shed blood provided
the way for God to offer us forgiveness justly.
If nothing else, Jesus' agony in the garden communicates to us that truly, just
as the Bible says, "It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the
living God" (Heb. 10:31). Jesus was severely distressed at the prospect,
yet He was God Himself, the exact representation of the Father's nature (see Heb.
1:3). He was God about to suffer the wrath of God.
If God Himself greatly agonized over the prospect of encountering His own wrath,
how much more should the person who has not yet received Christ and believed the
gospel be terrorized at the thought of suffering God's wrath?
Fulfilling the Father's Will
Jesus' time in the Garden of Gethsemane finally ended. He had resolved to fulfill
His Father's will.
Judas the betrayer, along with a group of Roman soldiers and officers from the
chief priests and Pharisees, arrived to arrest Him. Predictably acting on impulse,
Peter drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his
ear in the process. Immediately Jesus commanded Peter to sheath his sword as He
amazingly healed the servant's ear.
Peter still had not grasped the fact that it was the Father's
intention for Jesus to die, and therefore, there was no point in defending Him
from arrest. Jesus couldn't have made it more clear as He declared,
"Do you think that
I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than
twelve legions of angels? How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it
must happen this way?" (Matt. 26:53-54).
Jesus was not forced to go to the cross. He went by His own volition.27 He went to fulfill the preordained, prefigured, prophesied plan of God. He went
to save us from our sins. John recorded Jesus' final statement to Peter in the
garden: "The cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?" (John 18:11).
Innocence on Trial
We must not consider any incident of Jesus' passion as purely
incidental. Not only was His death preordained by God, but the circumstances that
immediately preceded His execution also served a divine purpose.
We know that Jesus had numerous opportunities to be killed
prior to His crucifixion, but in each case, God prevented it.28 So we ask: Was there a divine purpose for Jesus to be brought to trial before
the Sanhedrin, Pontius Pilate, and Herod Antipas in the early hours of the day
of His death?
As we study history in light of the Scriptures, we can certainly see the hand
of God working so that His Son would have to be tried before Jewish and
Gentile tribunals. Certainly it was not by accident that Israel
was an occupied territory of the Roman Empire at the time of Christ, as those
who have read Daniel's prophecies about the rise and fall of Babylon, Medo-Persia,
Greece, and finally Rome have discovered. Daniel predicted that during Rome's
rule the Messiah would be "cut off" (see Dan. 9:26).29
Was it by accident that Rome permitted the Jewish Sanhedrin to exercise its own
judicial process, except in the cases of capital punishment, when Roman authorization
was required? Because of this arrangement, Jesus had to be brought before Jewish and Gentile courts, and, for this reason, He was crucified by the Romans
rather than stoned by the Jews.30 As we will soon learn, it was imperative that Jesus die by "hanging on a
tree."
Certainly it was no accident that Pontius Pilate was then governor of Judea. God
had foreknown this man's cowardly character and exalted him, just as He had exalted
Pharaoh of old for the fulfillment of His own divine purposes. Jesus Himself spoke
of God's sovereignty over Pilate's life when He said to his face, "You would
have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above" (John
19:11a).
So, what was God's purpose that His Son "be delivered into the hands of men" as Jesus prophesied? (Mark 9:31). Why was it necessary for Jesus to have His day
in court?
Over one hundred and thirty years ago, Scottish theologian George Smeaton wrote:
Christ
was tried and sentenced at a human tribunal, which was but the visible foreground
of an invisible trial in which the righteous God was judging righteously, for
human guilt was laid upon the person of the Substitute. For wise reasons…God
arranged the events of the atoning sacrifice in such a way that Christ was not
to be cut off by the immediate hand of God, but by men who were His hand, and
only gratifying their malice against the representative of God. The human judge
[Pilate], who in the most unprecedented way absolved and yet condemned, declared
Him faultless and yet passed sentence against Him, represented in the transaction
the Judge of all the earth, who regarded Christ in a similar
way. The human judge could only pass a sentence that would affect His body;
but another sentence from a higher tribunal took effect upon His soul, and brought
home the wrath of God. And under this invisible infliction the Lord experienced
agony and desertion; under this He poured forth His complaint, His strong crying
and tears, and endured that penal death which rescues us from the second death."31
Not only did Pilate and Herod find Jesus innocent,32 but Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin also proved His blamelessness. The record
of that incident is the divine means of forever validating that Jesus was without
any guilt. Why is that so important? So all who would study the story would be
convinced that Jesus was crucified only for claiming to be the divine Son of God.
Cursed of God
The apostle Paul informed us that even the mode of Jesus' execution unveiled something
of its significance. In his letter to the Galatians, he quoted part of a passage
from Deuteronomy 21, which says:
And if a man has committed
a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his
corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on
the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God) (Deut. 21:22-23,
emphasis added).
Paul explained that we have been redeemed from the curse--or penalty--of the law
because Jesus was made a curse for us (see Gal. 3:13-14). Through the means of
ordaining His Son's public hanging on a tree, God was publicly testifying to all
that, according to His own word, His innocent Son was cursed of God.
It is obvious that if God sent His sinless Son into the world and then permitted
Him to be cruelly crucified (when God could have easily prevented or stopped it),
then there must be a very significant reason why He did so. Jesus was publicly
exhibited as one cursed of God.
Why would the God of perfect justice curse His sinless Son? The only possible
reason, as Scripture repeatedly confirms, is because Jesus was bearing the liability
for our sins.
We will bypass describing all the gory details of the act of crucifixion that
Jesus endured for our sakes. However, we do take note that just before the soldiers
were about to hammer the nails through Jesus' flesh, He was offered a pain-killing
narcotic, wine mixed with gall. Drinking it would have considerably numbed His
senses.
He innocently tasted it, but upon realizing what it was, refused to partake. It
is only natural to question why He would turn down this one act of mercy when
He was, no doubt, ravaged by thirst.
We understand that Jesus came to suffer in our place, and
He refused the narcotic drink because He would have nothing to do with anything
that would lessen His pain or diminish His sacrifice. His faculties would not
be clouded when He faced God's wrath upon sin. And so the soldiers performed their
gruesome task, impaling Christ to the cross and then hoisting it up.
Through the eyes of Scripture we see Jesus hanging with a sign contemptuously
posted over His head, dictated by Pilate, which read, "This is Jesus the
King of the Jews" (Matt. 27:37). Just as Caiaphas, the high priest, had unwittingly
prophesied before the Sanhedrin that it was expedient that one man should die
on behalf of the people,33
so Pilate had unknowingly inscribed a true title above the dying King.
That King wore a crown upon His head, not of silver or gold and precious gems,
but a crown of thorns pressed into His brow. Of that hideous crown James Stalker
wrote,
Of
all the features of the scene, the one that has most impressed the imagination
of Christendom is the crown of thorns. It was something unusual, and brought
out the ingenuity and wantonness of cruelty. Besides, as the wound of a thorn
has been felt by everyone, it brings the pain of our Lord nearer to us than
any other incident. But it is chiefly by its symbolism that it has laid hold
of the Christian mind. When Adam and Eve were driven from the garden into the
bleak and toilsome world, their doom was that the ground should produce for
them thorns and thistles. Thorns were the sign of the curse; that is, of their
banishment from God's presence and of all the sad and painful consequences following
from it…But it was the mission of Christ to bear the curse; and, as He
lifted it on His own head, He took it off the world. He bore our sins and carried
our sorrows.34
When Darkness Prevailed
Jesus was crucified at nine o'clock in the morning. After He had hung on the cross
for three hours, there descended a darkness "upon all the land" (Matt.
27:45) that remained during His second three hours on the cross--from noon to
three o'clock. Luke tells us the sun was obscured.
Although we are informed in the Gospels of certain things that took place before
noon--the dividing of Jesus' garments, the mocking of the bystanders, and so on--we
are not told of anything that occurred during the three hours of darkness. What
happened then is shrouded in silence as far as the four Gospel writers are concerned.
From our perspective, having the revelation of the epistles, there is little doubt
as to what happened. Paul wrote:
He [God the Father] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf,
that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21).
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us--for
it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree." (Gal. 3:13).
Obviously, these are strong metonymical expressions, as no person could literally
become sin or a curse. They simply mean that Jesus bore our sin. That is, He became
liable for the penalty and took the curse we deserved as sinners.
When exactly did Jesus become sin and a curse? It must have been during those
three hours on the cross when darkness prevailed. At that time, God poured out
His judgment upon sin in the body of His Son. This mysterious period ended when
Jesus cried out, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" just moments
before His death (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34).
Jesus' cry of dereliction only makes sense once we understand that Jesus died
as our substitute. How could the One who had experienced intimate fellowship and
mutual love with the Father from eternity past now cry out as one forsaken by
God?
How could He, who had declared the day before, "I am not alone, because the
Father is with Me" (John 16:32b), now declare Himself abandoned by His Father?
The answer lies in the fact that He "bore our sins in His body on the cross,"
(1 Pet. 2:24a) and thus God, whose "eyes are too pure to look at evil" (Hab. 1:13) turned His back upon Him. Jesus was literally God-forsaken.
Luther's commentary on Galatians 3:13 vividly explains how
Christ was made a curse for us:
When the merciful Father
saw that we were being oppressed through the Law, that we were being held under
a curse, and that we could not be liberated from it by anything, He sent His
Son into the world, heaped all the sins of all men upon Him, and said to Him: "Be Peter the denier; Paul the persecutor, blasphemer, and assaulter; David
the adulterer; the sinner who ate the apple in Paradise; the thief on the cross.
In short, be the person of all men, the one who has committed the sins of all
men. And see to it that You pay and make satisfaction for them." Now comes
the Law and says: "I find Him a sinner, who takes upon Himself the sins
of all men. I do not see any other sins than those in Him. Therefore let Him
die on the cross!" And so it attacks Him and kills Him. By this deed the
whole world is purged and expiated from all sins, and thus it is set free from
death and from every evil.35
"It Is Finished!"
After Jesus' cry of dereliction, only three other utterances escaped His lips
before He quickly expired. The first was, "I am thirsty" (John 19:28).
Jesus was then offered and accepted some sour wine in a sponge.
The final two statements were spoken just before His final breath, the first
being, "It is finished!" (John 19:30).
Obviously, Jesus had achieved something. What was it?
Jesus had accomplished what He had come to do--to bear our sins as our substitute.
God's righteousness would be completely satisfied in just a matter of seconds
when Jesus would breathe His last. Jesus had borne the full penalty. Although
He would still need to be resurrected and ascend to His Father, His sufferings
were finished. Salvation had been procured for all who would believe in Him.
Then Jesus spoke His final words, crying out with a loud voice, "Father,
into Thy hands I commit My spirit" (Luke 23:46).
Jesus was not at this point a spiritual child of Satan, as has been popularized
by some. He referred to God as His Father with His last breath.
His body died, and His spirit descended into Hades, the abode of the righteous
and unrighteous dead, where He remained until His resurrection.
He did not descend into hell to continue suffering the torments
of the damned; His sufferings ended on the cross. How could He declare "It
is finished!" if He anticipated further sufferings in hell?
The Bible states that Jesus has reconciled us "in His fleshly body through
death" (Col. 1:22). After His death, no further suffering was necessary.
Jesus descended to the section of Hades known as Abraham's bosom,36 or "Paradise," just as He had promised the repentant thief who died
on a cross beside Him (see Luke 23:43).
Further proof that Jesus did not descend into hell to continue suffering is
found in all of the synoptic Gospels. They tell us that, when Jesus cried out
with His final breath, the veil in the temple dividing the holy place from the
Holy of Holies was ripped in half from top to bottom.
The symbolism is plain: Through His death, Jesus had provided sinful humanity
access to a holy God. If Jesus had needed to suffer further in hell for our
salvation, then, quite obviously, God would not have sent an angel to tear the
temple curtain at the moment of His Son's death.
Now we've just barely passed the apex of history. Many of the mysteries that
shrouded the death of Jesus to those who witnessed His sufferings have been
unveiled to us. The most amazing truth is that Jesus was dying on the cross
as our substitute, suffering God's judgment for our sins and fulfilling a preordained
plan.
Unlike those who attended His final hours, we have the privilege of understanding
the central significance of the Lord's Supper, the reason for Jesus' great agony
in the garden, and the answer to why He didn't request a legion of angels to
prevent His arrest. We see God's invisible tribunal represented by the earthly
judge who found Jesus innocent and yet condemned Him. We can understand the
necessity of His death by hanging on a tree and comprehend His refusal of the
narcotic drink. In addition, the meaning of the three hours of darkness, His
cry of abandonment, and His declaration of accomplishment become clear. In addition,
we can see that history can best be divided into two segments: everything that
led up to the cross and everything that followed it.
Next, we'll look at what happened after the cross.
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Footnotes
27 See also Jesus' statement in John 10:17-18. Back to text
28 Luke 4:28-30; John 7:20; 8:20 Back
to text
29 See also Dan. 2:1-45. Back to text
30 See John 18:31-32. Back to text
31 George Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Atonement According
to the Apostles, p. 182. Back to text
32 See Luke 23:13-15, 22; John 19:4-6. Back
to text
33 John 11:50; 18:14 Back to text
34 James Stalker, The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ,
p. 60. Back to text
35 Martin Luther, translated by Jaroslav Pelikan in Luther's
Works,Vol. 26, p. 280. Back to text
36 See Luke 16:19-31. Back to text
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