Crucified (John 19:17-30)

This sermon was preached on 15/12/2013

Today, the cross is regarded worldwide as a symbol of the Christian faith, sometimes with affection by Christians and at other times with hatred by non-Christians. Historically, the Reformed church in our country has not used the cross as a symbol, probably because there was a superstitious attitude towards it prior to and since the Reformation. Whatever our attitude towards it as a symbol, we have to understand its significance in the Bible.

Crucifixion was a method of punishment that seems to have been invented by the Persians and adopted by the Romans. It was a very cruel form of punishment, designed to prolong the criminal’s experience of extreme pain. Moreover, it was a very common form of punishment and everyone in Jerusalem would have seen frequent impositions of the process. Clearly it was designed to be a deterrent to those who engaged in any rebellious or criminal activities. A Roman citizen could not be crucified and we have an example of the contrasting methods in the ways that the apostles Peter and Paul were executed. Peter was not a Roman citizen and he was crucified (upside down according to church traditions) whereas Paul, who was a Roman citizen, was beheaded with a sword (again according to church traditions).

The New Testament uses crucifixion to illustrate Christian living, perhaps to our surprise. For example, Paul writes in Galatians 5:25 that ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires’. The apostle teaches there that the flesh (sin in a Christian) has been put to death, but like crucifixion it can be a slow process and the sins may still show themselves. But one day, as with a crucified criminal, sin will be gone from the experience of a believer.

In the Galatians 5:25 reference, each believer is depicted as being active in dealing with personal sin. Paul also uses the method of crucifixion in a more passive way in Galatians 2:20, where he says that he has ‘been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ Paul saw himself as united with Jesus in his death. In a sense, that was when the old Paul died, and with the resurrection of Jesus a new Paul lives by faith in him.

Those two references, dealt with briefly, reveal to us that the message of the cross was used in the early church in a variety of ways. Yet the most obvious and frequent way of using it was to describe what happened to Jesus on the cross. In their speaking about the cross they don’t say a great deal about the injustice that Jesus suffered at the hands of the religious and civic authorities who had condemned him to death. Instead they focus on its spiritual significance.

For them, the cross was part of the humiliation of Jesus. This term does not focus on humiliation caused by others, although many contributed to such an effect. Instead, there is a profound aspect of his humiliation that we should approach with awe and wonder, and that is that the humiliation was self-chosen. Paul makes this very clear in the well-known words of Philippians 2:8: ‘And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.’ After all, he unlike all other crucified persons had the power to disintegrate his opponents with a thought. Yet he chose to humble himself and descend to the depths of the cross.

In contrast, they also regarded the cross as a location of or means of the victory of Jesus over the powers of darkness. We know little about that form of conflict apart from temptations to sin. In what ways Jesus and those powers engaged in conflict on the cross is hard to imagine. No doubt they tempted him, vented their hatred against him, tried to get him to sin. He resisted their assaults and in the process defeated them. Indeed Paul says that Jesus routed them. He writes in Colossians 2:13-15: ‘And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.’

In those verses, Paul is highlighting what God the Father did through Jesus. The Father forgave us because Jesus paid the penalty for our sins on the cross (Paul takes the practice of having a description of the criminal’s offence nailed above him on the cross and uses it to depict the fact that our sins were regarded as the offences of sinless Jesus and he paid the penalty). In the process, the Father disarmed the hostile powers of the weapons that they used, which seem to be accusations against God’s people for their sins. It is very important for us to realise this. For example, if I am tempted to say something sinful, thinking about Jesus on the cross should prevent me saying it. But what do I do if say it? I have to then think of Jesus on the cross and give thanks that he paid the penalty for my sins. And when the devil tries to attack me for that sin, my only response should be to speak about the cross where his power to condemn was taken by the crucified Saviour.

It is clear that the apostles regarded what happened to Jesus on the cross as indicating that he became a curse. The Mosaic law had stated very clearly that anyone who was hanged on a tree was accursed by God. For someone to be accursed was for him to be abandoned by God in the sense that he also received a conscious divine penalty for his actions. Someone who was accursed was an outcast from God’s comfortable presence, but still experienced the effects of divine justice and punishment against his sins.        

The cross through the seven sayings                        

There are several ways by which we could attempt to understand the crucifixion of Jesus. One helpful method is to consider briefly the seven recorded sayings of Jesus on the cross that are found in the Four Gospels.  It is very likely that Jesus said more than them, of course. Yet by thinking about them we can get an insight into what took place when Jesus was crucified.

The first saying by Jesus is a prayer, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing’ (Luke 23:34). Who are the ‘them’? They were the group of soldiers in charge of the execution. Clearly at that level they knew what they were doing. But they did not know that they were crucifying their Creator, the one who keeps the universe and everything in it in existence. And in this reality we have an insight into what was taking place at the cross. The Creator was dying on behalf of his creatures.

Moreover, the prayer of Jesus reveals his love for indifferent sinners. The soldiers were used to executions and to them what they had done was just their employment. We might imagine that the Saviour, intent on paying the penalty for sin, would not be able to concentrate at that time on the spiritual needs of the soldiers. But his sufferings did not diminish the love of his heart. His pain did not silence his petitions, so he prayed for those who were transgressors.

The end of the story, in Matthew’s account, reveals that the soldiers realised he was the Son of God. Mark and Luke focus on the centurion’s faith, but Matthew describes how each of the soldiers was affected by what they saw happening to the suffering Saviour. In a literal sense, we can say they looked on the one that they had pierced and found salvation. And that is one aspect of the cross.

The second saying of Jesus is a promise, again recorded by Luke. It was made to a very unlikely person, one of two criminals crucified alongside Jesus. Initially, both criminals had taunted Jesus, but as he hung there beside Jesus one of the criminals realised that beside him was one who could take him to heaven. He offered a simple prayer, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ In a wonderful response Jesus said to him, ‘Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise’ (Luke 23:42-43). This saying of Jesus informs us that we can go to heaven because Jesus went to the cross. We know that was the reason why he came, to deliver sinners from a lost eternity and to bring them into his presence for ever. And it would all depend on what he did for them on the cross.

The third saying was spoken to his mother and to the apostle John. Jesus said to them, ‘Woman, behold your Son,’ and ‘Son, behold your mother’ (John 19:27-27). Why did Jesus say those words? He wanted the best person available to care for his mother and that person was the apostle of love, John. The words are also a reminder that on the cross Jesus fulfilled the law perfectly. It was his duty as a good son to take care of his parent, to fulfill for her the requirements implied in the fifth commandment that tells us to honour our parents. In this lovely short interaction we see that the crucified Christ loved his family. The previous sayings had revealed his love for those who were indifferent to him. But the reason that he loved was because the law of God was in his heart and his obedience to that law reveals that he was a perfect sacrifice. In the Old Testament ritual, if a lamb had a little defect, it was disqualified as a sacrifice. If Jesus had a little defect, there would have been no sacrifice and no salvation. This provision for his mother reveals that Jesus was indeed offering himself as a perfect sacrifice to his Father.

The fourth saying is the most amazing of the seven. It preceded the three hours of darkness. Jesus turned to his Father and asked, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Some people speculate that Jesus, as he entered the darkness, was no longer aware that God was his Father. I don’t know what is the basis of that suggestion; it seems to be connected to the fact that he did not use the word ‘Father’ in this statement. Yet there are other statements made by him when he did not include the title, Father, and it is not suggested that they point to him not being aware that God was his Father. I can see that he was not aware of a comfortable sense of his Father’s presence, but that is not the same as him concluding that God was no longer his Father. 

I think rather that the reason why Jesus quoted this opening line of Psalm 22 is because he was thinking about the psalm and its detailed description of the circumstances he was now in. His referring to the psalm points to him being consciously engaged in an inner-Trinitarian transaction in which he still spoke to the One who was regarding him as the sinbearer and who was punishing him as the substitute of sinners. Because, after all, on the cross he offered himself without spot to God and did not withdraw from the transaction no matter how awful it was for him. For what it is worth, the most satisfying description of these words that I have read were composed by Bengel when he said: ‘In this fourth word from the cross our Saviour not only says that he has been delivered into the hands of men, but that he has suffered at the hands of God something unutterable.’ And if there were no words that Jesus could use that would fully explain what was taking place as he made atonement for sin and bore the wrath of God, who are we to try and find them?

We cannot interpret this fourth saying as if it indicated that the Father ceased to love his Son when he became the sinbearer. Nor can we regard it as suggesting that somehow the Father was not pleased with the work in which his Son was engaged as the sinbearer. What the saying does indicate is that in his human nature the Son experienced the wrath of God against the sins of his people and in doing so discovered this previously uncharted territory in which he could not sense the comfortable presence of God. And as we think about this fourth saying our hearts should be full of wonder at what took place between the divine Persons when Jesus was on the cross.

The fifth saying is ‘I thirst’ (John 19:28). Many have speculated what Jesus was thirsty for, but it is not surprising that his physical frame should have found itself suffering from thirst. At a basic level it tells us that crucifixion affected him physically as well as spiritually. Yet John has an unusual way of describing this statement of Jesus. John links it to the fulfilment of scripture, and there is a passage in Psalm 22:15 that links the Sufferer’s thirst and death. This fifth saying was said at the end of Jesus’ life and it indicates that he was conscious that he was at the end. Crucifixion had not blurred his understanding.

The sixth saying, ‘It is finished,’ was said immediately after he was given something to drink (John 19:30). The idea here is of a task completed to perfection. A carpenter would have used the saying to describe a job he had performed well. Jesus may have used the saying when he was a carpenter. Whether he did or not, he used it here to describe what he did on the cross. He had achieved something by his crucifixion and we know that it was the payment due to God by his elect people for their sins. Jesus completed the task of payment. We have lost the idea that payment can be a task because we usually hand over a cheque to cover it. In the past, it was common for a person to engage in a task as payment for a service rendered. As far as Jesus was concerned, the payment was made for services that could not be rendered by those who were required to do so. And he completed the payment on the cross.

The final saying, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,’ informs us that Jesus decided when the experience of crucifixion should end. His words remind us that he was the sovereign in control, not only of that event, but also of all events. He knew that his human soul was going to be in heaven, in Paradise, as he awaited his resurrection three days later.