The Suffering of the Cross

The following is a sermon preached on Good Friday, 23 March 2008. The text has been lightly edited before being put on the Web.

I wonder if I start by asking a question. What does the cross mean to you?

All this week we’ve been looking at the Cross of Jesus Christ from different perspectives. Like a precious jewel with many facets, the cross can be looked at from a number of different viewpoints. We’ve looked at how the cross was always the fulfilment of God’s plan to save his people, how the cross shows God’s love, how Christ’s death was a sacrifice, how Christ’s death is the basis of our justification, among other things. And now we come right to the heart of what the death of Christ means as we look together at the suffering of the cross.

If you read the New Testament, even the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion such as we read this evening, actually it is striking that the physical suffering that Christ endured is not really the primary focus. Our minds fill in the blanks a bit, don’t they? We see Christ’s torn flesh from the floggings, we see the nails being hammered in, we hear his groans and cries as the cross is lifted up and he hangs there, in unbelievable physical pain and suffering. And maybe every reader who has ever read this passage in Matthew has filled in those blanks. Maybe Matthew felt he didn’t need to spell out the details – everyone would get it. But I don’t think it’s just that.

The focus in the Bible is not on the physical suffering, as if that were an end in itself. It certainly isn’t. Christ wasn’t a masochist and God the Father is not sadist. As the hymn puts it:

“Inscribed upon the cross we see,
In shining letters, ‘God is love’.”

And in the Bible, the focus on the cross is on the spiritual meaning of that suffering that Christ endured.

Tonight, I want to look at three aspects of the suffering of the cross we find highlighted in Matthew’s account of the crucifixion.

First, that the suffering of the cross is a suffering that Christ chose to bear. It is suffering by divine choice and not merely by human infliction.

Second, that the suffering of the cross is inflicted on Christ in the place of sinners. That Christ suffered as our substitute, in our place, on the cross.

Third, that the suffering of the cross satisfies God’s justice and turns aside God’s wrath against sin, so that sinners can be saved.

So first, that the suffering of the cross is a suffering that Christ chose to bear. Yes, Christ was taken and put to death by wicked men, but he was always in charge of events. He was put to death because he allowed that to happen to himself and for no other reason. The right perspective on the cross is not Christ as hapless victim caught up in events beyond his control. No, the right perspective is captured in the words of the hymn:

“For Christ the cross ascended,
To save a world undone.”

He went to the cross like a king ascending his throne as God’s anointed King and the Redeemer of his people, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and chosen as that Lamb from before the foundation of the world.

Christ predicted his death many times to the disciples before it happened. The night before the crucifixion, he told them about it when he instituted the Lord’s Supper with its symbolism of broken body and blood poured out, and then later that night he prayed in the garden, asking God to take away the cup of suffering he knew he was about to drink, but also saying “yet not my will, but yours be done.” He knew what was coming. He knew what was coming from the day he rode into Jerusalem on the donkey. Indeed he knew for a long time before that what was coming. He from eternity, when he and his Father God entered into a covenant with each other for the Father to give the Son a people to be his very own, and for the Son to agree to come to the earth as a man to rescue and save them. He always knew it would come to that day when he would go to the cross. He knew and he chose the path of suffering deliberately and with tremendous courage and integrity and his eyes wide open to what would happen and what he would achieve by it.

We even see glimmers of it in our passage tonight if we look at some of the details.

Verse 34 – “There they offered Jesus wine mixed with a bitter substance; but after tasting it, he would not drink it.”

They were offering the victim of the execution a drink laced with a drug that would dull the pain – from Mark’s gospel we know the drug was myrrh – a natural pain killer that would lessen the suffering, but Jesus wouldn’t take it. He wouldn’t take it, because he knew what his suffering was going to achieve, and he knew that in order to bear the punishment in the place of those for whom he died, he couldn’t lessen his own pain and suffering. What does that tell you about the strength of will and courage and the greatness of our Lord’s love for us? He chose to suffer to the uttermost for our benefit.

Then again in verses 39 and 40 where the crowd stand around jeering him. “Save yourself if you are God’s Son! Come on down from the cross!” they shout. And in verse 41 even the so-called religious leaders join in: “He saved others, but he cannot save himself…If he comes down off the cross now, we will believe in him!...let us see if God wants to save him now!”

And whether they realised it or not, they were closer to the truth than they realised. If Jesus had wanted to, he could have come down from the cross. He could, with a word, have summoned an army of heaven’s angels to come down and save him. He chose to remain on the cross to save us, rather than to save himself.

Jesus himself said in John 10:17-18:

“The Father loves me because I am willing to give up my life, in order that I may receive it back again. No one takes my life away from me. I give it up of my own free will. I have the right to give it up, and I have the right to take it back. This is what my Father has commanded me to do.”

Jesus could have saved himself, but again and again and again he chose the path of suffering, he chose the suffering of the cross, to complete the rescue mission he had been sent into the world to accomplish.

The second aspect of the suffering of the cross I want us to think about tonight, is that in the suffering he undergoes, Christ is standing as our substitute, as our perfect substitute. For Christ’s suffering on the cross is in our place, a perfect sinless person, dying in the place of sinners. At its most basic level, it is a very straightforward, simple idea. God’s justice demands that sin must be punished, but if someone suitable chooses to receive that punishment on someone else’s behalf, then justice has been satisfied because punishment has been carried out, and this means the person who should originally have been punished is spared the punishment and can instead go free.

The idea that a substitute can be punished in another’s place, is so prevalent in Scripture, both Old and New Testaments, that it’s almost impossible to ignore it unless you throw the Bible away altogether.

For example, substitution, is really the idea that underlies the entire Old Testament system of animal sacrifices. In the Old Testament God commanded his people to make different kinds of animal sacrifices to make atonement for the people’s sins. The first five books of the Bible have many passages dealing with this system of animal blood sacrifices. The New Testament teaches us that these sacrifices were symbols pointing God’s people towards the one true sacrifice that deals with the sins of the world and that’s the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. But the animal sacrifices point the way and contain the principle of substitution of one for another – one punished for sin, so that another can go free.

In that great chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy, Isaiah 53, the notion of the suffering servant – one man being the substitute for others – begins to take shape. Here it becomes clear that God’s messiah will take the punishment that should have been inflicted on others, and this idea substitution comes out numerous times.

“He endured the suffering that should have been ours, the pain that we should have borne (verse 4)…Because of our sins he was wounded, beaten because of the evil we did. We are healed by the punishment he suffered, made whole by the blows he received. (verse 5)…The LORD made the punishment fall on him, the punishment all of us deserved (verse 6)…He was put to death for the sins of our people (verse 8)…My devoted servant, with whom I am pleased, will bear the punishment of many and for his sake I will forgive them (verse 11), says the Lord.”

Then in the New Testament, the idea again is taught over and over again in a great many passages. How can we understand any of these well-known verses without that idea of Christ dying as a substitute, in the place of others, being very much in mind?

At the last supper, Christ said: “This is my blood, which seals God’s covenant, my blood poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:28)

In John 10:11, Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd, who is willing to die for the sheep.”

In his Letter to the Romans, Paul writes: “For when we were still helpless, Christ died for the wicked at the time that God chose. It is a difficult thing for someone to die for a righteous person. It may even be that someone might dare to die for a good person. But God has shown us how much he loves us – it while we were still sinners that Christ died for us!” (Romans 5:6-8).

It always seemed to me that if there was anyone in Jerusalem that day who understood that Christ was dying in his place, that person would be Barabbas. Remember that the Romans had a custom to free one prisoner at the Passover? And Pontius Pilate asked the crowd which of two they wanted to be set free: Jesus Barabbas or Jesus of Nazareth. Barabbas was a criminal. Under Roman law, his crimes merited the death penalty. He deserved to go to the cross, like the thieves who were crucified with Jesus. But the crowd called for him to be released and so he went free while Jesus Christ died literally in his place.

And again in the mocking of the crowd, there are hints of this idea of Christ the substitute in the passage we read. Isn’t it there in the taunt, “He saved others, but he cannot save himself”? Little did they know that the very way in which he would indeed save others is by NOT saving himself, but being punished and put to death instead of them!

As we sang earlier:

“Behold the man upon a cross,
my sins upon his shoulders;
ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held him there
until it was accomplished.
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that is it finished.”

So, we’ve seen that Christ chose the suffering of the cross, and we’ve seen that in the suffering of the cross, Christ stood as our substitute, bearing our punishment so that our sins could be taken away.

Third, consider that the suffering of the cross is God’s judgment falling on sin, and that Christ’s death satisfies God’s justice and turns aside God’s wrath against sin, so that sinners can be saved.

I wonder, what makes you angry? For some people it’s not getting their own way or being frustrated that they can’t do what they want. For some people it’s when people hurt them or others they love that they get angry. For some people it’s things about themselves that make them the most angry or things they’ve done in the past that makes them angry.

But God’s anger is different from all these kinds of human anger. God’s anger isn’t God losing his temper. It isn’t God reacting emotionally.

It is something like the anger we might feel when we see animals tortured, or children being allowed to starve, or women raped: it is a righteous anger. Even our “best anger” if I can put it that way is at best an imperfect anger because we aren’t perfect. But God’s anger isn’t a mixture. God’s anger is pure holiness, righteousness and justice in action.

Romans 1:18 says:

“God’s anger is revealed from heaven against all the sin and evil of the people whose evil ways prevent the truth from being known.”

The word in Greek for “anger” here comes from a word meaning “to swell”. It is the same word used to describe the bud on a flower growing and swelling, coming to maturity as it bursts into a colourful flower. God’s anger is like that – imagine the sap of justice rising, and swelling till it comes to a point when it will burst forth in God’s judgment. God’s anger is a constant and settled disposition against evil and a desire to see justice done, not an emotional losing of temper.

Now, what’s all this to do with the cross you might be wondering? Well let’s see.
Sometimes, I think we read the gospels and miss out on a lot of what the gospel writers are trying to communicate to us because often they do not say what they are teaching straight out – they do it more subtly by symbols and images. In the New Testament letters, yes, the teaching is explicit and plainly stated, but in the gospels, it is more often more implicit.

There are a few clues in Matthew’s account of the crucifixion that tell us what’s going on there on the cross.

For a start, did you notice some of the things that were going on that afternoon of Good Friday? Some pretty strange stuff.

Verse 43 – “at noon the whole country was covered with darkness.”

Verse 51 – “the earth shook, the rocks split apart, the graves broke open…”

These things are full of meaning when we read them in the light of Old Testament prophecy. Darkness and earthquakes in the Old Testament are often events accompanying and symbolising God’s judgment, symbols of the prophets usually call the “Day of the LORD.”

Amos 5:20: “Will not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light— pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?”

Ezekiel 38:19: “In my zeal and fiery wrath I declare that at that time there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel.”

So the day of the crucifixion was a day of God’s judgment, God’s anger being poured out. Okay, we might say, “Yes, we can understand that. The Father is angry because of the wickedness of men in putting his Son to death.” That may be an element of what’s going on, but it’s not really an adequate explanation. Because, look at what Jesus says:

“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

And it’s in those words – in that agonising cry – that the full, terrible, wonderful picture of what was happening on the cross suddenly becomes clear. Yes, the day of crucifixion was a day of judgment. Yes, the day of crucifixion was a day of God’s anger and fury flowing out to accomplish their holy purpose. But in Christ’s heartbreaking words of abandonment and isolation, we realise that God’s anger and punishment were being poured out not on his murderers, but on the person of his own dear Son himself.

Why did Christ feel for the first time not only in his earthly life, but for the first time ever in all of eternity, that he was no longer the beloved Son in whom his Father was well pleased, that he was separated from his Father’s presence?

It was because at that moment, Christ was bearing the load and the guilt of your sins and my sins on the Cross. It was because at that moment, God’s anger was being poured out on Christ to satisfy God’s justice, so that God could pour out his grace and mercy on us, account us as righteous even though we are by nature unrighteous, so that eternal life in heaven could be given to us, even though we are sinners who deserve to go to hell.

The apostle Paul summed up what the suffering of the cross achieved for us like this in Romans 3:25 (NIV margin):

“God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin, through faith in his blood.”

Our hymn puts it so well:

"How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns his face away,
As wounds which mar the chosen one,
Bring many sons to glory."

I started with a question and I’d like to finish with it too. What does the Cross mean to you? Does Christ choosing to suffer on the cross, in the place of sinners, to take away God’s anger, really mean much to you?

We can ignore the cross. We can be like those people there that day who with chilling words, Matthew tells us sat down to watch Christ on the cross, like people watching a spectacle for entertainment. We can watch and do nothing, or worse turn against Christ and ridicule his cross by our words and our actions.

Sure we can say, “Whatever happened there, whatever it meant, it has nothing to do with me. I don’t need whatever this Jesus claims to offer me.” You can say that. If you do, one day you will stand before God and he will ask you why you didn’t accept his salvation when it was freely offered to you. Can you really claim that you have led a sinless life? Really? Then you’re really trampling the blood of Christ under foot and saying his death wasn’t really necessary. You are saying you can save yourself. I can’t say that – I know I sin every day. I know I cannot go a single day without breaking the two greatest commandments. I don’t love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength, and with all my mind. Neither do I love my neighbour as myself. I try to, but I fail. Every day.

Will you be able to look God in the eye and say to him, “I have led a sinless life. I deserve to enter into heaven”?

If you know you won’t be able to say that to God, then you do need the Saviour, Jesus. And the cross has everything to do with you. If that’s you, you need to come to Christ, to trust and follow him, and rely on what he did on the cross to take away your sins and turn aside God’s wrath. You need to be like that centurion in our reading who saw the events of that first Good Friday and came away saying, “Truly, this man was the Son of God.” I believe that soldier’s life was never the same again because of the cross and because of the Christ he met that day.

And if you are already a Christian, whose sins Christ has taken away and the Father has forgiven, then aren’t you fired up to rededicate yourself to a life of trust and thankful obedience to Christ? Doesn’t Christ’s suffering inspire you to take up our cross and follow him. Doesn’t it make you want to tell other people about Christ and his cross? Can we really experience the power of the cross and remain unchanged by it, or be content for our church to be unchanged by it in it’s mission to spread the gospel? I don’t think so!

I’d like to share the words of a modern worship song by Stuart Townend with you as I draw to a close. It’s called “The Power of the Cross” and it goes like this:

Oh, to see the dawn
Of the darkest day:
Christ on the road to Calvary.
Tried by sinful men,
Torn and beaten, then
Nailed to a cross of wood.

Oh, to see the pain
Written on Your face,
Bearing the awesome weight of sin.
Ev'ry bitter thought,
Ev'ry evil deed
Crowning Your bloodstained brow.

Now the daylight flees;
Now the ground beneath
Quakes as its Maker bows His head.
Curtain torn in two,
Dead are raised to life;
"Finished!" the vict'ry cry.

Oh, to see my name
Written in the wounds,
For through Your suffering I am free.
Death is crushed to death;
Life is mine to live,
Won through Your selfless love.

CHORUS:

This, the pow'r of the cross:
Christ became sin for us;
Took the blame, bore the wrath
—We stand forgiven at the cross.

Let’s pray:
Lord Jesus, thank you for choosing to go through the suffering of the cross for us. Thank you for dying in our place. Thank you for bearing God’s wrath and satisfying God’s justice so that we could be forgiven and saved. Help us to live in the power of your cross always. Amen.