What Really Happened on the Cross?

11 Apr , 2011 1 Comment

“God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

People ask: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” R.C. Sproul noted, “That only happened once, and He volunteered.” Jesus was sinless and yet He “became sin” for us. What does this mean?  If you want to live forgiven you must fully grasp what took place on the cross.  And the key to unlocking the mystery of the cross is to consider the most perplexing, uncomfortable, and difficult words that ever came from the lips of Jesus.  In His final moments on the cross, He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46 He’s actually quoting Psalm 22:1, but clearly this is a cry of anguish.  Here “forsaken” means, “abandon”, “left in trouble”- someone in trouble and turning your back on them.  I’ve had many people ask me, “Did He really believe the Father had abandoned Him?”  Could it be that God the Father really did forsake Him?  To understand the difficulty of these words we must first understand the nature of the Triune God.  The Trinity (the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit) is at the core of biblical Christianity.  It’s important to note that the Trinity is a relationship of submission.  The Son says He does nothing apart from “the Father’s initiative” and that He does only what He sees the Father doing.  Jesus says that ultimately the Spirit would come and “will guide you in all truth”.  At Jesus’ baptism, the Father says, “This is my beloved Son”.  In John 17:11, Jesus prays for the Father to make His followers “one even as we are one”.  Could it be that for the first time in all of history there was violence done, not only to Jesus, but to the Trinitarian relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?  Understood correctly, this cry of anguish found in Matthew 27, is one of the most powerful, perplexing, and comforting words that Jesus ever spoke to us.  In fact, I pray that as we unpack them you will be overwhelmed, besieged, and undone by God’s love for you.

See Matthew 26:36-46 In an attempt to understand more fully what Jesus meant, we need to go back to the Garden of Gethsemane the night before the cross.  As I read the event of Jesus’ last week, I’m struck with the reality that He is in complete control of all that is happening.  If you look carefully and listen to His words it seems as though He Himself is writing the script.  As the story unfolds you realize that’s precisely what’s happening.  He has a secret ambition.  It’s interesting to note that just prior to His arrest, John 18:4 says that Jesus knew “all things that were to happen to Him.”

Matthew’s account of the events leading up to the moment of Judas’ betrayal is the most descriptive account of all that Jesus was going through.  After Judas agrees to betray Him, Jesus shares the Passover meal with His disciples.  During the meal Jesus tells Peter that he will deny Him three times that night.  Then they go to a spacious olive grove of the garden called Gethsemane.  Emotionally drained (in fact Luke tells us that they were “exhausted from sorrow” in chapter 22:45), the disciples reclined under the moon and stars of a now peaceful night and quickly drift off to sleep.  Jesus, however, would find no peace, no rest at all.  Matthew says He “began to be sorrowful and troubled” (26:38).  Mark adds that He was “deeply distressed”.  Often Jesus would go off alone, most of the time to be alone, but on this night He would need His best friends there with Him.  Jesus, the Man, needed human companionship.  Solitary confinement is the worst form of punishment our species has ever devised and, in this moment, Jesus didn’t want it.

When His disciples failed Him, Jesus did not try to conceal His hurt: “Could you not keep watch for one hour?” (vs. 40)  His words suggest something more threatening than loneliness.  Is it possible that for the first time ever He did not want to be alone with the Father?  A great struggle is underway in the heart of Jesus.  No formal, well recited prayers would come on this night.  No poetic, nicely phrased petitions in these prayers.  Dr. Luke tells us, “being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling on the ground” (22:44).  He describes a rare medical condition that had taken effect, known as “hematidrosis”, in which the blood vessels, under such stress, expand and burst into the sweat glands.  Imagine what happens next: He falls face down on the ground crying out to God the Father.

Why was Jesus in such agony?  I would suggest that you and I have never known this kind of anguish.  I’ve talked to many people who knew they had only days, even hours to live.  Some are terrified but most are accepting, even calm.  Jesus seems anything but calm.  Knowing what was to come, was He afraid of the beatings, the scourging, the spikes driven through His wrists and feet?  Was it the fear of death that tortured Him so?  Here we realize that sometimes it’s a blessing not to know the future.  Was it the betrayal of His closest friends?  Was it the denial of Peter?  Was it a combination of all of these things together?  No.  I believe that the pain Jesus knew in the garden and would experience on the cross was greater than any one of those things and even greater than all of those things combined.

To know what was at the heart of His agony, we must understand what He meant when He referred to the “cup” the night before in the Garden.

What was this “cup”? What was Jesus hoping to avoid?  It was not merely death.  It was not physical pain on the cross.  It was not the scourging or humiliation. It was not the torture of nails being driven through His body, not the horrible thirst, nor was it the disgrace of being spat upon or beaten.  Again, it was not even all these things combined.  I say this because those were all the things Jesus said not to fear.  In Luke 12:4, He said, “And I say to you my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more they can do.”  “But,” He went on to add, “I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast you into hell; yes, I say to you, fear him!” (vs. 5)  Clearly, what Christ dreaded most about the cross was not physical death.  It was the outpouring of the wrath He would endure from His Holy Father.  The key is a clear understanding of “the “cup”.   The “cup” was a well-known Old Testament symbol of the divine wrath of God against sin. Consider just a few references:

“Awake, awake! Stand up, O Jerusalem, You have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of His fury; you have drunk the dregs of the cup of trembling, and drained it out.”  Isaiah 51:17

“Take this cup of fury from my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send you, to drink it.  When they drink it, they will stagger and go mad because of the sword I will send among them.” Jeremiah 25: 15-16

“Drink, be drunk, and vomit!  Fall down and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among you.” Jeremiah 25:27

Pretty graphic stuff.  What Jesus was experiencing on the cross was nothing less than the cup of the terrible wrath of God!  It’s worth noting here that “wrath” is not an out-of-control reaction of someone going “postal” on an angry rampage.  God is beyond that.  Wrath is God’s holy reaction to sin and in this case, it is unleashed on the Son.  The “cup” that Jesus was to drink was the vile, repulsive cup of sin bringing upon Him the full fury of the wrath of God.

Now, consider this: The One who had never tasted the tiniest drop of sin, the One who had never been separated from the Trinitarian relationship, will now bear the full brunt of the divine fury of God upon the most terrible, grotesque sins ever committed by every person who would ever live.  This, of course, includes your sins.

2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “He made who knew no sin to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”  That holy transaction of our sins being poured into Him, the full wrath of God unleashed upon the Son, is what Jesus feared most.  He had never been separated from the Father, until the cross.  God the Father has never abandoned anyone except His own Son.

This is the only way to explain the perplexing prayer of Jesus on the cross: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46)  Friend, as you read this, do you realize what you’ve been saved from?  God imputed (transferred, exchanged, ascribed) your sin to Christ and then punished Him for it.  Peter puts it this way:

“He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed.”  1 Peter 2:24 Don’t you feel a need to stop right now and thank Him?  Go ahead and do it.

In the garden we find the only place where Jesus addresses God as “My Father” (Matthew 26:39,42).  In fact, Mark records He prayed, “Abba, Father”.  “Abba” is the Aramaic equivalent of “Daddy” or “Dada”.  I believe that Jesus was experiencing a kind of “holy separation anxiety”.  What parent has not seen the terror in the eyes of a child while being left behind- as if their eyes and their cry was saying, “I can’t believe that you are leaving me!”, as if to say, “Why have you abandoned me?!”  I believe that is precisely what Jesus went through on the cross, and the garden was a prelude to the pain He knew was coming.  With this cry, He yelled, “My God…” not “My Father” (the only place He does this).  Did the Father really abandon the Son?  Was there really violence done to the Trinity while Jesus was on the cross!?  I can’t explain it theologically or understand it rationally, but how else can you justify this cry of Jesus?

As He cried out in anguish, God’s inflexible holiness and boundless love collided, and our redemption was made possible.

That’s what happened on the cross. For you to be fully forgiven, Jesus had to be fully abandoned.  In that moment, the Man Jesus was not in charge, the Father was.  What does this transaction over 2,000 years ago have to do with you today?  Everything.  It is more relevant than today’s newspaper and more powerful than any truth you’ll ever know.  “You are forgiven”, He says.  Jesus, the Lamb of God, took on the full fury of God’s wrath.  He died so that you wouldn’t have to and now, you can live forgiven.

What is the “righteousness of God”?

“But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” Colossians 1:22 What is “the righteousness of God” poured into us?

The “righteousness of God” is to be as righteous as Jesus is righteous.

How can I receive it?

“Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.”  John 1:12

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9

How can I live in it?

“He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed.” 1 Peter 2:24

So, grace is unmerited favor- Does God forgive me regardless of how I live? And once I receive His grace, can I go live any way I want to live?  I believe this question gets to the heart of what it means to be a Christian. If I truly comprehend the gift of God’s grace and the price that was required to pay so that I might be forgiven, then I will respond with a gratitude that would involve my whole life- all that I am. Otherwise I experience what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”- grace that cost Jesus everything but cost me nothing.  To receive His grace is to experience “costly grace”- I understand that the possibility of grace cost Him everything and therefore, cost me everything. It is costly because Christ’s life, death and resurrection becomes a model, the example for MY life.  Thus Bonhoeffer’s most famous quote, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”  There is no greater cost.  Of course this is in line with the call of Jesus Himself:

Then He said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23

Out of gratitude for this great exchange we die to ourselves in order to live for Jesus.  As we die to ourselves it is HIS life now alive in us.  Let your life now be one big, constant, ever-growing act of gratitude back to God for all He’s done for you.

 

 

General Revelation (from “Live Forgiven”)

26 Mar , 2011 No Comments

God may be indescribable, but He is not unknowable.  As we’ve already considered, God has revealed Himself to us through creation. Theologians call this “general revelation”.  He is seen “in general” throughout all of creation.  Through it all we catch a glimpse of who He is.  Creation reveals who He is- His character, His beauty, His “bigness”, and I think how “small” He can be as well.  God reveals Himself in “general” terms through His creation so that humans will simply humble themselves before Him and then partner with Him in to accomplish His purposes.  God doesn’t reveal Himself for kicks.  He reveals Himself “on purpose”, or even “for His purpose”.  Simply put, God’s job is to do the revealing, ours is to do the responding.  We respond to His revelation by humbling ourselves before Him and surrendering our lives to Him.

So, the logical question is this: What does creation say about who God is? And regardless of where you are in your faith journey, doesn’t it seem logical that God created all that is?  Remember, it is scientifically impossible to get something out of nothing.  In regard to the Aristotlean logic of “cause and effect”, there must be a cause for every effect.  Ultimately you are led to an “Uncaused Cause”.  What does creation reveal to us about who God is?  What can we know about Him?

Throughout all He has made God shows us how wonderfully creative He is and how thoroughly involved He is with His creation.  He cares for His creation and in ways and in places that we have never seen or think about.  When the Discovery Channel presented its series, “Planet Earth”, it quickly became a favorite in our family.  Taking years to make, a group of British scientists and photographers put together, what was for me at least, one worship sequence after another.  As they show us places and practices in creation never before seen, we’re reminded that much of God’s creation and caring seems, at times, gratuitous, unnecessary, even extravagant.

For instance, why didn’t He stop at 100 billion stars?  Why did He create billions of galaxies with trillions of stars in each one?  Why didn’t He stop at 2,000 mammals?  (There are 4,260 different types of mammals).  There are 6,787 species of reptiles, nearly 10,000 different types of birds and 28,000 species of fishes.  And of course, invertebrates outnumber all the vertebrates put together.  There are 80,000 species of mollusks and a million different kinds of insects.  Why didn’t He stop at 1,000 types of insects?  I read recently that there are 300,000 species of beetles and weevils alone!  What’s up with that?  And again, what does this say about God?  As a piece of art expresses the heart of the artist, God’s artwork, His creation, is an expression of who He is.

Why the extravagance, the lavish and seemingly excessive creativity?  Some scientists have now added to their reasons for the existence of such a vast universe this interesting thought: The Universe exists so that we might explore it and in so doing find the One who is the Creator of it all.  Again, He’s not just “out there”.  He wants to be found by us.

It’s as if He is trying to say to us throughout His creation that He is the One in control of all of life, not us.  It’s as if He wants us to know who’s in control, as if to say, “You’re going to need a God like me.  You’re going to need a God who creates and cares for His creation in ways that you don’t even see.  You’re going to need a God who gives and blesses and sustains and loves for seemingly no reason whatsoever.”  That’s the kind of God He is.  He loves because that’s who He is and we see His heart in creation.

Why Lent?

04 Mar , 2011 3 Comments

Growing up Baptist kid I didn’t know anything about Lent.  In fact, in North Carolina, I only knew Lent as a strange “Catholic” practice.  All I knew was they practiced some strange liturgy- at least to me, in my small little world.  Praise God as I grew older I was able to get broader picture of the Body of Christ through the study of Church history and I was able to experience a broader expression of prayer and worship.  Most of us Protestants think of Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season as a “Catholic thing” while, in reality it was part of the early church’s consistent pattern of worship.  Our earliest known reference is that of Ireneus (who died in 202 A.D.).  What I’ve sought to do is strip the Lenten season of anything that is not biblical but maintain a simple and clear focus of prayer, repentance, and sacrifice.  I’ve heard many sermons on Christ’s instructions to pray when He says, “When you pray…” pray like this.  But He also says, “When you fast…” fast like this.  He didn’t say, “if” you fast.  Jesus expected His followers to pray, and at times, fast as a regular part of our spiritual pattern of worship.  Could it be that we (in North America in particular) could learn a few things about giving up so much of what we want and dying to our selfish needs for more?  I am certain that prayer and fasting is greatly needed among believers- particularly in the affluent West.

What many have written off as “weird” (ashes on the forehead, giving up certain foods, etc.) I’ve sought to recapture in its purest biblical sense.  It is true that Ash Wednesday or “Lent” are not in the Bible (of course, neither are Christmas Eve services, Good Friday services, Advent, and so much of what others of us would call “normal”).  You don’t see “Easter Sunday” in the Bible either (because every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday for the believer.

“Lent” may not be in the Bible but focused seasons of sacrifice, confession, and repentance clearly are.  In the church I grew up in we rushed to Easter Sunday without any preparation of the heart before God.  I’ve learned much from the larger Body of Christ as it relates to the spiritual disciplines solitude, prayer, and fasting. “Lent” of comes from the Middle English word “Lenten” which means “Spring”.  The Lenten or Easter Season is a focused time of confession and repentance from “Ash Wednesday” to Easter Sunday.  Forty Days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday (minus the Sundays leading up to Easter- because the early believers would not fast on Sundays).  Later many would go from Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday (forty days later).  Maundy comes from “mandatum”, meaning “mandate” or “command”.  Jesus said, “A new commandment” (mandatum nuevum) I give to you.”   So the Lenten season is a period of focused prayer and fasting (with a focus on confession, sacrifice, and repentance). Why forty Days?  Forty days shows up throughout the Bible.  Moses, Elijah, and Jesus (Luke 4:1-2) all fasted for forty days.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:19

The ashes are to remind you of your mortality and of the need to repent of sin in your life.  It was common for Jews and early believers to mourn the loss of a loved one with “sackcloth and ashes”.  Ashes were also a sign of brokenness and repentance of sin.  Confession of sin is a private thing between you and God.  It is not something to be paraded around and seen by everyone but a private moment between you and your Savior.

Fasting is the act of the will through which the follower of Jesus puts forth spiritual control over the flesh (through sacrifice- not eating) with a view to a more personal and powerful experience with God in prayer. Fasting involves giving up but is much more about receiving.  You give up in order to receive.  You die in order to live.

Types of fasts:

Total fast (be careful and receive guidance)

Water only Prepare your body for it.  Hunger pangs will go away- first 2 days hardest.

Liquid only Juices- not milkshakes! (When you don’t eat, more time for prayer)

Eliminate certain foods No deserts, no caffeine, no junk food- “Daniel fast”- healthy

Media fast NO television, NO movies, NO paper, NO internet, NO video games, etc.

Multiple possibilities Be creative and specific-but a sacrifice- must cost you something

During a fast, when your earthly desires kick in, you turn to the Lord and you are reminded that He is more than enough to meet your every need.  It is a wonderful way to be drawn to the Lord and to overcome the desires of the flesh in many areas of your life.

“If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; but God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer.”  Psalm 66:18-19 What is David saying here?  I cannot harbor unconfessed sin or unresolved sin in my life.  Any Christian who desires to fully serve God and follow Him must attack sin from all fronts.  We cannot hold on to sin but release it and the first step is to confess it- to God first and then, to others.

“For me, to live is Christ and die is gain.” Philippians 1:21

To be alive to Christ and to live for Him means I must die to myself, my needs, my wants- continually.  “In the body” is where dying of Jesus is seen through my life and revealed to others.  It is, at the same time, the place where this life (the resurrection life) of Jesus is seen.  In the same passage he says, “so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in my body.”  My life then becomes a presentation of a Story- the Story of the passion of Christ.  I die to myself in order to reveal His life in my.  You see, you are called not only to tell the story of the Passion, but to LIVE it, experience it.  How?  By dying to self.

But the language used by Paul is a continual dying- the process of dying- you are continually dying.  To remind you of your mortality- your body is dying and to get you focused and busy on the eternal that does not die.  You see, death for Jesus was not the end- He lives. So, how can we position ourselves to move to this dying of self?  How can I be touched by God to go to deeper levels?  By confessing my sin to Him, by showing Him that He is all I want- all I need.  Fasting is that spiritual discipline that helps us live that out in unique ways.  It’s why Jesus says, “When you fast…” (Matthew 6:16)- it was an expected practice of the believer.  It’s a way to deny yourself of earthly things in order to focus on heavenly things.

“My food” Jesus said, “is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work.” John 4:34 During a fast He is your food.  The will of God becomes your sustenance.

May you walk to the cross with the Lord Jesus this Easter season as never before.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10

A Shadow of Heaven

25 Feb , 2011 1 Comment

One of the great blessings of being a pastor is that I am reminded daily of what really matters in life. Today I sat down with a precious family to plan the memorial service of their loved one. Our conversation jumped from here to there, earth to heaven, the temporary to the eternal, the already and the not yet.

I believe that every day we’re given glimpses of heaven. Whether we catch them or not is entirely up to us. It seems even the worst among us catch glimpses of the eternal: something more, something beautiful, something sacred. I’m sure I’m not the only one who hears the rumblings of something eternal among us. Milton’s question echoes across time, “What if earth be but a shadow of heaven?”4 Why does every culture in the world worship Someone or at least something? Philip Yancey notes in his book, Rumors, “Alone of all the beasts, the human animal has the power and freedom to center life in one impulse. We have not, it seems, the power to abstain from worship.”5

What is that within us? Is it simply the result of some evolutionary process that has created within us this God-consciousness, this desire to exalt Someone who is beyond us? Or could it be that God Himself really has “set eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)? Could it be we really do have a kind of “homing device” that calls us onward to seek, to search, to desire? In his classic book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”6 The fact that we have such longings doesn’t prove that God is the One prompting us or that eternity awaits, but I believe our longing for Heaven whispers to us in our joy and it seems to scream at us in our despair that something else is coming. And Someone else is writing this already-but-not-yet narrative.

Surely we all long for more. When Jesus prayed for the Father to set all things right by bringing His kingdom to earth (Matthew 6:10), He was calling for a present and future reality. “Thy kingdom come” should be the cry of every believer’s heart. As we join God in His restorative agenda we become the answer to the prayers of our Lord. The present life is but a shadow of heaven. You and I are not yet free from sin, but we do have the capacity within us (by the power of His Spirit) to reach our fullest redemptive potential. Live today with the end in sight. He is making everything new (Revelation 21:5).

The New Math of Grace

03 Feb , 2011 2 Comments

Several years ago I sat at a rehearsal dinner with a young woman who was getting her masters degree in mathematics. Not too fond of math myself, I told her how impressed I was and that I felt I had never been real good with numbers. She responded with, “Oh, we don’t really use numbers.” I was silenced. I didn’t even know how to respond, at least intelligently. Math without numbers? Isn’t that like geology without rocks, astronomy without stars, or zoology without animals? Surely she was talking a new math that I had not yet learned.

In Matthew 20:1-16, Jesus takes us to school with the scandalous mathematics of grace. Here He tells the troubling and frustrating parable of the vineyard workers and mathematically- challenged landowner. Troubling because it challenges our sense of fairness and it makes us question what is just. Of course, this is why Jesus so masterfully crafts this great story.

The landowner of the vineyard went out to hire workers for the day and found men waiting at the marketplace. He then hired groups of workers at different times throughout the day- “early” around 6 a.m., 9 a.m., noon, 3:00 p.m., and 5:00 p.m. The workday ended at 6:00 pm. When time came to pay all the workers he started with the last hour crew and paid them a full day’s wage. Those who had worked much longer and harder were eager and optimistic to see what the landowner would pay them. Each one received the very same wage, though the last to be paid had worked hard all day long. We resonate with the tired and frustrated workers as they complain of the injustice served. “It’s not fair!” is our collective response.

The story turns completely when we look harder, not at the characters in the parable but at ourselves- or I should say, as we find ourselves in the story. Every now and then if I read the Bible with a humble introspection and an eye toward application- I find myself in the story (which of course, is the point and power of Scripture). We identify with the frustrated workers because we actually think we’re the first-hour guys, the all-day workers. Our self-righteous angst betrays our misunderstanding, until we recognize that we are, in fact, the last-hour workers. You and I are the ones that others deemed unworthy to hire. We are the ones who showed up late and have done very little. This is the point of Jesus’ story. Perhaps the most profound words in the parable are found in the all-day workers protest against the landowner: “you have made them equal to us”. Praise be to God for the unfair and maddening gift of His grace.

The New Math of Grace
• Grace is not about human merit. It is about divine forgiveness.

• Grace is not about earning wages. It is about dispensing gifts.

• Grace is not about religious moralism or behavioral compliance to rules. It is about a complete reorientation of life to the Gospel.

• Grace is not about finishing first or last. It is about not counting.