“Justice Applied”
Mark 15:16-41
2 Corinthians 5:21
Good Friday
Dr.
I
am about to say some things that I intend to be unnerving, unsettling,
hopefully even shocking.
·
Can you imagine inviting Mother Theresa to go to a
pornographic movie with you?
·
Can you imagine forcing a woman who had recently
and sadly miscarried to assist in an abortion?
·
Can you imagine asking a WWII veteran to desecrate
the American flag?
The very ideas are
embarrassing or abhorrent to think about.
Those activities are the very antithesis of the character of those people.
We intuitively know that such things would violate them.
Pictures from the
Abu Ghraib prison in
I think many Westerners misunderstood why.
Physical torture wasn’t the issue; it was humiliation of the worst kind.
It was forcing them to engage in what to them was a violation of what they held sacred; it was a violation of their very being.
What is the most
abhorrent thing you can imagine being forced to do?
What could you be forced to say or do that would violate everything you are?
I wish I could leave you with that thought for a minute to really consider it but I must move quickly to the point:
When Jesus was in the
He said, “My soul is overwhelmed…”
This was his essential nature, his
being, his mind and emotions.
He was deeply distressed.
The words (Ekthambeisthai) mean to be “in the grip of shuddering
horror in the face of a dreadful prospect.” (Cranfield, St. Mark,
432
Troubled means to be in anguish or as Jesus said it, “overwhelmed with sorrow.”
What troubled Jesus so much?
Following Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” and many before him, we are inclined to think that Jesus’ dread was of the physical ordeal he was about to endure.
But I am certain that there were two other factors that weighed much more heavily on Jesus that night and the following day.
The
first is this: Jesus was about to become sin for us.
2 Corinthian
Before Jesus could pay the penalty for the sins of his people, he had to
take that sin upon himself.
Our sin became his sin.
He became guilty of our mistreatment of others, our disregard of God, our jealousies, our pride, our hurtful words and our shameful deeds.
He became the murderer, the adulterer, the deceiver, the slanderer, the thief, the cheat, and the child-molester.
He took on the guilt of my sinful thoughts, my failure to obey, my lovelessness, my anger, my pride, and all the rest.
Every sin you and I who belong to him, ever committed or ever will commit, he took on himself that day.
We have seen what
our sins do – we have seen the destructive power they have.
We have watched our sin hurt others and reduce others.
We have experienced the shame of our sins – we know the ugliness of them.
As one man wrote
of it, “Jesus took on the deformity, the abomination, and the soul-destroying
power of sin itself. (Krummacher, The
Suffering Jesus, 109)
It was bad enough
for the Holy Son of God to observe sin in others; it was another for him to
experience it subjectively – he became that sin in all its hideousness.
Now back to where
I began, could anything be more abhorrent than for the holy God to become
unholy, for the sinless God to become sin, or for the righteous Lord to become
unrighteous?
Habakkuk
When Jesus was on earth,
he wept over the affects of sin.
Is it any wonder that now he was “deeply distressed and troubled?”
He who
knew no sin, became sin for us.
Not
only did he become sin for us but also secondly he willingly accepted the
wrath of God against that sin.
In his Gospel, Mark records only one sentence by Jesus
during the entire crucifixion: Mark
The Bible says he
cried it out in a loud voice.
Can you imagine the surprise to those standing around; Jesus has been quiet so long, has said so little, and then he cries out.
Is God the Son
forsaken by the Father?
Can it be?
Instead of the
oneness of the Father, Son and Spirit, Jesus is alone.
He who is the beloved Son in whom the Father is
well pleased, is now the culprit, the child of wrath, the damned.
You read the story
of a war-ravaged country and hear of a child being torn from the arms of its
mother.
You can only imagine the grief of the mother and the terror of the child.
Well imagine not that the child is torn from the unwilling arms of the mother but is instead willingly given up for the sake of others.
Now try to imagine the grief of the mother and the anguish of the child.
God is absolutely
clear:
·
Romans 3: “The wages of sin is death.
·
Ezekiel 18: “The soul that sins will die.
·
Romans 1: “The wrath of God abides on
all unrighteousness.
·
Isaiah 59:2 “But your iniquities have separated
you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from
you…”
800 years before
the fact Isaiah told us: Isaiah 53:5 “But he (God) was pierced
for our transgressions,
the punishment
that brought us peace was upon him
any by his wounds
we are healed.”
It makes possible God’s forgiveness of us but it is NOT
cheap forgiveness.
This is forgiveness based on the guilt and punishment for our sins against God and each other being fully borne by another – by our Savior, Jesus.
·
And so we who trust in Jesus are declared “not
guilty” – Jesus has borne our guilt.
·
And we who trust in Jesus are declared no longer
under condemnation – Jesus has borne the wrath of God.
·
And we who trust in Jesus are declared righteous,
okay with God, included, accepted, loved, cherished, and his children
forever.
2
Corinthians