The Supreme Malediction

Reformation is needed in almost every day. If Paul, within years of founding the Corinthian congregation, needs to see them reformed, we can't be surprised that churches need reforming regularly in the history of the church. Sometimes that reform is more in the nature of a revitalization, but I think people have, especially in America, been too content to be satisfied with entertainment and with shallowness, and we need a seriousness about God, about Christ, and about His Word, and I think to be drawn again to a passionate interest in the Word is going to take a major reformation of the church today. My hope is that this series will serve the church by causing people to reflect on what the church ought to be according to the Word of God. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law.

Listen to this. Not simply by being cursed for us, but becoming a curse for us. He who is the incarnation of the glory of God now becomes the very incarnation of the divine curse. On the cross, Jesus experienced unimaginable physical pain and torture, but even more devastating was the rejection of God the Father. We hear the echoes of, My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?

Today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. R.C. Sproul explains why all of this was necessary to accomplish our salvation. In the imagery of atonement on the Day of Atonement, we know that there are several animals involved in the ritual of that day. The priest, before he can enter into the Holy of Holies, where the high priest and only the high priest and only this one day of the year, can go, he must first himself make a blood sacrifice and go through an elaborate process of purification.

And then there are two more animals involved. One who is killed, the other that survives. The one that is killed yields his blood, which the high priest takes into the inner sanctum and sprinkles on the mercy seat, sprinkles on the throne of Yahweh to bring reconciliation. And yet in this drama, there is no power in that blood, other than it's pointing forward to the blood of the Lamb, even as the blood on the doorposts on the night of Passover pointed beyond itself to Christ our Passover.

Who is sacrifice for us? We know two things from the Day of Atonement. One, that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.

We also learn from the author of Hebrews that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin. But in that half of the drama, with the blood sacrifice that is sprinkled on the mercy seat, what is symbolized is an act of propitiation, which some brilliant translators in the middle of the twentieth century decided to take out of the New Testament to their everlasting shame. Those two words that are so central to the core of the gospel, propitiation, expiation. What's the difference?

They have the same root but different prefix. I want our people at St. Andrews in Sanford, Florida to always understand propitiation and expiation if they're going to understand the gospel. And I tell them, I said, you know, our church is built in the classical style that's called the cruciform, so that if you looked at it from the air, the shape of our building forms the shape of a cross. And I say, if you come down the center aisle, let it remind you of the vertical piece of the cross. Let it remind you of propitiation, because in propitiation the Son does something to satisfy the justice and the wrath of the Father.

It's a vertical transaction. That is what is prefigured in this sacrifice that is made on the mercy seat. Let's not forget that other animal that liberal theologians try every which way to erase from the biblical record, as we've already heard. Yes, I'm speaking of the goat, the scapegoat who becomes the object of imputation where the priest now lays his hands on the back of that goat, symbolically indicating the transfer or the imputation of the guilt of the people to the back of that goat. So at the end of that ceremony, the priest lays his hands on the goat and says, may the sins of the people be upon this goat, and then says to the goat, thank you very much for standing still during this. And he says to the people, you are dismissed.

No, no, no, no, no. The significance really reaches its crescendo after the imputation of the sin of the people to the back of the goat, when the goat is driven then into the wilderness, outside the camp. Remember when God numbered the people according to the tribes and they pitched the tabernacle, the tribes were in a circle, and what was in the middle, equidistant to every settlement of every tribe, was the tabernacle, indicating God is in the midst of His people. And to be driven out of the covenant community, to be driven outside the camp, was to be driven to the place where the blessings of God did not reach, sent into the outer darkness, into the wilderness, into exile, into the curse. That's expiation. When in the cross, not only is the Father just as satisfied by the atoning work of His Son, but in bearing our sins, the Lamb of God removes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west.

How does He do it? By being cursed. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. Listen to this, not simply by being cursed for us, but becoming a curse for us. He who is the incarnation of the glory of God now becomes the very incarnation of the divine curse.

As it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs upon the tree. Many, many years ago I was asked by the Quaker community of Pennsylvania, the Society of Friends, to come to one of their meetings and explain to them the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. And there I talked about the Day of Atonement in Israel and the crucifixion of Christ in the New Testament. And as I spoke of Christ becoming cursed, my message was interrupted by a guy in the back who stood up and shouted out loud, that's primitive and obscene. Has that ever happened to you when you're preaching? I was taken back, and just to give myself a chance to think, I said, What did you say?

As if I didn't hear him, everybody in the room heard him. I said, What did you say? And with great hostility, he said, I said, That's primitive and obscene. And I said, You're right.

I love the words that you have chosen to describe this dynamic. What could be more primitive than killing animals and sticking their blood over the throne of God or taking a human being and pouring out his blood as a human sacrifice? That is primitive.

You're right. You know, one of the things I love about the gospel, sir, is that it wasn't written merely for a gnostic elite group of scholars who had to have their Ph.D. in theology in order to understand it. But the drama of redemption is communicated in terms so simple, so crass, so primitive, that a child can understand it. But I really like the second word you used, obscene, obscene. If there ever was an obscenity that violates contemporary community standards, it was Jesus on the cross. Because after he became the scapegoat and the Father imputes to him every sin of every one of his people, we see the most intense, dense concentration of evil ever experienced on this planet. Jesus was the ultimate obscenity.

And so what happened? The Bible tells us that God is too holy to even look at sin, and He cannot bear to look at this concentrated, monumental condensation of evil. And His eyes are averted from His Son.

The light of His countenance is turned off. All blessedness is removed from His Son whom He loved. And in its place was the full measure of the divine curse. All the imagery that portrays the historical event of the cross is the imagery of the curse. It was necessary for the Scriptures to be fulfilled that Jesus not be crucified by Jews, but He has to be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles.

He has to be executed not by stoning, but He has to be killed by Gentiles outside the camp, outside Jerusalem at Golgoth. So that the full measure of the curse and the darkness that attends it be visited upon Jesus. And God adds to these details astronomical perturbations where at midday He turns the lights out on that hill outside of Jerusalem so that when His face is moved away, when the light of His countenance is shut down, even the sun won't shine on Calvary. And bearing the full measure of the curse, Christ screams, "'Eli lama sabachthani?' My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?"

Oh, look at how the theologians play with that. Oh, well, Jesus was taking this occasion to identify with the psalmist in Psalm 22, which begins with those words so that He could call attention to those who are looking upon this spectacle that this is really a fulfillment of prophecy. I don't think Jesus was in a Bible-quoting mood at that time. Or as Albert Schweitzer opined, this was a cry of a disillusioned prophet who believed that God was going to rescue him at the eleventh hour, and he felt forsaken. He didn't just feel forsaken. He was forsaken. For Jesus to become the curse, He has to be utterly, totally, and completely forsaken by the Father. I started off by saying to you, I've been thinking about these things for fifty years, and I can't begin to penetrate that, what it meant that Jesus was forsaken by God.

But there is none of this to be found in the pseudo-gospels of our day. Dear brothers, every time I hear a preacher on television or live who says to his people, God loves you unconditionally, I want to ask that this man be defrocked for such a violation of the Word of God. What pagan who hears that announcement that God loves him unconditionally does not hear in that statement that he has no need of repentance, he can continue in sin without fear, knowing that it's all taken care of, that God doesn't hold grudges, that God loves him unconditionally. Well, there is a profound sense in which God does love people even in their corruption, but they are still under His anathema.

I know that almost everybody here is a minister or related to a minister and so on, but you know, just because you're ordained, there's no guarantee that you're in the kingdom of God. And with this size of professing Christians assembled at one and all, the odds are astronomical that there are many people in this room right now who are still under the curse of God, who have not yet fled to the cross, who are still counting on this nebulous idea of the unconditional love of God to get them through, who are even worse still thinking that they can get into the kingdom of God through their good works, through their service. You don't understand that unless you perfectly obey the law of God, which you have not done for five minutes since you were born, you are under the curse of God. And here's the reality that we must make clear to our people that they will either bear the curse of God themselves or they will flee to the one who took it for them. Cursed of God.

Father turns His back. Thomas Aquinas once was asked, Thomas, do you think that Jesus enjoyed the beatific vision through His whole life? Thomas said, I don't know, but I'm sure that our Lord was able to see things that our sin keeps us from seeing. Remember that the promise of the vision of God in the beatitudes is the promise made to whom?

To the pure of heart. Beloved, the reason why you can't see God with your eyes is not because you have a problem with your optic nerve. What prevents us from seeing God is our heart, our impurity. But Jesus had no impurity, and Thomas said He was pure in heart. So obviously He had some experience of the beauty of the Father until that moment that my sin was placed upon Him, and the one who was pure was pure no more, and God cursed Him. It was as if there was a cry from heaven. Excuse my language, but I can be no more accurate than to say it was as if Jesus heard the words, God damn you. Because that's what it meant to be cursed, to be damned, to be under the anathema of the Father.

As I said, I don't understand that, but I know that it's true. And I know that every person in this room and every person outside in this hotel and on the street and across the world who has not been covered by the righteousness of Christ right this minute draws every breath under the curse of God. If you believe that, you will stop adding to the gospel and start preaching it with clarity and with boldness because, dear friends, it is the only hope we have, and it is hope enough. It is hope enough. With clarity and conviction, that's Dr. R.C.

Sproul. His sermon cleared away any false understanding of the gospel and boiled it down to one incontrovertible truth. We will either bear the curse of God ourselves, or we will flee to the one who took it for us.

It shows us how much we have to celebrate this Easter. Thank you for joining us for Redoing Your Mind today. I'm Lee Webb, and I want to let you know about our special resource offer. It's Dr. Sproul's series, The Atonement of Jesus. In ten messages, he explains the biblical doctrine of the atonement. I hope you'll request this MP3 CD today when you contact us with a donation of any amount.

You can find us online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can simply call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. It is vital that we have a firm understanding of Christ's atonement, the nature, necessity, and consequences of Christ's work on the cross. I hope the messages you've heard this week have been an encouragement to you, and this material would be a great foundation for a Bible study in your home or a Sunday school class at your church. So again, request the series, The Atonement of Jesus, for your donation of any amount. Our phone number again is 800-435-4343. Tomorrow, Good Friday, and we'll bring you a message from Dr. Sproul that will remind us of the precious promises we have because of the atoning work of Christ. We hope to see you right back here tomorrow for Renewing Your Mind. .