Crucifixion

We've been told so often that God is a God of love who forgives us freely of our sins, and the idea we have then of God is that all God has to do to reconcile us to Himself is just simply to dispense His forgiveness upon us. But when we think like this, we forget that God is holy. When we forget that God is just, sin requires that a penalty be paid. God doesn't simply wink at sin. Welcome to Renewing Your Mind.

I'm Lee Webb. In the Old Testament, we see the people bringing sheep and goats and doves to the temple to be sacrificed over and over again to atone for their sin. It pointed the way to the Messiah, the One who would be the perfect sacrifice, never again to be repeated. During this holy week, we thought it would be good to focus on Christ's work on the cross and why it was needed to atone for our sin. In today's session, we're going to take a brief look at the crucifixion of Christ. We're all familiar with the Apostle Paul's statement that he was determined to know nothing except Christ and Him crucified. Of course, that was an example of apostolic hyperbole because Paul also knew considerably more and wrote on many other subjects besides the cross of Christ. But what Paul was saying with that comment was, in the crucifixion, we reach the zenith of the work of Christ, the acme, the high point of the mission He was sent to accomplish. Now, had we been eyewitnesses of the crucifixion on Good Friday, I think it's very doubtful that we would have realized that we were observing an act of cosmic significance, that we would be observing an atonement.

The people who were gathered there at Golgotha had different perspectives on what they were seeing from the viewpoint of Caiaphas. The execution of Jesus was a political expediency to keep the Romans off the back of the Jewish Sanhedrin. For Pilate, it was also an act of political expediency in order to calm the tumultuous crowd that was screaming for the blood of Christ. For the thief on the cross who recognized the identity of Jesus, he saw it as a miscarriage of justice. But who, as an observer, would see in this act an atonement that would have such far-reaching implications? To understand the depth of what happened in the cross, we have to look at the epistles in the New Testament, wherein we receive the interpretation of the meaning of the event of the cross. Just briefly, let me look for a second at Romans chapter 3, where the Apostle Paul says these words in verse 21, but now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe.

For there is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood. Now, there are two comments that the Apostle makes here in reference to our justification as it relates to the work of Jesus. One is with reference to the word redemption that I'll observe more closely in a few moments, but the one I want us to see initially is his reference to this act of propitiation, that in Jesus' death, in the shedding of His blood, there was an act of propitiation.

Now, what does that mean? The Jew who would read this material would understand it in light of the Old Testament celebration of the Day of Atonement, evi in importance as to which was the most important day of the year, the celebration of the Passover or the celebration of the Day of Atonement. But the annual Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, took place when the high priest was consecrated for a special task. He himself had to make an offering of a bullock as a sacrifice, and then he was to take two goats, one that would be sent as the scapegoat into the wilderness and the other goat that was to be killed, and then the high priest, again after elaborate cleansing rituals, was allowed to enter into the most sacred place in Israel into the Sanctorum, the Holy of Holies behind the curtain on the edge of the holy place where only the high priest could go. And he would enter into the Holy of Holies carrying with him the blood of the sacrifice that had been killed.

And what did he do with it? He would take this blood and sprinkle it on the mercy seat. And the mercy seat, which was in the Holy of Holies, was the throne of God. And the mercy seat was the lid of this throne, and inside the throne were contained, for example, Aaron's rod and the Ten Commandments, or the law of God. And so in this ritual, blood is sprinkled on the throne of God indicating a sacrifice of blood in order to satisfy the demands of God's justice.

So what we're involved with in an act of propitiation is an act of satisfaction. This concept is somewhat foreign to us because we've been told so often that God is a God of love. He's a God of mercy.

He's a God of grace who forgives us freely of our sins. And the idea we have then of God is that all God has to do to reconcile us to Himself is just simply to dispense His forgiveness upon us. But when we think like this, we forget that God is holy. We forget that God is just. And at the end of that passage that I just read from Romans 3, he says that as a propitiation by His blood through faith to demonstrate His righteousness because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness that He might be just and justifier. So when God justifies His people, He doesn't just do it by a unilateral act of forgiveness because to do so without satisfaction, without atonement, without propitiation would be a complete violation of His own justice. God will not wink at sin.

God will not simply pass over it without exacting a punishment for it. And so in the whole elaborate ritual of the Day of Atonement we see the symbolism of the blood sacrifice that is given to propitiate the wrath of God and to satisfy His justice. Now we come to the New Testament and we read the book of Hebrews, and the book of Hebrews reminds us that the blood of bulls and goats cannot atone for our sins. All this elaborate business of killing the goat and pouring His blood on the mercy seat isn't going to save anybody from their sins because there's no inherent intrinsic value in the blood of a goat to affect propitiation. And so how were the people's sins forgiven in the Old Testament? Not on the basis of the blood of the goat, but on the basis of the blood of Christ who was yet to come.

All of these observations and rituals in the tabernacle and later in the temple were pointing beyond themselves to the future reality that would come that in fact would satisfy the demands of God's righteousness and His justice. I also mentioned in here in this text that Christ was sent to bring redemption, and this concept of redemption is also linked to the whole work of Jesus in the cross. Redemption has to do with redeeming something. We have the experience in our past history in America of having supermarkets and other stores that would give out savings stamps, and that custom has simply passed away in the last few years, but it used to be that in every mall there would be a little store that was called a redemption center, and in that redemption center there would be all different kinds of appliances and tools, bicycles, whatever, and for so many stamps that were saved you could turn the stamps in for some real object of use because you couldn't really use the stamps.

You redeemed the stamps to purchase what it is that you wanted, and that's what's going on here with redemption. Redemption is an act of purchasing. It's an economic act as it were, and Jesus in the cross is purchasing something.

He's purchasing someone by redeeming them or paying the price of redemption. Again, in the Old Testament you had the situation where people when they were not able to pay their debts could give themselves to their debtor and enlist in the process of indentured servitude until the debt was paid. And if a man, for example, became an indentured servant and he had to work for five or six or seven years to pay off his debt, and while he was in this servitude married a woman, and the time came when his term of service was finished, he was to be set free, but not the woman. Because in order to protect the woman from being married to an insolvent person who in the first place wasn't able to see to his own affairs, not to mention taking care of a woman or any children, the woman or the children would stay until or unless the freed servant paid the bride price to redeem his bride.

And when he would pay the money, his bride would be set free. That imagery also runs through the Old Testament where Jesus purchases His bride who was in bondage, who was in servitude to the world and the flesh and the devil. That's why Paul will say to his readers, you're not your own, but you've been bought with a price. You've been purchased, and the price tag was the blood of Christ, or we should say the life of Christ because in Jewish categories the life was in the blood, and the reason why the blood was required, it wasn't insistently that they could scratch the animal and get a little blood from him and that would take care of the sacrifice.

No, the blood was shed because the life was required in payment for sin because in the beginning the punishment for all sin was life. Again in the Old Testament process of redemption, many times the one who would make the purchase to buy somebody back out of slavery would be a relative, and that relative would be known as the kinsman-redeemer, the relative who would pay for the liberation of his brother or sister or mother or whatever. And so in New Testament categories, Jesus is the supreme redeemer, and He makes payment for that price on the promise. If we look then also at Paul's letter to the Galatians in chapter 3 of Galatians, we see an astonishing statement where Paul writes in chapter 3 verse 10 these words, For as are of the works of the law are under the curse. For it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all the things that are written in the book of the law to do them, but that no one is justified by the law and the sight of God is evident. For the just shall live by faith. Yet the law is not of faith, but the man who does them shall live by them. And now we read this in verse 13. This is astonishing. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law.

Let me just pause there for a second. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. Now Paul has just already reached back into the terms of the Old Testament covenant that God made with Moses, and as it was renewed in the book of Deuteronomy, you recall that God said to His people as He gathered them together in solemn assembly, He said, if you keep these laws that I've given you, obey My precepts and My commandments, then blessed will you be in the city, blessed will you be in the country, blessed will you be when you rise up, blessed will you be when you go to bed at night, blessed will you be all over the place. But if you fail to keep My law, then cursed shall you be in the city, cursed shall you be in the country, cursed shall you be when you rise up, cursed shall you be when you go to bed at night. The curse, My curse will be upon you.

One of the things that I like about singing Christmas carols is in Joy to the World. There is that phrase in the hymn referring to the efficacy of Christ's work of redemption. It takes place as far as the curse is found. That curse appears in the very beginning chapters of Genesis. As soon as sin enters into the world through the temptation of the serpent, the man is cursed, the woman is cursed, the serpent is cursed, the land is cursed, and the whole creation groans together in travail until that curse is removed. Well, what is that curse?

I like to explain it in these terms. Everybody knows the Hebrew benediction, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you, and may the Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you and give you His peace.

There we have a case of Hebrew poetry of synonymous parallelism where each sentence means the same thing. So that for the Jew, may the Lord bless you, means the same thing as may the Lord make His face to shine upon you. Because the supreme blessing to the Jew was to be able someday to see God face to face. May the Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you, the radiance of His face. May that radiance descend upon you and give you His peace. That's the supreme sense of blessedness. But the blessing is the antithesis, it's the polar opposite of the curse. So what would it mean to be cursed of God? Instead of saying, may the Lord bless you and keep you, it would say, may the Lord curse you and abandon you. Instead of making His face to shine upon you, may the Lord turn His back upon you and give you only judgment.

May the Lord turn His face away from you and remove peace from your life. Paul goes on to say here using these categories of blessing and curse. It says, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree, that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith in order for the blessing that was promised to Abraham and to his seed to be received. Sin must first be punished. And now Jesus not only takes the curse upon Him, but He becomes the curse.

He embodies the curse. He has to be completely forsaken by God. The agony from which He screams on the cross, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me, happened when God turned the lights out.

The Father turns His back on Jesus. Once Jesus had all of our sins imputed to Him, He was the most loathsome sight ever in the universe, and God is too holy as to even to look at sin. And so He turned His back on Him that He might be cursed, that we may not be cursed, and instead we may be blessed. But thanks be to God the cursing of Christ did not last for eternity.

It was only for a season there at Golgotha. You know, I've said this many times that when people talk about the crucifixion, they go on and on about the physical pain endured by somebody who was subjected to the nails and the thorns and the spear in the side. I wonder if Jesus even felt those things. There were thousands of people who died like that, but only one received the fullness of the curse of God in the middle of His crucifixion. And finally, before He gave up the ghost, He said, Tetelestai, it's finished.

And He committed Himself into the hands of the One who had just cursed Him and was received once more into the Father's presence. The humiliation, the suffering, the curse was finished. And yet Jesus still had more work to do. That's why the story doesn't end on Friday. The story doesn't end on the cross. Sunday is coming as the work of Jesus goes on. And that's why we will look forward to Dr. R.C. Sproul's message tomorrow.

You're listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Monday. Thank you for being with us. And this week as we prepare for Easter, we will feature several of Dr. Sproul's messages on the atonement, why it was necessary, and what it accomplished.

I hope you'll contact us today and request R.C. 's series, What Did Jesus Do? Understanding the Work of Christ.

In 12 messages, R.C. explains how the life that Jesus lived made Him worthy of dying for our sins, and how His death appeased the Father's wrath against us. We invite you to contact us with a donation of any amount and request this series.

You can find us online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. After you make your donation, you'll find the digital files for the series ready to view in your Ligonier Learning Library. You know, I think that many times we only think of Jesus' death and resurrection when we consider His work of redemption. But we need to keep in mind that He had to first live a perfect life to become the second Adam, to succeed where the first Adam failed.

And that's a key element in the teaching that you'll find in this series. So again, request the two-DVD set of What Did Jesus Do? Understanding the Work of Christ.

You can request it online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us at 800-435-4343. R.C. loved to bring the deep truths of God's Word to Christians from every walk of life, and we remain committed to proclaiming the Lordship of Christ in our homes, workplaces, schools, and communities. With that in mind, Ligonier Ministries is committed to training growing Christians who can take God's truth and thoughtfully put it into practice wherever they are and train others to do the same. So when you give your donation to this ministry, you're helping us do just that. So we thank you. The Jewish and Roman leaders probably breathed a sigh of relief after Jesus died.

They were finally rid of this man who had exposed their evil and hypocrisy, or so they thought. Dr. R.C. Sproul's message tomorrow is on the resurrection. I hope you'll make plans to join us here on Renewing Your Mind. R.C. Sproul's message tomorrow is on the resurrection. I hope you'll make plans to join us here on Renewing Your Mind.