Good Friday + John 18:1-19:42 + March 30, 2018
In
the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
We are
always tempted on Good Friday to think that it’s not actually all that good. We
hear the account of Christ’s betrayal, His trials, His scourging, the crown of
thorns, and His rejection by man and God the Father, and we think that evil has
one the day, that the sufferings and death of Christ are the triumph of
darkness over light. If viewed this way, Good Friday becomes a day of mourning
and sorrow over Christ’s death, almost like a yearly funeral for Jesus. But
this is not how the Scriptures teach us view Christ’s passion. It is not the
triumph of darkness over light. It is not Cain murdering Abel for no reason
than to satisfy his own rage. We mustn’t imagine that that on this day that the
devil, the world, and the wickedness of men prevail over the goodness of God.
Jesus
was not at the mercy of bloodthirsty Jews, just as His life was not in Pilate’s
hands. When Pilate reminds Jesus that he has the power to crucify Him or
release Him, Jesus says, “You could have
no power at all against me unless it hand been given you from above.” The
Jews have conspired against Jesus to crucify Him. The Gentiles do their dirty
work for them. But Jesus was not at the mercy of Jew or Gentile, High Priest or
Pilate. Everything that happened to
Jesus, every ounce of agony that was poured out upon Him was the will of God
His heavenly Father. In the fourth
chapter of Acts, Peter prays and says, “For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You
anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel,
were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined
before to be done” (Acts 4:27-28). Every
affliction of Christ was given as if from the hand of God Himself. Herod and
Pilate, the Jews and the Gentiles, conspired together to bring Christ to death.
They intended it for evil but God the Father intended it for our good. As
Isaiah said, “It pleased the LORD to
bruise Him; He has put Him to
grief” (Isaiah 53:10).
Why
would Father wish this for His only-begotten Son? It wasn’t hatred, as if God
the Father could hate His Son whom He begot from eternity. The exact opposite
is true! Twice during Jesus’ earthly ministry the Father spoke audibly for the
disciples to hear. Both times God the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom
I am well pleased.” It wasn’t hatred. It was justice and it was love. It was
justice because God is holy and holiness cannot tolerate even the smallest
amount of sin. David sings in Psalm
5:4, “For you are not a God who takes pleasure in
wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with you.” Sin must be punished. It cannot
be tolerated. God can’t excuse our sins or wink at them. Sin is every violation
of His will for us. So sin must be punished, just as the sin of our first
parents was punished. The Lord had told them that if they ate from the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil they would surely die. They ate. So they died.
At that moment they spiritually died, becoming enemies of God who would rather
listen to the voice of Satan rather than the Word of God. That sin of Adam’s is
passed on to all His children and every one of his descendants, so that there
is not a child born that is not born into sin. It is, as Job says, impossible
to bring a clean thing from an unclean thing. So sinners beget sinners. As St.
Paul says, “Through one
man's offense judgment came to
all men, resulting in condemnation” (Rom. 5:18).
We are born sinful and this spiritual condition is
what then leads us all to daily commit all kinds of terrible sins. Our hearts
are like fountains from which flow all sorts of vile and filthy thoughts:
covetous desires, discontentedness with our situations, lust, greedy desire,
anger against our fellow man and hatred for our neighbor. The desires of our
hearts and minds work themselves out in our words and deeds. These sins are
often visible, but our spiritual sins are far more difficult, even impossible,
for us to detect. We imagine that we fear God above all things in life when in
reality we fear destitution and suffering. We think that we love God more than
anything else in this life when we really love our possessions and our
lifestyle more. We say we trust in God for good things, but then prove
ourselves liars by worrying about tomorrow. We misuse God’s name and we fail to
use it properly for prayer, praise, and thanksgiving at all times. We fail to
orient our lives around the most important thing: hearing God’s Word. All of
this is sin’s work us, for our many sins we deserve nothing but everlasting
wrath, punishment, and condemnation. This
condemnation must be meted out. Sin must be punished with the full force and
wrath of God.
But
God loves His creation and hates nothing that He made. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John
3:16). He gave His Son to assume our flesh and live our life so that He might
die our death in our place. Sin must be condemned. So the Son of God comes in
our flesh and takes our sin upon Himself. “For
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin
for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21), so
that Christ might be “the
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Christ doesn’t suffer because the Jews are thirsty for His
blood. Jesus isn’t condemned by Pilate in justice. Pilate acquits Jesus three
times publically! God gathers Herod, Pilate, the Jews and Gentiles together so
that He might afflict Christ with the punishment we deserve for all our sins so
that that God’s wrath against sin can be satisfied. As the prophet Isaiah
foretold: “Surely He has
borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten
by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded
for our transgressions, He was bruised
for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like
sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD
has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4-6).
All of this He endures for you. Each wound of Christ
is for the healing of the wounds you have inflicted upon yourself by your sin.
Every ounce of suffering is Hell that you no longer have drink from the cup of
wrath because Christ your Lord has drunk that cup to the dregs. Every false
accusation He bears is so that He can silence the true accusations of Satan
against you for your sins. The abandonment He suffers upon the cross, even from
God the Father, is the abandonment which you deserve for having abandoned God
by your sins. He fulfills God’s justice against sin, for the Father punishes Christ
as THE sinner upon the cross so that all who believe this gospel may be free
from everlasting condemnation. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
Do
not fall to the temptation to think this Friday is not actually good. It is
truly good because on this day Christ willingly atoned for every one of your
sins and satisfied God’s wrath against you. He earns for you the forgiveness of
all your sins. He gives His life into death so that you may receive everlasting
life. He endures your deserved condemnation to give you salvation from sin,
eternal death, and all the power of the devil. This was God the Father’s
purpose in gathering together Herod, Pilate, the Jews and Gentiles on Good
Friday: to earn for you what is truly good.
In
the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.