Preached · March 25, 2018
Palm Sunday and the Cross
So it's Palm Sunday. The children came in. They waved their palm branches, reenacting, helping us remember that many, many years ago Jesus of Nazareth came into Jerusalem on a donkey. And he was not the kind of king that Jerusalem was expecting, because a few days later this Jesus is going to die on a Roman cross.
And there's kind of a quirk of our calendar. We have Palm Sunday. We celebrate that, and we talk about the celebration of Jesus—that Jesus is King, and Jesus is Lord, and Jesus is a different kind of king. And then not all of us, admittedly, are going to go to the Good Friday service this Friday at First Presbyterian. A lot of us are going to skip it. We've got other things to do. And so then we get to Easter Sunday, and we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the fact that Jesus came out of the grave and that he's going to resurrect us as well.
But we kind of gloss over the cross—crucifixion, Golgotha, Calvary. And so today I don't want to talk so much about the triumphal entry. I want to talk more about the cross and what Jesus was doing up there. So the name of today's sermon is that the cross is about God's love, and there are some misconceptions about the cross, about why Jesus had to die.
Misconceptions
You know, a lot of us have misconceptions about lots and lots of things. Anybody listen to the radio show This American Life? Yeah, NPR. It's a weekly, hour-long show. It talks about different kinds of things that happen in America. It could be funny stories or heartbreaking stories. And they had a story not so long ago about kids who grew up with misconceptions that were never corrected until they were way into adulthood.
So anybody know the Nielsen TV ratings, the Nielsen company? It's the company that does the surveys that tell you that 30 million people watch the Super Bowl, or 17 million people watch Two and a Half Men, or whatever. They send out these surveys. You fill them out. This just actually happened to my wife and me. We got one in the mail. They give you like five bucks. You keep a journal: I watched this, and I streamed it, or I pirated it, or I watched it on NBC, or whatever. And then they take those statistics and extrapolate and tell you how many people watched a television show.
So in This American Life, they're talking about misconceptions that kids have that aren't corrected until adulthood. So there's this guy having a conversation with a friend, talking about the Nielsen TV ratings. And the guy says to his friend, "Isn't it weird that everybody they do research on has the last name Nielsen?" And this friend just looks at him and says, "You realize that's not how it works, right?" And of course this guy, well into his 30s, has this "Oh my goodness, I can't believe that was never corrected."
Or there was another guy sitting with a friend in a park, and some deer crossed by. And he says to his friend, "Man, they really need to put a deer-zing sign here." Because he had always pronounced it "zing," not realizing it was meant to be "crossing." You know, "zing" isn't a word, right?
And they gave more examples. There were several people who saw the word M-I-S-L-E-D and thought it was pronounced "misled"—like the past tense of the verb, to "misle" someone. There's another man who thought that "quesadilla" was Spanish for "what's the deal," until he goes to Mexico and someone cuts him off on the road. He's like, "Quesadilla!" There was another woman in a workplace situation, talking with some friends around the water cooler. And she asked her friends, completely straight-faced, completely earnestly, "Hey, has anybody been to a zoo that's had, like, unicorns?" And her friends just look at her, like, "You know unicorns aren't real, right?" And you kind of feel for the lady, because unicorns are just as easy to believe as zebras or dinosaurs. Those sound even more preposterous than just a horse with a horn.
People had these misconceptions. By the way—Misled Quesadilla Unicorns. Great band name. Feel free to take it.
People, children, all of us grew up with misconceptions that maybe got corrected really, really late. Now, if you had one of these misconceptions, wouldn't you want somebody to tell you? It's like when you're walking around with broccoli in your teeth. Wouldn't you rather have one person point it out to you so you can fix it, rather than walking around all day like some unhygienic maniac? We have misconceptions when we should want them to be corrected.
Misconceptions About God
Now, each of us also had misconceptions about God, God's character, what God was like. Maybe we imagined the God of Monty Python—an old man with a long beard and a crown, sitting up in a literal throne room in the clouds. Maybe we thought that the God of the Old Testament was really angry and murderous and mean, and then he got therapy and went to Dr. Phil and then came back as the God of the New Testament. We all have had misconceptions about God that have hopefully been corrected. And we should continue to desire that kind of correction.
Because here's the thing. Whenever we ascribe a characteristic to God that's not true, we're engaging in a form of idolatry—because we're worshiping a God that doesn't exist. When we make God angrier than he's out to be, or more mean, or ascribe any characteristic to him that's just not true, we're worshiping a God that doesn't exist.
And so we, as Christians, need to be willing to unlearn our misconceptions about God. We have to be willing to unlearn the lies that maybe have been told to us about the divine nature, so that we can worship the right kind of God. Businessman and entrepreneur Alvin Toffler puts it like this. He says:
[…]
So let's not be illiterate Christians. Let's be willing to learn, unlearn, and relearn together.
Why Did Jesus Die? A Bad Answer
So here is kind of the key question for the day. Why did Jesus die? Why did Jesus have to die? Why is the symbol of our faith a cross—a Roman execution, a torture device? It's a massive, important question. It's a question that has a thousand facets. And there are quite a few good answers out there, and probably even more bad answers out there.
So let me try out one of these bad answers on you and see if it sounds familiar. There's a story out there that says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and he created humanity. He desired relationship with humanity. But then humanity rebelled and rejected relationship with God. So far, so good—Genesis 1, 2, and 3. It's what Scripture says.
But here's where I think the story gets a little weird. God, because of his infinite holiness, perfection, righteousness, and justice, could not be with sinful humanity. He could not stand to be in their presence, even to look at them, because he was so holy and they were not. In fact, because of justice, God was required—he had to, he needed to—kill and destroy humanity. That was the only thing to be done. God perhaps wanted to be in relationship with humans, but he couldn't do it because of this legal concept of justice. God's hands are proverbially tied.
So then along comes Jesus. And Jesus says to the Father, "Whatever wrath or punishment or anger or discipline that you had in mind for humans, I'll take it instead." And so the Father, out of this need to be just and to punish sin, aims his wrath at humanity and hits Jesus instead. One writer even puts it like this: "It pleased God to bruise Jesus." And so the Father abandons Jesus on the cross, and Jesus dies. And now Jesus forever, eternally, stands in the way of the Father's righteous anger, standing forever as our mediator, preventing us from being destroyed by God.
Imagine it as a parable. There once was a father who had two sons, and the younger son demanded his inheritance and went and indulged in wild living. But then the younger son came to his senses and went back to the father. And so the son goes up the road, and the father sees the younger son, and he says, "I cannot forgive you. It would be against the moral order of the entire universe. Such is the severity of my justice," the father says, "that reconciliation will not be made unless the penalty is utterly paid. My wrath, my avenging justice, must be placated." And so the older son offers to do extra work in the fields in order to pay for the younger brother's penalty. And finally, when the older son dies of exhaustion, the father's wrath is placated against his younger son, and they live happily for the remainder of their days.
In other words, what I would suggest is that far too many of us believe that Jesus died to save us from God. But to say that Jesus died to save us from God makes about as much sense biblically as "Misled Quesadilla Unicorns." It's not what Scripture teaches. Maybe when we were children, we went to a church or a revival or a camp, and we were offered a far too simplistic understanding or explanation of the gospel. And we've carried that nonsense right into this day. We end up saying things that are biblical nonsense, like "Jesus died so that God could forgive," or "God could not forgive us until Jesus hung on a cross."
So how can we understand what is true about God? What misconceptions about God can we put away so we're worshiping the right God?
Romans 5:6–8
So I invite you to open up your Bibles to the book of Romans, chapter 5, verses 6 through 8. If you did not bring a Bible, if you don't own a Bible, there's no shame in that—feel free to take one home. There's nothing better to steal than a Bible, I promise.
The book of Romans was written by the apostle Paul to the church of Rome, and he's trying to explain the very question that we're asking: Why did Jesus have to die? What does it mean for Jesus to hang on the cross? And how does this solve humanity's problem with sin and evil and wickedness? Romans 5, verses 6 through 8. It says this:
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The word of the Lord.
Let's pray. Almighty God, we thank you for the gift of your Scripture and your word that reveals your character to us. So God, may we be willing to unlearn any mistakes we've learned about you. God, may we be unwilling to accept lies about your character. God, may we worship you as you truly are. So by the power of your Holy Spirit, would you illuminate your word for us, that we might see and hear the truth, and that the truth might set us free. We pray these things in the name of Jesus, and all God's children said, Amen.
So in order to understand Romans 5, in order to understand and answer the question why Jesus had to die on a cross, we need to talk about three things. Number one, the nature of the Trinity. Number two, the character of God himself. And number three, our response.
The Nature of the Trinity
So first of all, the nature of the Trinity. No small topic. Theology 101, 201, 301. Here we go.
Christians are monotheists. And we share that characteristic with other religions as well—Jews and Muslims and Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. We're all monotheists; we believe in one God. There are Hindus who are polytheists; they believe in multiple gods. There are those who are atheists; they believe in no gods. There are pantheists, who believe that nature itself is God. But Christians are monotheists. And what makes us unique is that we are Trinitarian monotheists. Jews also believe in one God, but they don't believe in a Trinity. Christians believe that there is one God in three persons, a Trinity.
And this is important to understand, because the Trinity is how God reveals himself to creation, how God acts with his people. And so you see in the classic diagram showing the Trinity: the Father is God, the Holy Spirit is God, the Son is God. They are one God, but they are distinct. The Father is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Son. The Son is not the Father. They are three distinct persons, but one God.
So I'm going to read to you a few of the classic orthodox statements on the Trinity. And this is important, because if we are people who say that we love God, that means we should love knowing about God. We want to know him personally, but we also want to love studying about God—how God has revealed himself in Scripture and in theology. Theology, the study of God. This is key stuff.
So, classic orthodox statements about the Trinity:
What the Father is, the Son and the Spirit are also. The Son and the Spirit share the divine nature with God, being of one essence with him. Three persons, one God.
Every attribute of divinity which belongs to God the Father—life and love and wisdom and truth and blessedness and holiness, power, purity and joy—every attribute of divinity which belongs to the Father belongs equally as well to the Son and the Holy Spirit.
In other words, what you can say about God the Father is true of the Son, is true of the Spirit.
The being, nature, essence, existence, and life of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are absolutely and identically one and the same.
If you can say it about the Father, you can say it about the Son, you can say it about the Spirit when it comes to their divinity. It goes on:
Since the being of the Holy Trinity is one, whatever the Father wills, the Son and the Holy Spirit will also.
So in other words, the Father and Jesus don't have to arm-wrestle to see who's going to get what they want. They are the same in will and purpose.
What the Father does, the Son and the Holy Spirit do also. There is no will and no action of God the Father which is not at the same time the will and action of the Son and the Holy Spirit.
They are united in will and purpose and action.
In himself, in eternity, as well as toward the world in creation and revelation and incarnation and redemption and sanctification and glorification, the will and the action of the Trinity are one, from the divine Father, through the divine Son, in the divine Holy Spirit. Every action of God is the action of the three.
So they act together, unified, but the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct in how they act together.
No one person of the Trinity acts independently of or in isolation from the others. The action of each is the action of all, and the action of all is the action of each, and the divine action is essentially one. The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each divine with the same divinity, yet each in their own divine way. Each divine action is three divine actors. There are three divine aspects to every action of God, even if the action remains one and the same.
And we see this borne out in Scripture. In the book of John, Jesus says:
The Son can do nothing by himself. The Son can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
And this passage is important when we start talking about God's character. This has massive implications, because the Son only does what he sees the Father doing. Which means when we see God the Son hanging on a cross, it tells us about the kind of God we worship. It doesn't just tell us about Jesus; it tells us about the Trinity as a whole. It tells us that God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are united in purpose, united in character, united in their love for humanity, and in the lengths they will go to to show that love.
We see this concept again in the book of Hebrews chapter 1. It says:
The Son, Jesus, is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being.
Another translation puts it like this:
The Son radiates God's own glory and expresses the very character of God.
So what is true of God is true of Jesus. What is true of Jesus is true of the Father, true of the Son. They are united in being, in essence, in purpose, and in character.
So that means, when you tell a story about a father and a son that sound like they want two different things, you are rejecting an orthodox, biblical view of the Trinity. In other words, Jesus doesn't save us from God. Jesus is God. The Son, united with the Father and the Spirit, together reveal God's character, break the power of sin, and invite us into relationship with God.
The Character of God
So we've talked about the Trinity; now we're talking about God's character. This means that we can't use phrases like "the cross enabled God to forgive us," or "without the cross, God couldn't forgive us." Because this makes no sense of the Trinity, united in purpose and character. Rather, the cross isn't the means by which God is enabled to forgive us. The cross demonstrates the forgiveness that God has been offering all along.
Back to Romans 5. This tells us not just about Jesus' character hanging on the cross; this tells us about the Father's character. This tells us about the Trinity, about God—that God is the self-giving, self-sacrificing, self-denying God. Jesus' death wasn't a last-ditch creative effort to get God to show us love. It wasn't a stretch of God's character for him to love us. God didn't have to grit his teeth and try really, really hard to like us. God has always been, is today, and will always be a God willing to die and hang on a cross for you and for me. Let me say that again. God has always been, is today, and will always be a God willing to die and hang on a cross for you and for me.
Whatever debt of sin we carry to God, he is willing to pay it. Whatever power that death held over us, God is willing to break it. Whatever pain that the world may inflict, God is willing to bear it, because that is just who God really is. 1 John 3 tells us that the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. The Son didn't show up to keep God from killing us. Jesus came with the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to destroy the evil that Satan was up to, because that's the kind of God he is.
There's a psalm embedded in our Scriptures, in the book of Philippians chapter 2. It says that Jesus,
who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing.
Now listen to the implications of this. Jesus, who is in very nature God—his nature—what does his nature cause him to do? What is Jesus' natural response to sin and to evil and to a lost and broken humanity? Jesus' natural response is to empty himself, to give of himself. That's what divinity is. The divine nature, God, is a God who is naturally self-emptying, self-denying, self-sacrificing.
One translator puts Philippians 2 like this: "Jesus emptied himself because he already had the nature of a slave." Jesus didn't just take on the nature of a slave when he became human. This is God's very nature: to be a servant to those he loves. Jesus emptied himself because he already had the nature of a slave. He had already identified with humanity. The moment God created us, he identified with us. He humbled himself because he already was an obedient-to-death kind of God.
The cross was not an invention or a new addition to God's divinity. The cross has eternally been the way God is. A theologian puts it like this:
What happens on Calvary reaches into the very depths of the Trinity, and therefore makes its impact on the Trinitarian life of God in eternity.
Now, let this blow your mind for a second. God is a God without time. God is a God of eternity. That means there was never a moment in God's life in which the cross was not central. There was never a moment in God's life—first of all, because God doesn't have moments; he's eternal—but secondly, because he is the God of eternity and the God of the cross.
In Christian faith, the cross is always at the center of the Trinity. For the cross reveals the heart of the triune God, which beats for his whole creation. The definition "God is love" acquires its full weight only if we continually make ourselves aware of the path that leads to the definition: Jesus' forsakenness on the cross, the surrender of the Son, and the love of the Father which does everything, gives everything, and suffers everything for lost men and women.
God is love. That means that God is self-giving. It means God exists for us on the cross.
In other words, the cross is not some weird exception, not a quirk of history. The cross is the ultimate revelation of who God is—a God who stands in the gap for us, a God who is by his very nature self-sacrificing, self-giving, and self-denying.
The God Who Suffers With Us
Quite often in pastoral ministry, we will get asked why God lets suffering happen—pain and heartache and loss. And to be honest, even Scripture itself struggles answering these questions. Look at the book of Job and how it struggles knowing why God lets us suffer. And you know, I've got some pretty good theories. I've read some pretty good theology books. But I'll be honest with you: in the end, I don't know. I don't have great answers. When I'm grieving alongside someone, I don't dare say that I know why God lets this happen. It would be pastoral malpractice.
But what I do know, and what Scripture does reveal, and what the cross does show us, is that we never suffer alone. We should never forget the fact that the cross is alongside two other crosses. God suffers alongside humanity. We do not worship a God who is oblivious to our lot in life. We do not worship a God who is impervious to pain and loss. We worship a God who is just as capable, if not more, of suffering. Hebrews 4 says:
We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are.
Friends, our God is with us. Our God is for us. Our God loves us, and even suffers alongside us. We should never forget that there was never a moment in eternity in which God was not suffering along with his creation. We never suffer alone.
The love that the Father has for humanity is shared by the Son and the Spirit. And the suffering that the Son endured on the cross is felt by the Father and the Spirit. And together, united through their love and their united sacrifice, we are made free, we are made whole. The power of sin and death is broken, and we are handed the keys to an eternal kingdom and life everlasting.
Our Response
So, number three: How do we respond? There is really only one proper response, and that is that we have to worship God as he truly is, not as we imagined him to be. Remember what we said at the beginning: whenever we ascribe a characteristic to God that doesn't actually belong to God, it's idolatry. Even when we add to or reduce from God's character to make ourselves seem more righteous—we make God out to be angrier than he actually is, we make him less loving than he actually is, more wrathful, less kind, less patient—whenever we do that, we're worshiping the wrong God, and it's idolatry.
Some of us, out of good intentions, or maybe out of a respect for a tradition we came from, are walking around like God is waiting to strike. We're couched in fear and terror and shame. And all that does is betray what we actually think God is like. But here's the thing about God: God is good. God is love. He is eager to forgive you. He is yearning to embrace you, to hold you as his dear son and daughter. As the book of James says, mercy triumphs over judgment. When you fail or screw up or mess up, God's mercy will win every time, if you'd just be willing to accept it.
So here's a thought I want you to take home and ponder. The fruit of the Spirit—Galatians 5—the fruit of the Spirit describes God himself. It's not just a list of rules that God wants you to follow; it is a description of the Spirit of God. God is loving. God is joyful. God is peaceful. God is patient. God is kind. God is good. God is faithful. God is gentle. God is temperate. And if the God that you worship can't be described like this, I'm sorry, but that's not God—that's you.
If you can't be kind to yourself, then you probably believe that God can't be kind to you either. If you can't be gentle with your kids or your spouse or your parents, then you probably believe that God shouldn't be kind or gentle to them either. If you can't find joy in life, then you will probably find the idea of God as joyful as preposterous and insulting. But God is each of these things to a degree passing understanding. He is better than we can imagine.
When you remember that God is the most joyful being in the universe, maybe finding joy won't come so hard. If you remember that God yearns to be kind and gentle to you, maybe allowing yourself some self-kindness wouldn't be so impossible. And then this loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, temperate God—he will call us and enable us to offer that same love and joy to the world. As the beloved disciple says in 1 John, "Whoever claims to live in God must live as Jesus did."
And here, friends, is the call to holiness. Because if what is true of the Father is true of the Son is true of the Spirit, then it's also true of people as well. If God reveals himself through Jesus on a cross to be self-giving, self-sacrificing, self-denying, then God through his Spirit will sanctify us and call us to be the same. We look to the cross not only to reveal the character of God, but also to see the call of the church: that through the love of God we might give ourselves up for the sake of the world, even to the point of death, so that the world might know God's love.
Communion
So with that, we are moving into another form of response, an enacted one. God's love, as shown in Jesus on the cross, is also shown in the elements of the loaf and the cup—God's body broken for us, God's blood shed for us. And when we partake of that bread and that juice, we are joining with the Trinity and being identified as the kind of people who will also be broken and poured out for the sake of the world. So may we come to the table, recognizing just how good God is and just how much he has called us…
