Behold Your Son, Behold Your Mother (John 19:23-27)

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The notable English linguist Samuel Johnson once said, “Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”[1] There’s nothing like staring death in the face to help one concentrate on the things that matter most. We’ve seen that as we have looked into the saying of the Lord Jesus as He hung dying on the cross. It is amazing that He thinks first of others before Himself. His first word was to His Father, and it was a prayer for mercy on behalf of His murderers. His second word was a compassionate response to the pleas of a penitent thief dying beside of Him. And today we come to the third word, in which Jesus turns His attention and His speech to His mother and to one of His closest earthly friends. Lehman Strauss writes, “I cannot imagine a more glorious and triumphant way to die than this; namely, in the extending of one’s self in supplying the needs of others. No man dies in vain who blesses others in his expiration.”[2]

Jesus had a number of antagonists around Him as He died, and a very few friendly faces. John names them for us here: His mother, His mother’s sister (who may have been Salome, the Apostle John’s mother), Mary the wife of Clopas, and the disciple whom he loved. We know from comparing the uses of this term in the Gospel of John that this is John’s way of referring to himself. There may have been a few others there, but there were not many. Here in this moment, Jesus turns His attention to His loved ones there at the cross.

What was it that caused Jesus’ attention to shift to His mother? The context may explain this. Just before Jesus speaks to His mother, we read that the soldiers were gambling for the clothing of Jesus at the foot of the cross. It was a somewhat common practice for the executioners to take the belongings of their victims, but John also tells us that this was taking place to fulfill a specific messianic prophecy: “They divided my outer garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” This had been written by David in Psalm 22:18. Though David never observed a death by crucifixion, the language of his Psalm describes the ordeal of Jesus with exact precision. He speaks of the bones being out of joint, the heart being melted like wax, the hands and feet being pierced. It is this Psalm in which we first read the words that Jesus will speak in moments, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Though David’s Psalm reflects his own anguish in some horrific ordeal he was facing, it seems that he was given words by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to portray the suffering of the Messiah would come some 1,000 years later in the person of the Lord Jesus. The soldiers at the foot of Christ’s cross merely reckoned that they were doing what they normally did. The Word of God indicated that they were doing far more than they realized. They were fulfilling prophecy and adding further testimony to Jesus, the Messiah.

John says that they divided His garments into four parts, a part to every soldier. Typically, we assume that this means that they cut his garments into pieces, but that is not likely the case. The typical attire of a first-century Jewish man consisted of five pieces: the robe, the belt, the headcovering, the sandals, and the tunic (which was an undergarment worn next to the skin). So, it is likely that each soldier took one article of clothing, leaving the tunic to be awarded to the winning gambler in the casting of the lots. They didn’t want to cut it up into pieces for equal shares because it was a fine garment. It was “seamless, woven in one piece.” Now, as Jesus watches the soldiers at His feet gambling for this final item, His heart turns to His mother. But why? It was a custom for Jewish mothers to make this garment for their sons to be given as a gift to commemorate their coming of age. Could it be that this was true of the tunic that Jesus had worn throughout His adult life? It may well be the case. And if so, it is not hard to fathom that, as Jesus witnesses the fulfillment of Psalm 22:18, His thoughts turned to Psalm 22:9-10. In those verses, the prophesied Messiah speaks to the Father, saying, “You are He who brought Me forth from the womb; You made me trust when upon My mother’s breasts. Upon You I was cast from birth; You have been My God from My mother’s womb.” Charles Swindoll says, “His outer garments were insignificant. … But when they touched the tunic, they touched something very near to His heart—the garment made for Him by His mother.”[3] Now His thoughts are filled with memories of His childhood, the love of His mother, the pain and grief she must feel now, and her fears for the future. Though no sword would touch that tunic, a sword was piercing the soul of His mother, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Simeon in Luke 2:35. And it is at this point that He speaks to her, and He speaks to His friend John about her. The words He speaks, though brief, are profound. They speak to Mary and to John a word of compassionate concern, a word of revolutionized relationships, and a word of glorious grace. And these are words that we need to hear as well.

I. The Dying Savior Speaks a Word of Compassionate Concern.

Occasionally, when I speak to unbelievers, I will ask them what they think the Bible says about how to get to heaven. One very common answer I get is that we must keep the Ten Commandments. Sometimes, I will ask the person who says this, “OK, so you believe that the Bible says we must keep the Ten Commandments to get to heaven, so you would agree that those are very important, right?” And the person will say, “Of course!” I then ask them, “Can you tell me what they are?” Seldom can a person name more than three or four of them. So, I will say, “OK, so they are important, and you think they are the basis for a person getting into heaven, but you don’t know what they are. If I were to give you a Bible, could you look them up and find them?” And almost without exception, people don’t even know where to look for them. What about you? Could you name them? Could you find them? By the way, they are in Exodus 20, and the Bible is very clear that this is not how we get to heaven. In fact, the Ten Commandments were given to people who had already broken every one of them, and the Law contains provisions for what people are to do when they violate them. If we are to be saved by our keeping of the Law, then we have no good news to offer. But the Gospel of Jesus is good news for it says that Christ has become for us the sacrifice for our sins through His death on the cross and His resurrection. He kept God’s law fully and perfectly, and became in His death the righteous substitute, bearing the wrath and paying the penalty for the unrighteous. By His sacrifice, our sins are dealt with fully and finally, and thus we who trust in Him as Lord and Savior are forgiven and granted eternal life as a gift of God’s grace. The good news is not that God saves people who keep the Law. People who keep the Law don’t need saving, but none of us can keep it. The good news is that Jesus saves those who cannot keep the Law, but who trust in Him and receive His saving grace.

Now, invariably, when I talk to people about the Ten Commandments, if they have raised children, they know that one of the commandments is to “honor your father and your mother.” This is the fifth commandment. So, if Jesus kept all of God’s Law perfectly, did He keep this one? If we examine His earthly life and notice His interaction with His mother, we may wonder if He did. At the age of twelve, He slipped away from His family and went into the Temple to interact with the religious leaders. When Mary and Joseph came to find Him, He said, “Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49). Later, when He was attending a wedding with His mother and others, Mary imposed upon Him to do something for the host, because the host had run out of wine for the guests. Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come” (John 2:4). We find ourselves wanting to rebuke Jesus in moments like these and say, “Jesus, that is no way to speak to Your mother!” But perhaps we don’t understand these things rightly. For one thing, the Greek word that Jesus uses which is translated as “Woman” in John 2:4 and here in the text of His statement at the cross is actually a very difficult word to render accurately in English. “Woman” is too distant a word. “Mother” would be too intimate a word. D. A. Carson suggests that the word is perhaps best rendered by our good old Southern word “ma’am.”

Another way in which we may misunderstand Jesus’ words and actions towards His mother is by confusing honor with obedience. There is a period of life when honor includes and implies obedience. But there comes a time also when obedience is not a necessary component of honor. When Jesus was a child, His life was characterized by perfect obedience to His earthly parents. Even when He had abandoned them in the Temple at age 12 and spoken so directly to them about being in His Father’s house, the next verse says that, “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them” (Lk 2:51). He was still of the age where obedience was necessary in order to honor His earthly parents. But because He was unique in His nature, being the fully human offspring of Mary and the fully divine Son of God, Jesus also was perpetually obedient to His Heavenly Father, and lived to honor Him as well as His earthly parents. So, when He came into adulthood, when obedience is no longer an aspect of parental honor, Jesus could and did speak directly to His mother about His obedience and honor of His Heavenly Father without dishonoring her as His earthly mother. In fact, we may well say that to do anything other than obeying and honoring His Heavenly Father would be the ultimate dishonor to His earthly mother, for it was for this reason that she had been chosen as the vessel to bring Him into the world.

Now, we need to also recognize that the honor that is sometimes given to Mary by modern Christians exceeds that which is suitable. It is no honor to her for us to mistake her as an object of worship. When the magi came to see Jesus after His birth, Matthew says that they came into the house and saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him” (Matt 2:11). Luke records how, on one occasion as Jesus was teaching, a woman in the crowd shouted, “Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breasts at which You nursed.” That sounds like the kind of devotion that some in our day render to Mary. But in response, Jesus said, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it” (Lk 11:27-28). So, while Jesus never dishonors His mother, neither does He suffer her to be honored beyond what she is due, and that is an instructional and corrective word that many need to hear.

If there is any question about whether or not Jesus honored His earthly mother, this word spoken from the cross should remove all doubt. Here He demonstrates that He has never failed to honor her. He speaks to her a word of compassionate concern in His dying moments. “Woman,” He says, “behold your son!” But in saying this, He is not directing her to Himself. When He says, “behold your son,” He is directing her to John, the beloved disciple. These words, together with those that follow, as He says to John, “behold your mother,” indicate that it is Jesus’ desire for John to care for Mary after Jesus’ death. Why did Jesus say this? Why does Mary need someone to care for her? It should be noted that her husband Joseph disappears entirely from the biblical narrative after the episode at the temple when Jesus was 12 years old. This has led most scholars to conclude that sometime between Jesus’ 12^th and 30^th birthdays, Joseph died. If that is so, then Mary is a widow, and Jesus, being her firstborn son, is responsible for her care.

We may also wonder, why John? Why does Jesus not entrust her to the care of one of her other children? This is another error that some Christians believe about Mary – that she was perpetually a virgin and never bore any other children. The Bible makes it clear that this is not so. She had other sons and some daughters as well. Mark 13:55 indicates that it was common knowledge in Jesus’ day that he had brothers and sisters, and that there names were known among the people of Nazareth. They said of Jesus, “Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us?” (Matt 13:55-56). So we know that Jesus had at least four brothers and two sisters, if not more. Now, why did He not entrust Mary into the care of one of them? We can speculate at least two reasons why. First, quite simply, they were not there. Had they been there, they would have likely been named. They did not live or work in Jerusalem. Their homes were up North, in Nazareth or Capernaum. John was there, they were not. But there is another reason. John 7:5 tells us that Jesus’ brothers did not believe in Him. Thankfully, we know from other Scripture references that some, if not all, of His siblings did come to believe in Him and to worship and serve Him. But at this point, they were still unbelievers. Meanwhile, John is the most faithful follower Jesus has at this point, as all the rest have abandoned Him. It was important to Jesus for Mary to be cared for by one who loved Him and believed in Him. It was vital for her to grow in her own faith and understanding of Jesus as, not only her son, but her Savior, and this could best be fostered in a family of faith. And this brings us to a second point that these words raise. 

II. The Dying Savior Speaks a Word of Revolutionized Relationships.

A few years ago, a pastor and his family were traveling through the area and dropped in for worship here with us. I met him and chatted with him before the service, and at a point in the service, I mentioned that it was good to have “my brother and fellow pastor” here with us that day. After the service, several people came up to me and said they wanted to meet my brother and some commented that they didn’t know that my brother was a pastor. Well, I had to disappoint them by telling them that he was not my brother from birth, but that doesn’t make him any less my brother. You see, that man was my brother by new-birth. He and I have been born-again into the same family. We have the same Father – God, our Heavenly Father – and we are brothers in the Christian faith. In the same way, I refer regularly to you all as my brothers and sisters. This is not a pretend kind of relationship. It is for real. Those of us who have come to God through faith in Jesus have been adopted into His family. He is our Father, and we are brothers and sisters. Here in the South, we like to say “blood is thicker than water,” but in reality, the blood of Jesus and the waters of baptism are stronger than any other earthly tie, for they are eternal bonds. Jesus has revolutionized our relationships.

He began to do this almost immediately. He made it clear to Mary and Joseph at the age of 12 that His allegiance to God as His Father superseded His earthly ties to them. On another occasion, recorded for us in Matthew 12, Mark 3, and Luke 8, Jesus’ mother and brothers had come to visit Him but they could not get to Him because of the crowds of people around Him. When someone told Jesus that His mother and brothers were there wishing to speak with Him, He said, “Who are My mother and My brothers?” Then, as He looked around at His followers, He said, “Behold My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother” (Mk 3:33-35). He was revolutionizing the concept of human relationships. And He continues to do that up to His death. “Behold your son,” He says to Mary, pointing her to John. In a sense, Mary has no need for John. She has at least four other sons, besides Jesus. “Behold your mother,” He says to John. John was not an orphan. He had a father named Zebedee and a mother named Salome. She may have even been present, assuming that the Salome mentioned in Mark 15:40 is the same Salome. And she may in fact be the sister of Mary mentioned here, but that is not quite conclusive. If so, then Mary is John’s aunt, not his mother. But Jesus is saying, “Mary, I wish you to view John as your son; John, I wish you to view Mary as your mother.” For in the family of God, those who follow Jesus are mothers and sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters in a way that is even more real than our biological relationships.

This is a difficult reality for some of us to consider. After all, here in the Bible Belt, we have not often been made to feel that there is any real threat or competition between our allegiance to our earthly families and our spiritual family. The virtual omnipresence of the church and Christian ideals has been pervasive in our culture for a long time, and for many of you, the proudest day in your parents’ lives was the day that you came to faith in Jesus. But that is not true of everyone. Some here in this room understand fully well what Jesus mean when He said, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple” (Lk 14:26). The hatred of which Jesus spoke was not a vehement and violent kind of rejection, but rather a determined devotion to God in Christ that so surpasses all other affections that they appear as hatred in comparison. It is a resolve to always choose allegiance to Christ over all other claims upon your affections. And that is a decision that some of you have had to make, and one that countless Christians make every day in the world. It is the reality I faced in Kenya as I witnessed to a young Muslim woman, who said to me, “I like what you are telling me about this Jesus. In fact I like it much better than my own religion. I want to believe it. But if I turn to Jesus, my family will reject me. I will lose my home, my family, my job, and maybe even my life.” Jesus responds to that very reality when He says, “"Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mk 10:29-30).

Here at the foot of the cross, Mary must no longer view Jesus as her son. He must become Her Savior. John must no longer view Jesus as his friend. He must become His Lord. Mary must become a mother and a sister to John, and John must become a son and a brother to her if they will have a part in the family of God. And the same is true of all of us as well. For some, these words are inviting and irresistible. The call to become part of a new and better family is welcome to those who have broken family relationships or who face opposition from their relatives because of their desire to follow Christ. God will be a better Father, and you will find better mothers, brothers, and sisters in His family than you have ever known. But to others, these words are a hard challenge. Where God has blessed a person with a strong and loving family, devotion to that family can become a stumbling block to building intimacy in the family of God. We must beware of allowing those earthly ties to become an idol that threatens our allegiance to Christ or hinders us from developing intimate bonds of fellowship with the new family that we have been adopted into. We may not always have to make the hard choice. How blessed is the family where father and mother, son and daughter, brother and sister, experience the double-bond of genetics and faith. That family must enlarge their tent and welcome in new brothers, sisters, sons, daughters and mothers, who have had to make the choice to follow Christ and forsake earthly ties for Him. Perhaps you were unable to have children. Perhaps your children are not followers of Christ. Maybe you never knew your parents. Maybe your parents were the cause of hardships in your life. It may be that you never had a sibling, or that you never had a good relationship with your brother or your sister at home. If you are a follower of Christ, then I want to invite you to look around this room and see your family of faith. There is a young Christian here that needs a godly mother and a faithful father-figure. There are ailing widows who need faithful sons and daughters to care for them in their advancing age. There is a hurting believer who desperately needs a faithful brother or sister to help them bear their burdens. Look around you. Behold your son. Behold your mother. Behold these revolutionized relationships that have been created through the death of the Savior. Embrace the reality of these revolutionized relationships!

III. The Dying Savior Speaks a Word of Glorious Grace.

You may have heard the expression, “Showing up is half the battle.” The first time I ever heard it was when I was on the high-school wrestling team. My coach said that showing up was a third of the battle; making weight was another third; and outwrestling your opponent was the final third. If you showed up and the other guy didn’t, you won. If you showed up and made weight, and the other guy didn’t make weight, you won. So, we had a guy on our team who weighed 112 pounds, and he was undefeated, but he only had to get on the mat in about half the matches. He showed up and he made weight, and those counted for half of his victories.

I want to turn our thoughts here to John for a moment. He deserves mention because he showed up. It looked less than certain that any of Jesus’ followers would, but praise God, John did! Mark 14:50 tells us in a very few words the sad reality of what happened to Jesus’ disciples after He was seized in the Garden of Gethsemane: “they all left Him and fled.” But one came back. Only one came back: John. As important as the words that Jesus said to Him are the words that Jesus didn’t say. He didn’t say, “Where have you been? Why did you flee? Where is your faith? Do you really love me? Where are the rest?” Jesus said, “Behold your mother.” John showed up, and as a result, he was singularly blessed with this word of glorious grace. Not only is he restored to right fellowship with Jesus, but he is entrusted with a significant ministry of caring for the very mother of Jesus. And he took that responsibility seriously. He tells us that, “From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.” Though the Bible is silent about much of John’s future between this time and the time we find him on the isle of Patmos in Revelation, we know that at some point he went to Ephesus where he served for many years as the pastor of the church in that city. And there are traditions that indicate that he took Mary with him. There are ruins of a house in Ephesus today that is called the house of Mary, and if that is true, then it shows that John fulfilled his responsibility to the very end. He showed up, and Jesus spoke to him a word of glorious grace, reconciling him and entrusting him with a significant ministry.

There may be something in your life that is holding you back. You may fear that the Lord will not accept you if you come to Him, or that there is no way that He could use you in His service. John may have had that same fear. Would the Lord cast him away because he had fled and forsaken the Lord in his hour of need? Could the Lord ever use him in any way? John overcame that fear, and he showed up. And when he did He heard a word of glorious grace. I have often said that the Lord is far less concerned with your ability than your availability. Show up and say yes to the opportunities that the Lord puts in front of you, and you will experience that glorious grace as well.

I want to just hit a couple of quick points of application on the whole of this text before we conclude. First, examine your heart about your compassion for others, whether they be in your own family or in the family of faith. Are you showing honor and concern for those who are due it? Are you providing care to those in need? And second, have you come to embrace the new family that God has placed you in through your faith in Christ? Is there some young Christian that you can be a spiritual mother, father, or older brother or sister to? Is there some older Christian that you can be a spiritual son or daughter to? Is there some hurting Christian that needs the comfort of a brother or sister in their life? Finally, have you come near to the foot of the cross to meet the Savior? You may fear that you will not be accepted because of your sins. Listen, friend, your sins are the reason He is there. He knows your sins, just as He knew John’s. And He died for them. Remember what Jesus said in John 6:37, “The one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out.” So if you never have before, I pray that today you would come to Him and receive Him as your Lord and Savior. And if you have, then I hope you will make yourself available to serve Him and to serve His people, your spiritual family, in whatever way He leads you.

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[1] Cited in Erwin Lutzer, Cries from the Cross (Chicago: Moody, 2002), 71. Background info from http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2009/09/hanging-it-concentrates-mind.html. Accessed March 5, 2012.

[2] Lehman Strauss, The Day God Died (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1965), 56.

[3] Charles Swindoll, The Darkness and the Dawn (Nashville: Word, 2001), 153-154. 

Today You Shall Be With Me in Paradise

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The season of Lent began officially this week on Ash Wednesday. For centuries, all over the world, Christians have observed this season that leads up to Easter as a time of heightened spiritual concentration on the suffering, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. This year, our focus during this season is on the seven sayings of Christ on the cross. Herschel Hobbs says of these sayings,

Every word falling from the blessed lips of our Saviour is precious indeed and of eternal import. But there is an unusual significance in the seven words of Jesus spoken at the cross. Few men indulge in mere prattle in the face of death. Therefore we may be certain that He who never indulged in an idle syllable chose wisely and with purpose the final words left for Him to speak as He walked into the valley of the shadow of death.[1]

We began last week with the first saying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Today we move ahead in Luke’s Gospel to the second saying, in which our Lord says to a condemned criminal, “Today, you shall be with Me in Paradise.” The first word of Jesus is a prayer to His Father. The second word of Jesus is an answer to the prayer of the man on the cross beside of Him. This story of the exchange of words between Jesus and the repentant criminal has been called “the most surprising, the most suggestive, the most instructive incident in all Gospel narrative.”[2] That may an overstatement, but certainly Russell Bradley Jones is correct when he says, “It is doubtful whether any other gospel incident presents the plan of salvation more clearly or simply.”[3] For here in this text, we meet a sinner who undergoes a radical conversion, who receives a promise of paradise from the Savior, and thereby exemplifies the scandal of grace.

I. Notice the radical conversion of the sinner.

By the time we come to this narrative in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has endured one abuse after another at the hands of sinful men. He has been betrayed by a friend, accused with lies secured by bribes, convicted and sentenced in a mockery of justice, beaten, scourged, paraded through the streets in shame, and now crucified—stretched out to die in the most cruel and unusual form of punishment the world has ever known. But sinful humanity was not satisfied. Still, after all this had been done, they mocked and insulted Him as He bled and died on the cross. Verse 35 says that the rulers were sneering at Him and taunting Him. Matthew 27:41 tells us that these included the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. Mark 15:29 says that the people passing by were hurling abuse at Him. Verse 36 or our text here in Luke says that the soldiers were mocking Him. And Matthew and Mark tell us that the two criminals who were crucified on either side of Jesus were both insulting Him (Matt 27:44; Mark 15:32). This was a bit unusual, for most accounts of crucifixion indicate that if the victims say anything at all, they shout curses at the soldiers and the crowds of people. These two, instead, “used their dying strength to join in the taunting of Christ.”[4] But at some point, one of the two criminals begins to have a change of heart.

We may wonder what could create such a radical change of perspective in the heart of this criminal. Surely many have wondered the same about some of us. How is it that we no longer think, or speak, or act in the ways that we used to? The change of heart that we have experienced is not altogether different from that of this man, and the causes are likely the same as well. First, we must notice the words of human witness. Surely, in the case of the words that this man heard, the witness was somewhat accidental. In the taunting and mocking of Jesus, this criminal heard it said of Jesus, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One” (v35). We must wonder if the criminal began to think, “He saved others? What could they mean that He saved others? Are there some who believe that He is the Christ, our long awaited Messiah? Did He claim this for Himself? Could He really be?” Others were saying to Jesus, “If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself!” (v37). Indeed, Pilate had ordered the inscription to be hung over Jesus’ head, “This is the King of the Jews.” These were words of mockery and derision, but there was truth in the words. This truly was the King of the Jews. And perhaps the sight of that inscription and the sound of those words began to spark an interest in the heart of the criminal as he considered, “What if this really is our King? What might that mean for us?” So we have this somewhat accidental witness of the people around the cross. They were not intent on testifying for Christ, but even in their mockery, they were saying truthful things about Him. And God was using the kernels of truth in their words to begin a process of change in the heart of this criminal. That should encourage us in our witness, for if God could use even kernels of truth in the words of these mockers to touch the heart of this thief, what could He do with our witness for Christ?

In addition to the words of human witness that the criminal heard, he also was presented with the Word of God. Jesus is the Living Word of God, as John’s Gospel tells us, and anytime someone beheld Jesus with their eyes, they were confronted with the very word of God. The criminal was witnessing the Living Word fulfilling the written Word that had been recorded by the prophet Isaiah centuries earlier. Here was this Suffering Servant of the Lord, who was led to slaughter like a lamb, and who spoke not a word in His own defense (Isaiah 53:7). Here was a righteous man being numbered among the transgressors (Isaiah 53:12), as the Scriptures had foretold. And then the Lord Jesus began to utter His spoken Word. While others spoke words of venomous hatred from their crosses, here this One who is called King and Christ opens His lips to say, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This must have surely been an alarming surprise to the criminal. In the midst of His agony, Jesus cries out to God as His Father, and He cries out to Him for mercy to be showered on His murderers. The Bible says that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. And here the Living Word, fulfilling the written Word, proclaiming the spoken Word, begins to awaken faith in the heart of this sinful thief on the cross. So often we wonder, what should we say as we witness to our lost friends? Friends, we do not need to find words. We have the Word of God. Our witness is best when it is saturated with God’s written Word, about the Living Word, who declared the spoken words of truth about sin, salvation, and eternity.

Then we also must recognize, as in all true spiritual conversions, the power at work is the Holy Spirit. He is the one who works through human witness and through the Word of God to produce conversion in human hearts. He brings us conviction of our sin and awareness of our need for a Savior. We see His convicting power at work in the heart of this criminal as he sees his own sinfulness and accepts the penalty of his sins as a just judgment. As the other thief continues to hurl abuse at Jesus, this one turns to him and says, “Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” These words indicate that the criminal has come to see himself as a sinner. No more excuses, and no more attempts at justifying himself – he simply says, “We are getting what we deserve for what we have done.” He recognizes that the God-ordained power of the governing authorities has done right to put him to death as he says, “We are suffering justly.” But he is also beginning to awaken to the reality that the court which sentenced him and his compatriot to death is not the final judgment they will face. He says to the other criminal, “Do you not even fear God?” In other words, “Have you given no thought to the fact that in moments we are going to stand face to face with our Creator and Judge! Our guilt before Him will be evident soon enough! And what if the things they are saying about this Man are true? Then you are only adding to your guilt before God by mocking His Son, the King, our Christ!” This criminal has come, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the place we all must be brought to if we would be saved. He recognizes himself as a sinner who is fully deserving of punishment, and whose most severe penalty is yet to come at the hands of a holy God.

Have you come to this realization yet? Or are you still saying, “OK, I’m not perfect, but I’m not so bad. I don’t really deserve for any bad things to happen to me, and I especially don’t deserve to be condemned under the judgment of God.” You see, those are the words of the other criminal. Those are the words of an arrogant and hard heart. When he says, “Are you not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!” he seems to imply that he deserves something from Jesus. He seems to think that what he has done is not deserving of what he is experiencing. And if he really wants salvation at all, he only wants it from the harsh circumstances he finds himself in at the present. He has given no thought to the guilt of his sins before God, and no thought of the judgment and the penalty that is to come. So many people are like this unrepentant criminal. If we have any use for God at all, it is only that He might make our lives here and now more comfortable and pleasant. In a sense, this man is like the hordes of people who flock after the so-called prosperity Gospel in our day. “Let’s don’t deal with our sins and the reality of hell. Let’s deal with the fact that I’m not experiencing my best life now. If God is really there, and if Jesus is really the Christ, let’s have a little more health, wealth, prosperity, and comfort, and let’s have it now.” That is not the Gospel. That is a satanic distortion of Christianity. Only one of these men is even beginning to comprehend the good news of Jesus, because only one is aware of the guilt of his own sin, and the justness of the penalty he is bearing now, and the greater penalty to come. When the Holy Spirit begins to work in our hearts, we will become convicted of these truths as well.

This conviction of the Holy Spirit is a blessed gift of God, for through it we come to see our need of a Savior. You see, it is only at this point in the narrative, after having become convicted of his sin, that the criminal turns to Jesus and says, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom.” Notice he calls him by name, “Jesus.” Now, I’m taking the statement of Philip Ryken at face value, I haven’t fact checked him on this; but Ryken says that no one else in the Gospels spoke to Jesus calling Him by His name.[5] Think about it. Most of the time, when people speak to Jesus, they call Him Master, Rabbi, Teacher, even Lord, and all of those titles are appropriate for Him. But if Ryken is correct, then this man on the cross who ever looked upon Him and began speaking by addressing Him by name, “Jesus.” What is the significance of this? You recall that when the angel announced to Joseph that Jesus was to be born to the virgin Mary, he said, “you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins” (Matt 1:21). His very name means, “The Lord (YHWH) is salvation.” Might it be that this crucified criminal is the first person who ever truly understood the mission of Jesus? Might it be that he was the first one to ever recognize that in the death of Jesus, this man whom the criminal recognizes is suffering unjustly (he says, “this man has done nothing wrong”, v41), and in Him alone salvation from sin is found? It is obvious that he is not thinking about salvation in terms of the here and now. He is thinking about a salvation that is yet future. He is not asking for temporal relief from his misery, as the other thief is asking. He is asking Jesus, the Lord of salvation, to remember him at some point yet future, when after His death He enters into His Kingdom. Though his knowledge of Christ is limited here, it seems that he understands more about the saving mission of Jesus than even any of the Twelve apostles at that point. He is able to look with the eye of faith to a future in which Jesus conquers death and inherits a Kingdom prepared for Him by the Father, and to request a place in that Kingdom.

His is not the request made by James and John. They asked Jesus if they might be granted to sit His right and left hand, the places of supreme honor, when He came into His Kingdom (Mark 10:37). No, this man is not asking for a place of honor. He is simply asking to be remembered. It’s a humble prayer. And his faith in Christ is a confident one, for he does not say, “Jesus, remember me if you ever come into Your Kingdom.” He says, not if, but when. His prayer reminds me of Joseph’s request when he was in prison in Egypt. After interpreting the dream of the cupbearer, Joseph said, “keep me in mind when it goes well with you, and please do me a kindness by mentioning me to Pharaoh and get me out of this house” (Genesis 40:14). But the cupbearer did not follow through. The Bible says that he “did not remember Joseph, but forgot him” (Gen 40:23). You and I have been asked numerous times by people enduring hardships that we might remember them when we speak to the King in prayer, and like the cupbearer, we so often forget them and their concerns. But Jesus is not a fickle human as we are. He does not promise one thing and deliver another. No in response to this humble request of faith, Jesus speaks with assurance a promise of Paradise.

 II. Hear the Promise of Paradise

It is often the case, and we might say always the case, that when we pray to the Lord, He grants us far more than we ask. His answers are not always what we have asked for, but they are always far better, even if we do not understand it here and now. But the dying criminal surely understood that what Jesus was promising him in response to his request was “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). His request was to be remembered at some indistinct point in the future when Jesus came into His Kingdom. The reply was “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” These words assure us that it truly is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, that we are saved. Jesus did not say to Him, “Well, first there are some things you need to do.” No, there could be no doing. The man’s hands were nailed to his cross. Jesus did not say, “You must first go participate in some ritual or observance.” No, there could be no going, for the man’s feet were nailed in place. Jesus did not say, “First you must turn over a new leaf and live a different way.” There was no time for better living. This man was dying. The only thing he could do was to believe upon the Lord Jesus and receive the gift of eternal life. And this, he did. He had placed his faith upon Christ and testified publicly to that.

Salvation by works is nowhere to be found in the Bible. The words of Jesus here assure us that there is nothing we can do to earn eternal life. But Jesus also assures us here of the truth that salvation is instantaneous and immediate. There are some who believe that there is a process involved, and some who believe that after this life there is a period of suffering in a mythical place called purgatory where we endure affliction to purge the sin from our lives before we can enter heaven. No, this is not to be found in Scripture. The Lord Jesus says to this man, whose sins are so evident, “Today you shall be with me in paradise.” There is no process, no purgatory, no period of waiting. Salvation has come to him instantaneously and immediately. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” This man who is on the cross in the morning shall be in Paradise by nightfall. What a glorious promise this is for us. Richard Baxter, the great Puritan pastor, said that we must preach as a dying man to dying men. And such we are. But when death draws near, the true child of God who has trusted in Christ can know that when our eyes close on this world they will only blink, and open immediately to Paradise. Our last exhale of this world’s air, will be followed by the deep inbreathing of the air of Paradise.

But I confess to you that in most of our thinking about Paradise, about heaven, we have really missed the point. You see the point of heaven is not that you will be free from hardships, in a beautiful place, surrounded by your friends and loved ones. The most important aspect of heaven is that you will be with Christ. Hear the Lord Jesus as He says to this dying criminal, “Today, you will be with Me in Paradise.” The emphasis is on those two words, with Me. This is more than was asked for! He merely asked to be remembered. Jesus says, “I’ll do better than that. I will take you with me, and we’ll go today.” There was much that this criminal did not understand about heaven, Paradise, the Kingdom of Christ. But this much was made clear to him: whatever that place is and whatever it is like, the most glorious aspect of it is that we will be with Jesus there. Hear the longing of the Psalmist as he cries out, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth” (Psalm 73:25). Why do you long most for heaven? Is it so that your aches and pains will pass away? Is it so that you can be reunited with Grandma or Dad? Is it so that you can behold the streets of gold? Or is it so that you can be with Jesus? John Piper has said it so well: “The critical question for our generation—and for every generation—is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?”[6] For the Christian, the answer to that question must be a resounding, “No!” Our hopes and our longings are not satisfied in a place, with certain particulars and people. Our hope and our longing is satisfied in a singular person – the Lord Jesus! And for those who believe upon Him and call out to Him in saving faith, we have this precious promise, “You shall be with Me in Paradise.” For the thief, the promise was that it was even to be experienced that very day, Today. Now this brings us to the scandal of grace.

III. Embrace the Scandal of Grace

I stood in the driveway of a man named Al just days after I preached his wife’s funeral. She was a Christian, he was not. As we stood there, I talked to him about heaven, about God, and about the Gospel which promises us eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. Al said, “Preacher, I’m a good man. I help my neighbors when they need a hand. I do good things for people. I took care of my wife every day while she was dying of cancer. Do you mean to tell me that when I die I will go to hell, but a man on death row can just suddenly believe in Jesus and pray a prayer and be forgiven and go to heaven?” I said, “Al, that is exactly what I mean.” He said, “I cannot believe that.” And he turned away and walked into his house and closed the door. It is scandalous, isn’t it? It doesn’t seem fair, does it? And in fact it is not. But, when this life is over, and we set foot into eternity, the only person who will be able to rightly accuse God of being unfair is the person in heaven. The person in hell will realize at that moment that they are receiving exactly what they deserve. The person in heaven will realize that they have received nothing of what they deserved. They will realize just how infinite and amazing God’s saving grace is. It is downright scandalous. And we must embrace it as such.

Two men met Jesus at the cross on that day. Both of them called out to Him and asked for salvation. One said, “Are You not the Christ?” That implies that he thought there might be some truth to that claim. He said, “Save Yourself and us!” But he was asking for a salvation that God will not deliver. For Jesus to answer that man’s prayer would be for Him to remove Himself from the cross, undoing the purpose of God for Him to redeem the entire race of fallen humanity through His death. And for what? So that He and these two men could enjoy life here on earth for, at best, several more years. That man died that day, and he died unsaved. He would not be with Christ in Paradise. He would be separated from Christ in hell. But the other man said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom.” He was asking for the salvation which God provides. He was asking for the salvation that comes through the death of Jesus on the cross. He recognized that the glory of Christ’s crown is gained through the suffering of Christ’s cross. He recognized that salvation is not about increasing one’s creaturely comforts here on earth. It is about reckoning with the problem of human sin, and gaining entrance through the death and resurrection of Jesus into eternal life with Him in Paradise. And that man was saved. Was it fair that one was saved and the other wasn’t? No, because neither of them deserved to be saved. None of us do either. Grace invalidates all notions of fairness. It is a scandal. And it is a scandal that we must embrace.

I think that true, genuine, deathbed conversions are rare. I don’t think there are many. But I wouldn’t say that there aren’t any. One of the Puritans said, “There is one such case recorded that none need despair, but only one, in Scripture, that none might presume.”[7] Do you have a friend or loved one who is drawing near to death and is yet unsaved? Do not despair! It is not too late. It takes only a moment for them to believe and call upon Christ and to receive that precious promise, “Today, you shall be with Me in Paradise.” I think of my last visit with Tom Dixon. I went to visit him and I sat in the car praying, “Lord, I do not know if Tom is saved, but I am not leaving this hospital today until I know.” After we visited a while, Tom said, “Preacher, I was sitting out in the carport the other day wondering how I could have my sins forgiven.” And what a privilege it was for me to lead Tom to Jesus just days before he died. Don’t despair. We have this example in the thief on the cross. As long as there is life, there is hope. But we have only this singular example in scripture, so neither must we presume. We must not be like the teenage boy who told me one night down at Ardmore Park, “I am going to get saved one day. Maybe when I’m old, like 30 or something. Because first I want to have some fun.” I said to him, “You know what Jesus says? He says, “You fool! This very night your soul is required of you!” (Luke 12:20). Why would you presume that you have years left to give your life to Jesus? You may not have months, weeks, or days left. You may not even have hours. Death is not obligated to give us a warning. It will come whether we are ready or not. Hebrews 4:7 says that God “fixes a certain day, ‘Today,’ saying, ‘Today, if you hear His voice do not harden your hearts.” In 2 Corinthians 6:2, Paul says, “Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold now is the day of salvation.” To put it off is to presume. Believe today and hear the words of Jesus, “Today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” If you turn away, you do not know but that you may hear Him say, “You fool, this very night your soul is required of you.”   

Whenever I go away on a trip, when I return, my kids love to come sit down with me and see what I brought them back from my journey. I like to envision Jesus coming home to His Father, and maybe, just maybe His Father says, “Son, did you bring Me anything?” And I envision Jesus introducing this criminal to the Father and saying, “I brought this one.” And every time any one of us who has trusted in Christ passes through the valley of the shadow of death, the Lord Jesus stands to receive us and says to His Father, “Here, here is another one!” William Cowper was a man whose soul was afflicted throughout his life with debilitating depression. He was suicidal at times, and often at the end of his rope. But he held steadfastly to Jesus, and in moments of brilliant clarity, he wrote some of our greatest hymns. One of them says, “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away.”

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[1] Herschel H. Hobbs, The Crucial Words From Calvary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958), 5.

[2] Charles Erdman, quoted in Russell Bradley Jones, Gold from Golgotha (Chicago: Moody, 1945), 29.

[3] Jones, 31.

[4] John Macarthur, The Murder of Jesus (Nashville: Word, 2000), 213.

[5] James Montgomery Boice and Philip Graham Ryken, The Heart of the Cross (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1999), 25.

[6] John Piper, God is the Gospel (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2005), 15.

[7] Quoted in Arthur W. Pink, The Seven Sayings of the Saviour on the Cross (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958), 42. 

Father Forgive Them (Luke 23:33-34)

Audio

This week, Christians around the world begin a season that leads up to Easter, the celebration of our Lord’s Resurrection. Last year, I remarked to Dave Shafer that I planned had planned a series of sermons leading up to Easter, to which he said, “If you weren’t a Baptist, you could call it Lent.” Indeed, that is what most Christians in the world call this season of 40 days that begins this week on Ash Wednesday and culminates in Resurrection Sunday. Lent is a time of spiritual preparation for the celebration of the Resurrection at Easter. Baptists, as you know, have not typically held to these seasons and special days of the church year, and there are both positives and negatives associated with that. You may hear a Christian friend who belongs to another denomination speak of “giving up something for Lent.” I like to say that Baptists have for the most part just given up Lent. Yet, there is something to be said for spending time in reflection and introspection leading up to Easter. For some, this can be a good season to practice a fast of some kind, and if the Lord should so lead you, I would in no way discourage you, but it is a matter of freedom, so we must not consider fasting a requirement during Lent. If you are so inclined, I would recommend John Piper’s excellent book A Hunger for God as a good biblical guide to fasting. As we go through these weeks, I will be departing from our study of John to engage with the seven sayings of Jesus on the cross that are recorded in the Gospels. Matthew records one of them; Mark records the same one; Luke records three additional ones; and John records three more. Lehman Strauss has written,

I like to think of these seven sayings as windows through which we are able to look into the very mind and heart of God. On that darkest day in human history man needed windows through which the light of God could shine. Blessed be His holy name, that light did shine! … And wherever these sayings of the Savior are retold, men are privileged to peer into the mind of the world’s Creator and Redeemer and see the heart of the Christian Gospel.[1]

The first of these sayings of Christ from the cross is found in Luke 23:34: Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. This single sentence is a prayer that is as profound as it is brief. In fact, most of the prayers of Jesus are brief. This should remind us that much can be accomplished in brief moments of prayer. It is not our verbosity but our consistency, sincerity and intimacy in prayer that is effectual. Here in this one-sentence prayer, the Lord Jesus says more than any of us have ever said in the longest prayers we have prayed. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. This prayer helps us to understand the heart of the Lord Jesus toward a sinful world. We do well to consider the timing, the subject, and the basis of this prayer.

I. Consider the timing of this prayer, or when Jesus prayed this prayer.

Have you ever experienced moments in which prayer was extremely difficult for you? Often we are able to pray when things are going well and our hearts are filled with joy. But what about when things get difficult for us? In those moments, perhaps when prayer is most needed, prayer becomes most difficult. But we see here that Jesus’ first instinct in the most difficult moment of His earthly life is to retreat to the intimacy of His relationship with His Father in prayer. Verse 33 tells us that Jesus prayed this prayer at that place called “The Skull,” the translation of the word Golgotha, which we also know as Calvary, as He was being crucified together with two criminals on each side of Him. I have read numerous books on prayer which talk about the importance of finding a time and place conducive to prayer: a comfortable spot in a quiet place, free from noise and distraction. This was not that kind of place. In fact, if we are honest, most of the time when we need prayer the most, we are not in that kind of place. The place where Jesus prayed was filled with all kinds of hideous noise – violent screams from the victims of crucifixion, mocking taunts from bystanders. And comfort was nowhere to be found at the scene of crucifixion. It was the cruelest form of execution ever devised in the minds of sinful men. After carrying the heavy cross to the place of death, the victim of crucifixion would be stretched out, the joints being ripped from the sockets to add to the pain and misery and make the process of dying all the more excruciating. Then, nails would be driven through the wrists and the crossed ankles of the victim as they were raised up in public shame and humiliation. The death would be long and agonizing. In addition to the traumatic loss of blood and agonizing pain, the cause of death in crucifixion was almost always suffocation. As the body weakened, it was harder to draw in breath. The victim would fight for breath, pressing against the spike in the feet to thrust the body upward and outward to inhale. Eventually, exhaustion, pain, and complete agony would make breathing impossible. Most often, the victims would use what little breath they had to cry out in agony or to curse the scoffers and the soldiers around them. But Jesus did not do this. With His labored breath, He began to speak, but the words He uttered were words of prayer to His Father.

The verb tense that is used in verse 34 indicates that Jesus did not just pray this prayer once; He prayed it repeatedly. Over and over again, He cried out to His Father. After all He had endured, not only the cross but the agonizing torture of being scourged and beaten before the crucifixion, He was still able to pray, and in His prayer to call upon God as His Father. He does not question or withdraw Himself from the intimacy of His relationship with the Father as we are inclined to do in our suffering. He does not wonder if God is there, or if God’s love for Him has wavered. He speaks in the confidence that the God who is enthroned over the universe and sovereign over these very events is still His Father. The intimacy of His relationship with the Father is His refuge in prayer, even in the most horrific of circumstances.

Are you able to pray in the midst of your suffering? If not, we have to wonder if we are really able to pray at all, because so much of life in this fallen world will involve suffering. Some of us experience it for different reasons, from different sources, and at different intensities, but we all experience suffering on a regular basis in this life. If we can’t pray when we are suffering, then prayer is of no practical benefit to us. And in the midst of our suffering, are we able to look heavenward and see a God there who is a loving Father to us? Are we inclined to think that He loves us less because He is allowing us to suffer? Do we question or shrink from the intimacy of a personal relationship with Him because hardships have come our way? We must be able, in the midst of the most difficult of circumstances, to know that our suffering and our hardships do not mean that His love for us is any less than it has ever been. We must look to Him as our Father, not only in the good times, but in the bad times all the more. And knowing human propensity to shrink from affection toward God and to resort to prayerlessness in our suffering, we must be mindful to pray all the more for one another when we know that a brother or sister is going through hardships. We may be praying for them in way that they cannot, or will not, pray for themselves.

Look at the Lord Jesus here on the cross! The most intense and extreme suffering that any human has ever experienced pales in comparison to what He endured on the cross. Yet in the midst of it, He is able not only to pray, but to pray with confidence in His intimacy with the Father.

II. Consider the subject of this prayer, or for whom Jesus prayed this prayer.

The Gospel According to Matthew records for us a lengthy sermon of Jesus that we call “the Sermon on the Mount.” In this great sermon, Jesus spells out what it means to be His follower and how we are to live for Him. He also challenges some common misunderstandings that had been applied to the teachings of Scripture. For instance, He says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” He does not say that these things are written in the Law, but that you have heard these things taught. And indeed, the Law did say that we must love our neighbors as ourselves, but nowhere did the law ever say that we were to hate our enemies. That was something that the scribes had attached to the Word of God. So, in His sermon, Jesus said, “You have heard this, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44). Now, if we were sitting there on that hillside on a bright, sunny afternoon with Jesus, and we heard Him say that, it would be really easy to say, “Amen,” at that point in the sermon. But it is much harder to say “Amen” when we are actually called upon to do it. Is it really possible to love our enemies and pray for them?

Similarly, when Peter asked, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” the Lord Jesus responded, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” Now by this, Jesus was not saying that we should keep a record of how many times we have been wronged by someone, and how often we have forgiven them, so that when we reach 490, we are no longer bound to forgive them. No in fact, in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul tells us that love keeps no record of wrongs. Jesus was using figurative speech to say, “There is to be no limit on how many times you forgive someone.” Again, it is easy for us to read that and say, “Amen! Peter, you keep on forgiving that person over and over again!” But it is another matter altogether when we are the ones being sinned against. We have a hard time forgiving once, much less seven, or 490 times! It is one thing to say this, and to agree with it, and quite something different to practice it. But as we see the Lord Jesus on the cross, praying to His Father, we see that He practices what He preaches.

“Father,” He says, “forgive them.” Who are them? The immediate context makes it clear that Jesus is praying for the very people who are putting Him to death. And who, we might ask, is responsible for the death of Jesus? Certainly the soldiers who drove the nails into His hands and feet are responsible, though they might assert that they were only carrying out orders. Certainly Pilate and Herod are responsible, though they may assert that they were only trying to preserve the peace. Certainly the religious leaders of Israel were responsible, though they would assert they were driven to do so by their zeal to preserve their religion from blasphemy and idolatry. The Jews have a part in His death, the Gentiles have a part in His death. But when we remember that God is the one who has orchestrated all these things in His divine sovereignty, and we remember why Jesus died – to bear the sins of all humanity as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world – we also are faced with the fact that we ourselves are involved in putting Him to death. So for whom is Jesus praying? He is praying for every person who has a hand in what John Piper calls history’s most spectacular sin – the brutal murder of the Son of God.[2] And whether we want to admit it or not, our sin is equally responsible with that of Pilate, Herod, the soldiers, the religious leaders, and all the others who cried out for Him to be crucified. He is praying for a world that has declared an all out war against God. He prays for His enemies, just as He instructed us to do.

Now there is a sense in which we might say it is easy to pray for our enemies. That of course, depends on what we are praying for them. We might find great ease in asking God to flood them with judgment and misery. We may wish to pray for their death or for revenge to be exacted upon them. But this is not how Jesus prays for His enemies, and it is not how He would have us to pray for ours. He prays, “Father, forgive them.” And the astonishing thing is that He does not pray, as one writer says, “after His wounds had healed, but while they were yet open. Words of forgiveness came from His lips when the nails were being driven into His body, when the pain was the fiercest, when the jolts of anguish were the sharpest.”[3] This prayer for forgiveness did not come when remorse had set into hearts of the guilty and they had returned humbly in repentance. It was prayed while the hammers were still pounding the nails.

Has anyone ever wronged you? Surely they have. Living in this world is like living in a den of porcupines. Sooner or later, you are going to get stuck. But what have you done with those hurts? Have you harbored them in your heart, allowing that grudge to fester into a cancerous tumor on your soul? The Lord taught me early in my Christian life that my refusal to forgive someone does not hurt them, but it kills me slowly and painfully. “But Lord,” we protest, “they have not expressed any regret or remorse for their sin! Why should I forgive them?” The Lord will only point us to the cross, where we see the Lord Jesus crying out while the nails are being driven in, over and over again, “Father, forgive them.” No one has ever done to you what they did to Him. And in the midst of it, Jesus is able to release these individuals over to His Father and plead for their forgiveness. Will you harbor resentment and grudges for sins of far less severity?

III. Consider the basis of this prayer, or why Jesus prayed this prayer.

“Father, forgive them,” Jesus says, “for they do not know what they are doing.” Did the soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross know what they were doing? Surely they did, for they had done this countless times before. They knew of the cruelty of this kind of death, and they performed their task with experienced precision. Did the religious leaders of Jerusalem know what they were doing? Certainly. The depths of their deceitful plotting indicated that they knew. They had to resort to bribery and manufactured allegations to bring against Jesus in order to secure His execution. Did the crowds know what they were doing when they cried out for Jesus to be crucified? Indeed. Many of them had heard His teachings and seen His miracles. Earlier in the same week, some in this unruly mob had undoubtedly welcomed Jesus into the city with cries of “Hosanna!” They knew when they called for the release of Barabbas that they were giving the life of an innocent man in exchange for a guilty one. Did Pilate know what He was doing? Surely he did. After his investigation into the case of Jesus, he pronounced that he had found no fault in Him. Nonetheless, he ordered the crucifixion. It seems that each one who has a part to play in this scene did, in fact, knew what they were doing. Why then does Jesus say that they didn’t know? Because, although each one knew that there was wickedness at work in this evil deed, they did not know the magnitude of it. They knew that they were putting to death an innocent man, but they gave no thought to the notion that they were putting to death the Lord of glory. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:8 that had they known the wisdom of God, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Does their ignorance of this absolve them of guilt? No, even in their ignorance of the magnitude of their evil deed, it is still sin. So, the prayer of Jesus is not that it be overlooked or ignored in heaven, but rather that it be forgiven. In God’s infinite holiness and justice, there is no sin that can be merely overlooked or passed over. It must be reckoned with. And in order for the guilt of one party to be forgiven, it must be satisfied by another. And that is what Jesus is doing here on the cross. As He suffers and bleeds, and as He dies, He is bearing not merely the scornful treatment of a wicked world, but He is bearing the divine justice of the wrath of God as He becomes the substitute for sinners. His prayer is that the Father will be satisfied by the substitute of the death of the Son in the place of these sinners. And not these alone, but all of us as well. For you see, in a very real sense, it may be said of us that we need forgiveness for our sins because “we know not what we do.” Surely, in all of our sin, we are aware that we are making a choice to commit an act of unrighteousness, or to forego an act of righteousness. Surely we are aware that there is a wild sense of rebellion in our spirit that refuses to be tamed in surrender to the holiness of God. But we are unaware of the magnitude of our sin. We are unaware of the depths of the offense that is committed because we lack awareness of the majestic holiness of God. We are unaware of the dangers of our sin, its effects on our own souls and on the wellbeing of others. We are unaware of the drastic penalty that our sins require. To us it seems a small matter, a minor offense, a peccadillo, just a tiny fracture of God’s requirements. But how does God see it? Look at the cross. Until you see every sin that you have ever committed, or will ever commit, as the deed for which Christ died and bore unspeakable agony and shame, you have known not what you have done. Our only fitting response then is to bow before this cross in humility and repentance and plead to the Father, “Lord, forgive us, for we did not know the magnitude of our sins! Forgive us Lord, on the basis of this righteous substitute who bore our wrath in our place. Forgive us Lord, for had we known the depth of our own wickedness, had we known the extent of our offensiveness before You, had we known the effects that this sin would cause upon ourselves, and others, and yes, even upon the Lord Jesus Himself, we would not have done it.” And henceforth, it is our Christian duty to know, to be no longer ignorant of the depths and dangers of sin, and to live in the power of the Holy Spirit whom Christ has imparted to us, that we might resist and overcome sin in our daily lives.

In the moment of His most intense agony and suffering, the Lord Jesus is not silent. And what does He say? He cries out to His Father in this prayerful sentence: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do! In these words, prayed as it was under these circumstances, prayed as it was for the likes of these, for the likes of us, we see that no one is beyond the bounds of forgiveness. You may think today that there are unspeakable horrors in your past that the Lord could never forgive. Hear Jesus praying for those who are putting the nails into His hands! “Forgive them, Father.” There is hope for you in those words. And there is hope for the one who has offended you. If God can hearken unto the prayer of Christ for these, then He is anxious as well to hear you release the power of His forgiving grace to those who have wronged you. And He longs to hear you call out to Him in the intimacy of a relationship with Him as your Father, and you as His child, even when your circumstances have become most bitter.

You may wonder, “Did God answer this prayer?” I tell you that He did. Within moments, one of the soldiers who was putting Jesus to death would step back and behold the Lamb of God dying in his place and say, “Truly this was the Son of God.” Within days, the disciples who had denied Him, forsaken Him, and doubted Him, would bow before Him and worship Him as Lord and God following the resurrection. Within weeks, those Christians would proclaim the good news of Jesus throughout Jerusalem, and thousands would be saved, many of whom were likely present at the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, including a great many of the priests (Acts 6:7). And His prayer has been answered over and over again, every time a sinner looks to the cross and finds there God’s provision for the forgiveness of his or her sins in the person of Jesus. It might even be that God answers the prayer of Jesus in the life of someone you know today. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. This is the prayer that the Lord Jesus prayed for you. Have you turned to Him as Lord and Savior and received this forgiveness? May this also be our prayer for a lost and dying world today, and may we offer our witness to the Lord for His use in bringing about the answer to it.

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[1] Lehman Strauss, The Day God Died (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1965), 8.

[2] John Piper, History’s Most Spectacular Sin (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2008), 5.

[3] Erwin Lutzer, Cries from the Cross (Chicago: Moody, 2002), 36. 

This is the Son of God - John 1:29-34

Audio 

On my last visit to Dakar, Senegal eight years ago, I struck up a conversation with the security official at the customs counter. As he looked over my passport at my full name, he asked, “What do your friends call you?” I said, “They call me Russ.” I have found that there are some languages in the world that do not have a corresponding short-u sound in their vocabulary, and so I am accustomed to people having difficulty with pronouncing “Russ.” It usually comes out “Roose,” or, if they are accustomed to rolling the “r”, “Doose,” or something like that. But this Wolof man just couldn’t seem to wrap his tongue around any pronunciation of my name, so he said, “I can see from your visa stamps that you have come to Senegal many times, so you need a Wolof name. Who is your father?” I said, “My father’s name is John.” He said, “Who is your son?” I said, “My son’s name is Solomon.” Being a devout Muslim, he recognized the name “Solomon” from the Old Testament, but he pronounced it “Suleiman.” He said, “Well, since Suleiman was the son of Dauda (which is the Wolof way of saying “David”), I will call you Dauda John-Son.” So, in addition to a number of souvenirs, experiences, and memories, I left West Africa with two new names. You can call me Russ Reaves, or you can call me David Johnson, or as a friend of mine says, “You can call me anything, just don’t call me late for dinner!”

As we study the Bible, we find several people who go by different names. Saul is called Paul; Simon is called Peter; and so on. But no one has as many names as Jesus. If we were to restrict our study of His names and titles to only the first chapter of the Gospel of John, we would find at least 19 of these terms. In this chapter alone, He is referred to as the Word, the Light, the only begotten of the Father, the only begotten God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, the Christ, the Lord, the Lamb of God, a Man who has a higher rank than John the Baptist, the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit, Rabbi, Messiah, King of Israel, Son of Man, Him of whom Moses and the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph, and Son of God.

It may be helpful to place this account in chronological perspective with the events described in the other Gospels. John does not record the actual baptism of Jesus, but we know from this context that it has already taken place. We also know from the other Gospels that immediately after His baptism, Jesus went out into the wilderness to endure 40 days of temptation. So, we are about six weeks removed from His baptism at this point in the narrative. From the preceding context, John 1:19-28, we know that Jesus was present on the day before this account in 1:29-34. John said to the delegation from Jerusalem, “among you stands One whom you do not know.” And now, on the following day, Jesus comes out to the place where John is preaching and baptizing. When John sees Him coming, he identifies Him publicly using five distinct titles in these six verses.  These titles combine to give us a sharp image of His nature and His mission.

I. The Son of God has a divine nature.

There aren’t many days that go by that my son doesn’t hear someone say that he looks just like me. When I meet people who know my dad, I often hear them say that I look a lot like him. Even without those resemblances, if you were to sample our DNA, you would see that we are biologically related. We share the same the same genetic makeup. But what do we mean when we say that Jesus is the Son of God? That is how John identifies him here in verse 34, and how Christians have referred to Jesus for two millennia. Does this title mean that Jesus has the same DNA as God, or that He and God look alike? Do we mean that Jesus was born the way that some of the demigods of pagan mythology were born, through an act of sexual relations between God and Mary? Muslims assume that this is what we believe, and Mormon doctrine comes close to this, but the Biblical description of the virginal conception of Jesus leaves absolutely no room for this view. No, the Bible is clear that the title “Son of God” means that Jesus is of the same eternal and divine nature as God the Father.

Though there are a number of mind-boggling mysteries in Christian theology, none is more profound than the mystery of the Trinity. The earliest Christians understood fully well that there is only one God. But as they searched the Scriptures, they found that the Father was spoken of as God, and the Son, Jesus, was referred to as God, and the Holy Spirit was also referred to as God. It took several centuries to hammer out an explanation for this that did justice to all of the biblical data, preserving the uniqueness of Father, Son, and Spirit, while maintaining that there is only one God. In the time of Constantine, the Christian faith was nearly ripped apart by a single occurrence of the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet. Arius was a popular teacher in Alexandria (in Egypt), and he taught that Jesus was of a similar nature with God. The Greek word He used was homoiousios, meaning “similar nature” or “similar being.” Other Christians were convinced from Scripture that this teaching was incorrect. They understood Scripture to teach that Jesus was fully divine, and of the same nature with God the Father. Thus, these Christians emphasized the Greek word homoousios, meaning “the same nature” or “the same being.” Have you ever heard someone describe a small matter as “one iota”? That’s the difference in the spelling of homoiousios and homoousios: one iota. Though there is only one iota of difference in the spelling of these two words, the difference in meaning is of infinite importance. That is why this one iota nearly split the Church of Jesus Christ irreparably in two in the fourth century. Edward Gibbon discusses this controversy in his famous History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, where he speaks of “the furious contests which the difference of a single diphthong excited.”[1] Is Jesus kind of like God, or is He fully God? You can see that this is no small matter. To be wrong on the one end is idolatry, and to be wrong on the other is blasphemy.

The Council of Nicea in 325 affirmed that the Scriptures taught that Jesus is fully God. The Nicene Creed, which is the only creed affirmed by all Christian groups in the world today, explains that Jesus is, “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” The matter of Jesus’ deity was settled fully and finally. But then there arose questions about His humanity, and thus the matter of His nature – whether He was only God, only man, or somehow both God and man – was taken up again at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The conclusion of this council, known as “the Chalcedonian Definition,” it affirms the dual nature of Jesus, saying that He is “at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man.” The definition goes on to explain that He is, “of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin.” Throughout history many have objected to the idea of Jesus being fully God by saying that these explanations from the church councils are man-made doctrines. But we counter by saying that the councils were not inventing doctrine, rather they were seeking the best way to express what they understood the Scriptures to teach. And, among other things, they understood the Scriptures to teach that Jesus, the Son of God, is no less than fully God, yet distinct in person from the Father and the Spirit, and there is only one God. This is what God’s word had been saying in many portions and various expressions all along, but the councils systematized these various expressions and portions into precise and concise explanations of Christian doctrine. We need look no further than those who opposed Jesus during His earthly life, for they understood that when He spoke of God as His Father, that He was claiming to be God Himself. “Son of God” means that He is God the Son, of the same nature and essence as God the Father and God the Spirit; one God in three Persons.

A number of years ago, as I sought to teach the members of another church some basics of Christian doctrine, I began by giving a quiz about their beliefs. One of the questions I asked was: “True or False: Jesus is God.” In addition to a handful of church members who wrote “False,” a surprising number of them left the answer blank, and several wrote in, “He is the Son of God.” When I teach in the classroom, my students like it when I let them known in advance what questions will be on the test and what the right answers to those questions are. I won’t be giving you any quizzes in the near future, but if I do, please know that the answer to the question, “Is Jesus God?” is “YES!” And the correct way to express that is in all caps with an exclamation point! He is fully God, who became fully man in the incarnation, while maintaining His full deity.

This is why John the Baptist says of Him in verse 30, “After me comes a Man (yes, Jesus is fully man through the incarnation) who has a higher rank than I.” What is John’s rank? Well, Jesus will later say that John was the greatest person ever born. But John says Jesus has an even higher rank. John was a prophet of God, a man who received a word directly from God and delivered it on His behalf. Throughout Israel’s history, the prophet of God was the most important man in the land. But John says, “Jesus has a higher rank than that.” He does not merely deliver a word from God, He is the Word of God, God Himself, incarnate to dwell among us. John 1:1-14 makes this abundantly clear, as do many other passages of Scripture.

But then notice the next thing John says: “He has a higher rank than I for He existed before me.” We don’t know how many people standing around John understood the significance of this expression, but we who possess the New Testament certainly do. In Luke’s Gospel, we read that the announcement to Mary concerning the virginal conception of Jesus came in the sixth month of the pregnancy of Elizabeth, John’s mother. This means that John was six months older than Jesus. We also know that John came on the scene in public ministry some time before Jesus did. Thus John says here, “After me comes a Man.” But this Man who was coming after John, six months younger than John, actually “existed before” John. This is nothing other than an explicit identification of the eternal divine nature of Jesus. He existed “in the beginning” as God and with God according to John 1:1. Not only did He exist before John, Jesus will say of Himself in John 8:58, “before Abraham was born, I am.” He testified of Himself, John the Baptist testified of Him, and John the Apostle testified of Him that He had no beginning. He has simply always existed. There is only one name for a being who is eternal, who has no beginning and no end, and that name is God. John’s testimony clearly depicts that Jesus, the Son of God, has a divine nature and is God Himself.

II. The Son of God came on a redemptive mission.

When my wife was a child, her grandparents had a farm where they raised pigs among other things. A little baby pig was born that didn’t appear healthy, and so Donia’s parents brought that little pig home from the farm and kept it as a pet for a short time. They named it Isaac, and took care of it and nursed it to health before returning it back to the farm. Donia recalls asking her grandparents on occasion, “Whatever happened to Isaac?” And they would kind of glance at each other and try to change the subject. As she looks back on it now, she realizes now that Isaac grew up to fulfill the mission for which he was born, namely to become someone’s breakfast. Pig farmers aren’t breeding pets. They are breeding bacon and sausage. Little Isaac, like all of his kin, was born to die. What does Isaac have to do with Jesus? Well, my point is not that because Christ came, the dietary Kosher laws have been abolished so that we can now enjoy eating Isaac with a clean conscience, though I am grateful for that often overlooked blessing of being in Christ! My point is that Jesus is like Isaac. He was born to die. But John did not declare him to be the “Pig of God.” That title probably belongs to Martin Luther, whom the pope declared to be a wild boar loose in the Lord’s vineyard. John identified Jesus to be “the Lamb of God,” and in those days, most lambs were born to die as sacrifices upon the altar of the Lord. So too the Lord Jesus was “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

From the time of the first sin, God had instituted a way of making atonement for sin. When Adam and Eve sinned, the Bible says that the Lord God made garments of skin for them. When we see Adam and Eve covered in fig leaves in artwork, that undermines the redemptive plan of God. They weren’t covered in leaves; they were covered in the skin of an animal. This Hebrew word that is used in Genesis 3:21 is translated as skin, hide, and leather throughout the Old Testament. And where did this hide come from? An animal had to die. God had commanded Adam and Eve, “from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Gen 2:17). And to be sure, spiritually they died immediately as evidenced by the separation in their fellowship with God. They hid from Him in shame. But as for physical death, they did not die, but a substitute died in their place as a sacrifice. We are not told what kind of animal it was, but when their son Abel begins to worship the Lord in an acceptable manner in Genesis 4, he brings to the Lord an offering from among the firstlings of his flock. He brought a lamb. When Abraham took Isaac to offer him on Mount Moriah in Genesis 22, he told his companions, “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you.” Notice his faith. God has said, “Take your son and sacrifice him.” Abraham says, “Me and my son are going to make an offering, and both of us are coming back.” Isaac said, “My father, … behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide for Himself a lamb for the burnt offering my son.” And God did. As Abraham prepared to offer his son, the Lord sent His angel to stop the procedure, and there was a ram – a male lamb – with his horns entangled in the thorny thicket. God had provided His lamb, and Isaac was saved.

As the Israelites prepared to leave Egypt, they were told that each household must sacrifice a lamb and the blood of the lamb must be spread above the doorways of their homes. God was going to have the firstborn of every household in Egypt killed that night, but where a lamb had been slain and its blood applied, that lamb’s death became a substitute to save all within the household. When the law came to Israel, it came with ordinances and instructions for sacrifices of various kinds. There were certain offerings which were made with bulls and oxen. Certain others were made with goats. The poor were permitted to bring birds. But it was the lamb that was offered day in and day out as a perpetual sacrifice to God on behalf of the people of Israel. One every morning, one every night, who knows how many lambs had been slaughtered and how much blood had been spilt in these daily offerings? I will tell you who knows: God knows! Because every single one of those lambs and every single drop of that blood was pointing the faithful people of God forward to a coming day when once again, God would “provide for Himself a lamb for the offering.” And when He was offered, there would be no more need for lambs and rams, and bulls and goats. Isaiah was given a word from God that he records in the 53^rd chapter of his book which speaks of a Servant of the Lord coming who would bear our griefs, carry our sorrows, be pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, chastised for our well being, and scourged for our healing. Isaiah said, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” And he says that this Servant will be like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and that the Lord would crush His own Servant as a guilt offering for humanity. Fast forward 700 years. Here stands John the Baptist out in the wilderness. He sees Jesus coming toward him, and he says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

Jesus came on a mission of redemption. He is that Lamb that the Lord has provided to be the sacrificial offering for our sins. He bore our sin to the cross and died in our place. He became our substitute, bearing the wrath that our sins deserve under the righteous judgment of God. Peter said that we were not redeemed from our futile way of living by perishable things like silver and gold, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18-19). The writer of Hebrews says, “Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He (Jesus), having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:11-12). Jesus came to die, and to die for our sin, as a Lamb of God, in order to take our sin away forever. And having done that on the cross, conquering sin and death forever through His glorious resurrection, His redemptive mission was completed. Unlike those priests of old whose work was never done, and so they stood every day to offer one lamb after another, this Lamb made one perfect offering, finished His redemptive work, and sat down on His eternal throne at the right hand of the Father.

He takes away the sin of the world. Let there be no question as to the sufficiency of His atoning work. His death was sufficient to save the entire human race. But the entire human race is not saved. In fact, Jesus Himself will say quite plainly that in the end there will be far more who are lost forever than who are saved. He will say in Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” The difference between those many who are lost in destruction and those few who find eternal life is found in the other aspect of His redemptive mission that John proclaims. Those who find life are those who have been made new in Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit.

John says that Jesus, whose life and ministry was characterized throughout by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit. God had imparted special revelation to John, indicating that the one on whom he saw the Spirit descend and remain upon was the Messiah. And when John had baptized Jesus, he saw this take place as the Spirit descended in the form of the dove. It was not as if Jesus did not have the Holy Spirit upon Him prior to that moment. For eternity, He had been in constant uninterrupted fellowship with the Father and the Spirit. The demonstration of the dove, accompanied by the voice from heaven by which the Father declared, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” was not for Jesus’ sake. It was for John’s sake. John said, “I did not recognize him.” That’s an odd thing for John to say. He and Jesus were cousins. They knew each other. And all the time growing up, John never knew that Jesus was the Messiah. He knew there was something unusual about Him. When Jesus came to be baptized, John was reluctant to do so. John’s baptism was one of repentance for sin, and as far as he was aware, Jesus had no sin of which to repent. But at the persistence of Jesus, John relented and baptized Jesus, and when he did, he saw the sign that God had promised him. He saw that this was the One who was endowed with the Spirit. This was the anointed one of God, the Messiah, the Christ. And because of His unique endowment of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is able to impart the Spirit on whosoever He chooses.

Jesus said to His followers, “It is to your advantage that I go away (referring to His death); for if I do not go away, the Helper (the Holy Spirit) will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you” (John 16:7). And on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit came. The church was baptized in Him, as each one received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And since that day, every person who has turned by faith to the Lamb of God for salvation has been baptized in the Holy Spirit as He promised. The Holy Spirit convicts us, leading us to repentance. He grants us faith to believe upon Christ. He regenerates us, giving us new life. He indwells us as the seal of our redemption. He baptizes us into the body of Christ, the true church of God, and He empowers us to live in righteous victory. There are some who say that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is something that happens after salvation, and is evidenced by spectacular gifts and signs, particularly that of speaking in tongues. However, without going into a prolonged discussion on the issue of tongue-speaking, it is sufficient to point to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 12:13, where He says, “by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, … and were all made to drink of one Spirit.” Then he goes on to say 1 Cor 12:30, “All do not speak in tongues, do they?” So, according to Paul, all Christians are baptized in the Holy Spirit, as Jesus promised, even though all do not have the same gifts of the Spirit. According to the Scriptures, there is no salvation apart from the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and His presence is the certainty of our redemption. 

Christ came on a redemptive mission. That redemption was accomplished in the atoning death of the sacrificial Lamb of God. And that redemption is applied to us through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, by which we are reconciled to God through faith in Jesus. John testified to Him, speaking of His magnificent divine nature and His redemptive mission. We give the same testimony of Him. He is the preeminent and eternal Son of God, who became flesh to become the Lamb of God who would take away our sin and impart to us the Holy Spirit. How glorious is this good news? We proclaim it afresh to you today. If you have never trusted in Christ as your Lord and Savior, then we bid you to behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He bore yours sins on His cross, that through His death, He might give you life through His Spirit. Would you receive Him today? And if you have, then would be His witness and testify to Him as John did, pointing to Him by your words and deeds so that all will know Him as the exalted and eternal Son of God, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit?

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[1] Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York: Macmillan, 1914),  2:373.