The Sufficiency, Efficiency, and Intent of the Atonement

As I've been teaching about the Reformation in Church History this semester, I have tried to be careful to explain the difference between Calvin, Calvinism, and the TULIP (often spoken of as the "five points of Calvinism"). John Calvin (1509-1535) was a man -- by all measures, a man whom God used greatly for His glory. I always come away from reading Calvin feeling blessed by the experience, and so I read him often. Calvinism is the systematization of Calvin's teachings. I suppose one could say that Calvinism originated with Calvin, but it didn't attain full and final form with him. His followers and successors contributed to what we call Calvinism today. This is why I feel like, unless we can point to a page number in the Institutes of Christian Religion, we ought to speak of Reformed Theology rather than Calvinism. I will never forget when I got my first copy of the Institutes a number of years ago. I searched the Table of Contents and the Index to find the TULIP explained and defended. I expected that Calvin would have a section on each petal of the TULIP wherein he would write some brilliant explanation of the point. But guess what? It wasn't there. The TULIP doesn't come from Calvin (though I suppose one could find quotes from the Institutes to defend each petal of the TULIP) or from the city of Geneva. The TULIP comes, fittingly, from Holland. Well, sort of, anyway. In response to the Five Articles of Remonstrance published in 1610 by the followers of Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), Dutch Calvinists convened at the Synod of Dort (1618-1619) to articulate the essentials of their faith. The conclusions of this meeting were published in The Canons of Dort. The Canons of Dort articulate what is known as "Dortian Calvinism." This became the most popular expression of what is called Calvinism. But the TULIP acrostic comes much later. From researching several sources, the earliest use of the acrostic seems to have been in a 1905 lecture to the Presbyterian Union by Cleland Boyd Mcafee. From that time, it was popularized by well-known writers, such as Lorraine Boettner, A. W. Pink, and more recently R. C. Sproul and John Piper. For the benefit of readers who may not be aware, the letters stand for: 

T - Total Depravity

U - Unconditional Election

L - Limited Atonement

I - Irresistible Grace

P - Perseverance of the Saints

Now, when it comes to the TULIP, by far the most controversial element of it is the "L", which stands for "Limited Atonement." Thus we find many people who say that they are "Four-Point Calvinists" because they reject Limited Atonement. Others say that they can hold to Limited Atonement only if it can be defined in a specific way, namely that the atonement is limited only in its efficiency (it will only save the elect), not in its sufficiency (it is unlimited in its power to save anyone who would repent and believe on Christ). I myself have made this claim numerous times. However, upon researching this line of thinking, one finds that it is actually closer to what the Arminians posited in the Five Articles of Remonstrance. 

In Article Two, the Arminians said: 

That agreeably thereunto, Jesus Christ the Savior of the world, died for all men and for every man, so that he has obtained for them all, by his death on the cross, redemption and the forgiveness of sins; yet that no one actually enjoys this forgiveness of sins except the believer, according to the word of the Gospel of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And in the First Epistle of John 2:2: “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”

This seems to indicate that the dichotomy between "sufficiency" and "efficiency" of the Atonement is an Arminian position. Now, if it is true, then it doesn't matter whether or not it fits into one system or the other. And if it is not true, then we should not hold to it, even though our system may require it. And this is where we run into danger by isolating one proposition of the Arminian system or one petal of the TULIP from the rest. In my class lecture, I likened the petals of the Tulip and the points of Arminianism to a Jenga tower. In the game Jenga, the goal is to remove a block from the tower without toppling the whole thing. It seems that the systems of Arminians and Calvinists require all of the "blocks" to hold up each other. One cannot say, "I am a Calvinist, but I reject limited atonement," and neither can one say, "I am an Arminian, but I reject unlimited atonement." Each of these positions are critical to keep the respective "tower" from collapsing. 

The Arminian system is designed to demonstrate that salvation is a "synergistic" process that combines the work of God with the "act" of the human being to believe upon Christ. The Calvinist system, on the other hand, is a "monergistic" system that sees all the work being done by God Himself, and the belief of the human being as a result or effect of what God has done. Thus, in the Arminian system, unlimited atonement means that sins have been atoned for all people, and those who choose to believe upon Christ will receive the benefits of the atonement. The Calvinist system emphasizes that no one is able to make that choice (because of total depravity) until and unless God has unconditionally elected them, covered them in His atonement, drawn them by His irresistible grace. The Arminian system, regardless of how palatable it sounds, presents "in total," a salvation that is not secure for anyone. As Packer describes the Arminian position, "Christ's death did not ensure the salvation of anyone, for it did not secure the gift of faith to anyone (there is no such gift); what it did was rather to create a possibility of salvation for everyone if they believe" (quoted in R. C. Sproul, Grace Unknown, p164). 

Sproul writes, "Reformed theologians do not question that the value of Christ's atonement is sufficient to cover the sins of the whole fallen race. The value of His sacrifice is sufficient to cover the sins of the whole fallen race. The value of His sacrifice is unlimited. ... When we speak of the sufficiency of the atonement, however, we must ask the question, Is it a sufficient satisfaction of divine justice? If it is sufficient to satisfy the deamnds of God's justice, then no one needs to worry about future punishment. ... [I]f Christ really, objectively satisfied the demands of God's justice for everyone, then everyone will be saved. ... If faith is necessary to the atonement, then Christ's work was indeed a mere potentiality. In itself it saves no one. It merely makes salvation possible. Theoretically, we must ask the obvious question, What would have happened to the work of Christ if nobody believed in it? ... In this case Christ would have died in vain. He would have been the potential Savior of all but an actual Savior of none" (Sproul, Grace Unknown, pp165-167). 

Thus, it seems that we are asking the wrong questions and splitting the wrong hairs in a discussion about sufficiency and efficiency. Sproul says, "The ultimate question has to do not so much with the efficiency of the atonement, but with its design" (p168). So, it seems best to remove the question of sufficiency from the discussion altogether, for it is a discussion of mere hypothetical potentials. When we speak of the atonement, what is at issue is its effect. Only the elect will be saved by the atonement of Christ. In this case, we must conclude that it was only designed to redeem the elect. Otherwise, we end up with either an incomplete atonement (because it needs belief to make it "work", and since so many don't believe, it is a rather pitiful attempt at redemption); or else (worse?), a universalism that has all humanity redeemed ultimately whether they want to be or not. Ironically, this ends up being more "deterministic" than robust Calvinism. 

Returning then to the question of whether or not it is fitting for a Calvinist to speak of a sufficiency/efficiency dichotomy, or whether tinkering with the phrases makes one a "four-point Calvinist" or a "one-point Arminian," we can be encouraged by the language of the Canons of Dort. Under the Second Main Point of Doctrine, Article 3, the Dortian Calvinists wrote, "The death of the Son of God is the only and most perfect sacrifice for the satisfaction of sin, and is of infinite worth and value, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world." Article 8 says further, "For this was the sovereign counsel and most gracious will and purpose of God the Father that the quickening and saving efficacy of the most precious death of His Son should extend to all the elect, for bestowing upon them alone the gift of justifying faith, thereby to bring them infallibly to salvation...." 

Contrary to those who say that such a system hinders the spread of the Gospel, it is instructive to read Article 5 under the same Second Main Point of Doctrine in the Dortian canons: "Moreover, the promise of the Gospel is that whosoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have eternal life. This promise, together the the command to repent and believe, ought to be declared and published to all nations, and to all persons promiscuously and without distinction, to whom God out of His good pleasure sends the gospel." 

My point here is to, at a far greater length than I originally intended, suggest that it is perfectly in keeping with a monergistic reformed system of faith to say that Christ's atonement is sufficient for all and efficient only for the elect. Even though this is the language of Arminians, we see in the Canons of Dort that it is also the language of Calvinists. But behind the language is the reality that for Arminians, the atonement does not actually secure atonement for anyone; it merely makes it possible. For Calvinists, there is greater confidence that the atonement actually succeeded in securing the redemption of the elect. Thus, the matter at stake is not sufficiency or efficiency, but design or intent. Therefore, a Reformed (or Calvinist) Christian can say that they believe in an atonement which was sufficient for all, yet designed for the elect, and fully efficient for them. 

As I have said many times, we should never seek to be identified with a system, but with the Savior. By most of my friends, I am called a Calvinist. By a good number of Calvinists, I am called some kind of tertium quid ("a third thing", neither Arminian or Calvinist). But my aim is not to earn any labels. My aim is to follow Christ and His Word, and in so doing, I am ever more comfortable with all five-points of the TULIP, given that they are fully explained and not taken as self-sufficient phrases. 

It is Finished (John 19:30)

Audio 

Today is commemorated as Palm Sunday in churches around the world, the day of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It was the beginning of His final week that would end in His death on the cross, and ironically the only day of His earthly life, with the possible exception of the day of His birth, when He received the worship He was due. But as we know, it did not take long for the tide of public opinion to shift against Him during what we call Passion Week, the week of His suffering, betrayal, rejection, and crucifixion. Over the last several weeks, we have been studying the seven statements that Jesus spoke from the cross, and today we come to the penultimate word. In English, we read three words, “It is finished.” If we were to read this in the Greek New Testament, we would find it is only one word: Tetelestai. But this single word of the Greek language is so profound that the great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon said it “would need all the other words that were ever spoken, or ever can be spoken, to explain this one word. It is altogether immeasurable. It is high; I cannot attain to it. It is deep; I cannot fathom it.”[1] Theologically, this word has so many ramifications for us that it would require hours, if not days or weeks, to fully treat it. So, for time sake, we must limit what we say about it here and now. And I have chosen to limit it by the bounds of this text and its context. The words of John 19:30, and the surrounding context speak of the finishing or completion of two particular aspects of the person and work of Christ. It speaks of the fulfillment of all the prophecies about Him, and it speaks of the completion of His mission to save the world from sin.

I. The prophecies have been fulfilled.

Last Sunday, we dealt with the saying of Jesus in John 19:28, “I am thirsty.” And we discussed at some length the necessity of this saying in order to fulfill prophecy. John said in verse 28, “Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill Scripture, said, ‘I am thirsty.’” One of the reasons for Him saying that word (it is a single word in Greek) was to fulfill Scriptures that stated that the suffering Messiah would thirst in His dying, and that He would be offered vinegar to drink. Every other promise that had ever been made by God’s prophets about the coming of the Messiah, His earthly life, His ministry, and His suffering, had taken place. Of course there were more prophecies that had not been fulfilled yet, and those would have to follow His death. But of those prophecies concerning how He would come, who He would be, what He would do, and how He would die, had all been fulfilled. Now that He has announced His thirst and been offered the sour wine-vinegar to drink, He can say at last, “It is finished.” Spurgeon said, “There is not a single jewel of promise, from that first emerald which fell on the threshold of Eden, to that last sapphire of Malachi which was not set in the breastplate of the true High Priest.”[2]

The Messiah had been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, as the Seed of woman (Gen 3:15); born of a virgin (Isa 7:14); born in Bethlehem (Mic 5:2); a descendant of Abraham (Gen 12:3, et al.), of Judah (Gen 49:10), and of David (2 Sam 7:12-19). Of course all of these are uniquely true of Jesus. In addition to these and many other aspects of His birth, there were explicit prophecies concerning His ministry on the earth. When Jesus entered the synagogue of Nazareth at the beginning of His public ministry, He was handed the scroll of Isaiah from which to read, and the words for the day were the words of Isaiah 61 – “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord." And then Jesus closed the book, and sat down, and said to the congregation, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Those words describe perfectly the earthly life and ministry of the Lord Jesus. He did preach the Gospel to the poor. He did proclaim liberty to those who are captive in sin. He did grant sight to the blind. And He did many other things that the Old Testament had announced in advance that He would do. When John the Baptist was in prison awaiting his execution at the hands of Herod Antipas, he sent word to Jesus: “Are You the Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?” And the word Jesus sent back to John was this: “Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, and the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them” (Matt 11:2-5). In other words, “I am doing everything that the prophets said the Messiah would do.

And of course the prophets also spoke of His suffering and death. In our study of the seven sayings of Jesus on the cross, we have mentioned how there were prophetic images in David’s Messianic Psalms, particularly Psalm 22 and Psalm 69, which spoke of His manner of death. But nowhere will you find a more exact description of the suffering of the God’s Anointed Servant than in Isaiah 53.

He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. 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. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the Lord was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering … Isaiah 53:3-10 (NASB)

And now each of the multitude of prophecies has been finished, fulfilled, and completed, and they are completed in Jesus Christ and in Him alone. Spurgeon notes, “Brothers and Sisters, what a wonderful thing it is, that a mass of promises, and prophecies, and types, apparently so heterogeneous, should all be accomplished in one Person!”[3] Indeed, if we were to read all of the prophetic descriptions of the Messiah apart from knowing Christ we might consider them to be contradictory and impossible to find fulfillment in a single person. In the words of Spurgeon, “He must be a Prophet like unto Moses, and yet a champion like Joshua; he must be an Aaron and a Melchizedek; he must be both David and Solomon, Noah and Jonah, Judah and Joseph. No, He must not only be the lamb that was slain, and the scapegoat that was not slain, the turtledove that was dipped in blood, and the priest who slew the bird, but He must be the Altar, the Tabernacle, the Mercy Seat, and the Showbread!” Where can all of these promises, pictures, and prophetic words and images come to pass in one person? Only in Jesus. Spurgeon says, “Take away Christ for one moment, and I will give the Old Testament to any wise man living, and say to him, ‘Take this. This is a problem; go home and construct in your imagination an ideal character who shall exactly fit all that which is herein foreshadowed.’” [4] If Christ had not come to fulfill all of these things, then they could not have been filled in any other individual. And thus, as He died, the Lord Jesus is able to examine the catalog of biblical prophecies, including and up to His thirst, the drink He would be offered, and now His impending death, and say with confidence about the entire array, “It is finished!”

These words, or the singular Greek word Tetelestai, indicate that the prophecies are all fulfilled. Now, a second truth is expressed in these words as well, which is somewhat related and yet distinct from the first. And that is …

II. The mission has been accomplished.

If you are like me, I imagine that you often start more things than you finish. My library is filled with books I never finished reading. Around my house and my office are the remnants of projects that I started and never got around to finishing. Some time ago, a friend of mine taught me a valuable lesson about life. He is a triathlete and marathon runner. He told me that he had finished the Marine Marathon in DC, and I asked him naively, “What place did you come in?” I can’t remember exactly, but he said something like 347^th place or something. I said something dumb like, “Oh, well, maybe you’ll get ‘em next time.” He said, “No, you don’t understand. Most people don’t run marathons to win. They run to finish the race.” He didn’t view his 347^th place finish as a loss. It was a victory because he finished. The more I thought about that, the more I thought that life is a lot like that. What matters is not how fast we run the race, but whether or not we finish what we set out to do. When Jesus died, He could say in a unique sense that no one else ever could, “It is finished.” He had completed what He came to do.

The mission of Jesus was announced by the prophets in advance, and it was declared to Joseph in Matthew 1:21 before His birth: “you shall call His name Jesus (which means “Yahweh, or Jehovah, is salvation”), for He will save His people from their sins.” He came to save His people from sin. And how would He do that? Jesus said of His own mission, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45; Matt 20:28). His mission was to serve humanity by giving up His life as a ransom to save us from our sins.

We understand this word “ransom,” and usually associate it with a payment that is made for the release of hostage or someone who has been abducted. We envision movies where someone glues letters clipped from a magazine or newspaper together to make a ransom note, and then someone shows up with a briefcase full of money in exchange for the release of the victim. Well, in the case of our predicament and Jesus’ ransom, the situation is somewhat different. We have not been abducted or kidnapped. We have willingly entered a state of slavery – slavery to sin. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, chose to disobey God, and by that act, humanity was taken captive in the slavery of sin. Each of us is born in that state by virtue of their sin, but each of us makes our own sinful choices as well. So we are sinners from birth by nature, and we demonstrate that through our own sinful choices and actions. Our predicament is utterly helpless and hopeless apart from the delivery of a ransom. But Jesus did not come to earth from heaven with a briefcase full of unmarked bills. He came into the world with all that He would need to pay the ransom – a human body. The ransom would be paid with His blood as He becomes our substitute and a sacrifice for sin on the cross. At the cross, He bore the sins of humanity beneath the full measure of God’s wrath. As He carried our sins, the fellowship of God the Father and God the Son for the first time in eternity, prompting Jesus to cry out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” But now, with the price having been paid, the sacrificial substitution offered, Jesus can say, “It is finished.”

For centuries, on the altar before the Tabernacle and the Temple, countless animals bled and died as sacrifices for sin. But the work of the priest was never done. These animals did not pay the price. They were like purchases made on credit. They promised that payment would be made, but the payment had not been delivered. And so one after another, at times by the dozen, by the hundreds, or by the thousands, more and more blood flowed from lambs and bulls and goats. But the price had not yet been paid. It is interesting that when the Lord gave Moses the instructions for building the Tabernacle, He specified how every furnishing was to be constructed. But there was one piece of furniture noticeably missing. There was to be no chair, because the work of the priest was never done. There was no time for sitting and resting, for there was always more to be done, more blood to be shed. And so 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 (Christ), having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God” (Heb 10:11-12). His mission of redemption was finished.

Archaeologists have discovered ancient papyri in the Near East which were receipts for taxes that had been paid. And across those papyrus pages are written the single Greek word, Tetelestai. It means “paid in full.” If you were to write out all of your sins, and the penalty that they deserve in the justice of God, and staple that list together with that of every human being who has ever lived or ever will, you would find that Jesus has written in His blood across every page, Tetelestai, “Paid in full!” It is finished. Our sin debt is paid for by His blood in His substitutionary death on the cross. Paul says in Colossians 2:14 that Jesus has “canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” The record of sin and condemnation was nailed to the cross as Christ became sin for us and received our wrath and paid our debt. It is finished and it is paid in full.

This means that nothing more is required. How will you be saved? By looking to Christ as your sin-bearer and seeing the debt of your offenses before God as paid in full in Him. What more then can you add? Can you add your own works to this? Can you add participation in some ritual, or observance of some holy day, or financial contribution to any religious institution to this? No, because the debt is fully paid. There are some things that can be improved by addition. You can improve your paycheck by adding an extra digit. But there are other things that addition only destroys. Imagine if you were to add a “g” to the word “love”? Would it make it better? Would you rather have “love” or a “glove”?[5] I remember my high school science teacher mixing chemicals in the lab one day. He mixed the liquid from one bottle with another liquid from another, and nothing happened. But then he dropped just a few flakes of another chemical into the beaker, and a small explosion occurred. That is what happens when we try to add anything to the completed work of Christ. It doesn’t enhance our salvation, it destroys it. Spurgeon said, “Will you pin your rags to the fine linen of Christ’s righteousness? Why will you add your counterfeit farthing to the costly ransom which Christ has paid into the treasure-house of God?”[6] You have nothing to contribute; all you can do is receive. The price has been paid by grace, in blood, and in full for you.

A year or so ago, I had a conversation with a church-going man who professed to be a Christian. The man said to me concerning someone who had recently died, “I know she is in heaven because she was a good person.” I said, “Do you think that is what it takes to get to heaven?” He said, “Sure!” I asked him, “Suppose you were to stand before God and he were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into heaven?’” He said, “Because I am a good person, and I’ve done some good things,” and so on he went. I said, “Have you ever put your faith in Jesus as your Lord and Savior?” He said, “Oh yes, that too.” I said, “No, not ‘that too,’ but ‘that only!’” He protested and continued to debate me, until I finally said, “Listen, who are you trusting in to get you into heaven? Jesus alone, or your own goodness.” He said, “My own goodness.” I said to him, “Sir, then I must tell you on the basis of your own words that you are not a Christian, for a Christian is one who trusts in Christ alone to save them.” I am sad to say that the man has never spoken to me since. But I spoke to Him as truthfully and lovingly as I could. And I would say the same thing to any one of you today. Our only hope is to be found in Christ alone, and we can add nothing to the salvation that He offers us freely by His grace. If we try to add to it, what we are saying is that Jesus was not telling the truth when He said, “It is finished.” Is it or isn’t it? If it is, then you need nothing but Christ. If it isn’t, then we have no hope. It is as simple as that.

As I preach this sermon today, I have two aims. One is to speak to the heart of the one who is not a Christian, who would acknowledge that he or she has never placed faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. To you, I would say that you can look to the cross and find all of your sins forgiven because Jesus has paid the full debt and finished the work of redemption. And it is my most earnest prayer and desire that you would do so even this day. But I also desire to speak to the one who, like that man I just described, thinks that Christianity is about what you do. If you describe your Christianity as something that you have done, then that is not Christianity. The Good News of the Christian Faith is that you cannot do anything to make yourself right with God. It has all been done for you by Jesus. All there is for you to do is receive Him, receive His gift, receive His shed blood as the payment for your sins and the purchase of your redemption. He has paid it in full. I heard it said a long time ago when I was just a young Christian, “Christianity is not spelled D-O, but D-O-N-E.” All that is required to reconcile you to God and rescue you from sin has been done by Christ, and when it was completed, He said with finality and full confidence, “It is finished!” My prayer is that you will come to rest and abide in the reality of the finished work of Christ.

---

[1] Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “Christ’s Dying Word for His Church,” in Sermons on the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1966), 170.

[2] Spurgeon, “It is Finished.” Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 421, December 1, 1861, p. 2. Available online: http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols7-9/chs421.pdf. Accessed March 28, 2012.

[3] Spurgeon, “Finished,” p. 2.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Philip Ryken, “Mission Accomplished,” in James Montgomery Boice and Philip Ryken, The Heart of the Cross (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1999), 57-58.

[6] Spurgeon, “Finished,” p. 6. 

The Christian's Holy Days

This is my April newsletter article for Immanuel's Messenger:

For Christians, the two "high holy days" on our calendars each year are Christmas and Easter. While critics of the Christian faith often point out that the observance of these occasions are "late developments" and that they seem to be Christianized observances of pagan holidays, that is not entirely true. While the date of Christmas was not established immediately in Christian history, there does seem to be an early practice of commemorating the fact that Jesus is the eternal Son of God who became flesh. Easter, though it was not called this by the earliest Christians, on the other hand was instituted almost immediately in the early church. The early church, however, did not always agree on a specific day each year that the Resurrection of Jesus would be celebrated. Rather, the Resurrection of Jesus was celebrated every week. That is why Christian worship occurred on Sunday, "the first day" of the week. Every time Christians gathered together for corporate worship on the Lord's Day, it was a commemoration that this was the day of the week on which Christ conquered death. Though Christians in the East and West observed different annual days for Christmas and Easter, both were celebrated by Christians around the world from very early on. This was a big change for Christians, especially those coming from Jewish backgrounds and some pagan backgrounds in which many feasts, festivals, and holy days were commemorated throughout the year. The Jewish people celebrated seven biblical holy days, and two more were added later, giving Israel a calendar of nine annual religious festivals. It is interesting, however, that the prophet Ezekiel speaks of a coming day when the people of God would celebrate not nine nor seven festivals, but only two. In Ezekiel 45, the prophet speaks of a reconstituted Israel, a reassembled people of God, coming together to commemorate an observance in the "first month," and another in the "seventh month." The festival of the first month is Passover, which corresponds to the Christian observance of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The festival of the seventh month is the Feast of Tabernacles, which corresponds prophetically to the incarnation of Christ, when the eternal and divine Word of God became flesh and "tabernacled" among us (John 1:1, 14). Though the annual observance of the Feast of Tabernacles occurs in the Fall, some two or three months prior to the Christian observance of Christmas, it may well be that the birth of Jesus actually coincided with the Feast of Tabernacles. The actual dating of Christmas is irrelevant to the point that the prophetic significance of the Feast of Tabernacles is fulfilled in the incarnation of Christ. Thus, in our observance of these two high holy days, Christmas and Easter, we are seeing the fulfillment of that far off day envisioned by the prophet Ezekiel. It reminds us that the Church of Jesus Christ is the reconstituted and reassembled people of God, not an ethnic group or a national entity, but a body of Jews and Gentiles from all nations, gathered under the Fatherhood of God through faith in Jesus Christ. In Christmas, or Tabernacles, we commemorate the beginning of His earthly life and ministry of redeeming His people from the curse of sin. In Easter, Passover, or Resurrection Day, we commemorate the climax of His earthly life and ministry and the completion of that redemption through the atonement for sins that was accomplished in His cross and empty tomb. These two events define the life and work of Jesus, the virgin-born Son of God who came to seek and save that which is lost, and who came not to be served but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many. Therefore, these two events also define who we are as the people of God. We are His children, adopted by faith in the one who came for us, who lived for us, who died for us, and who is risen from the dead for us. We commemorate this reality every year when we worship the incarnate Christ at Christmas and the risen Christ at Easter. In another sense, we celebrate these truths of who He is and who we are in Him every Sunday as we gather together for worship, and every day as we live out the reality of our faith. So, do Christians only have two holy days? In one sense, yes; and they are Christmas and Easter. But in another very real sense, we have 365 (and one-fourth!) holy days every year to celebrate that God has come to us in the person of Christ to rescue us from sin and reconcile us to Himself. I pray that this season of worship will be a meaningful time of reflection and meditation on the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for you as we exalt our Death-proof King! Remember, because He has risen from death to everlasting life, so we who belong to Him shall as well (1 Corinthians 15:20-23). 

I Am Thirsty (John 19:28-29)

Audio

As we have looked at the Sayings of Christ on the Cross, we have seen the range of emotions and attributes of Jesus on display. In the first saying, when He prayed for His Father to forgive His murderers, we saw His infinite mercy. In the second, when He promised paradise to the repentant criminal, we saw His abundant grace. In the third, when He entrusted the care of His mother to the Apostle John, we saw His tender compassion. In the fourth saying, after the sky was darkened and as He bore the sins of humanity under the flood of God’s judgment, He cried out “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” In that expression, we see His intense agony. Now we come to the fifth saying. He says simply, “I am thirsty.” These words seem rather pedestrian and unimportant to us perhaps. What could be significant about the fact that dying Savior is thirsty? The words He has spoken to this point are words that no one else could utter under those circumstances. Surely every person who died upon the cruel crosses of Rome experienced thirst as their lifeblood drained from their wounds. We may be tempted to think that this expression is relatively unimportant. But be sure of this, the words are of tremendous importance. If for no other reason, they are important because it is Jesus who spoke them, and no word that ever crossed His holy lips is unimportant. This statement is also important because the Holy Spirit inspired the inclusion of this statement in the Word of God. For some reason, God the Holy Spirit deemed it necessary for all generations to know that the Lord Jesus declared that He thirsted upon the cross. His thirst is significant for us. But why? What importance or significance can be found in these words? I don’t think we can exhaustively answer the question in the time that we have here, but we can at least begin to make an attempt at an answer. And in so doing, I want to point out four aspects of His thirst on the cross that are of the utmost importance for the world to know.

I. The Human Thirst of Jesus

Recently, I took my family down to Charlotte to visit the amazing exhibit of mummies from around the world that is temporarily on display at Discovery Place. They have some really amazing specimens in the exhibit, and it fascinating on so many levels. But one thing that really impressed me was a short video that is shown prior to entering the exhibit. In that video, the visitors are reminded that the mummies they are about to see are real people who lived real lives and died real deaths, and as such, they deserve dignity and respect. It would be easy to view them as merely historical artifacts or even to some degree objects of ancient art, and forget that they were real human beings. We can sometimes run into a similar dilemma regarding the humanity of Jesus.

Ever since the first century, people have customarily made three errors regarding Jesus. Some have considered Jesus to be fully God, and not at all human. This was the error of some Gnostics groups like the Docetics, for example, who believed that if you were to strike Jesus, your fist would pass right through Him, and that He didn’t leave footprints in the sand when He walked. In their thinking, if Jesus was fully God, He would have tarnished His deity by uniting it to human flesh. Others have made the opposite error, considering Jesus to be fully human, and not divine at all. I would suspect that this has been the most common misunderstand about Jesus throughout history. Certainly there are many people you know, and possibly some here today, who would consider Jesus to be a good man, maybe even the greatest man, who ever lived—but merely a man, and nothing more. The third error that people have made about Jesus is to see Him as something of a half-and-half being, a demigod perhaps, greater than a man, but not quite God. In the days of Constantine in the Fourth Century, the entire Roman Empire was in upheaval because of the teachings of a man named Arius who taught that Jesus had a nature that was greater than humanity, but not quite fully divine. Some have characterized his teaching by saying that Arius believed that at the birth of Jesus, that which was not God became that which was not man.

Well, if all of these are incorrect, what is the correct view of Jesus? The only proper way to understand who Jesus is would be to recognize Him as fully man AND fully God. He is not half-and-half, but all-and-all. In that sense, He is truly unique and nothing in the universe can ever compare to Him. We see His full deity in His virgin birth, His miracles, His limitless knowledge, and most vividly in His resurrection from the dead. Certainly, it is wrong to miss the fact that He is fully divine. But we must be careful to remember that Jesus was completely human in addition to being fully God, the two natures perfectly conjoined in one Being. We see His humanity on display as He grows from infancy to adulthood, and matures physically and grows in obedience to His earthly parents. We see Jesus being tired and sleeping; we see Him hungry; we see Him weeping. Have you ever considered the thought that Jesus had all the same bodily functions as you do? And on the cross, He demonstrated several very human experiences. He hurt. He suffered. He bled. He died. But before He died, He tells us that He thirsted as well. He was fully God, yes, but never forget, also fully human. And thank God He was. We need Him to be fully human.

If Jesus is going to redeem humanity from sin, He has to be human to make the sacrifice.  If He is going to bear our sins, He has to identify completely with us. If He is going to be our eternal High Priest, then He must be one who can sympathize completely with our human experience. And Hebrews 4:15 assures us that “we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” If He were not fully human, it would make no difference that He was tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. If He were only God without a human nature, those temptations would have no effect upon Him, and His victory over them would not be significant. But because He was fully human, He could be our righteous and sinless substitute, because as a man, He fulfilled every command of God’s Law and withstood every temptation that humans can experience. Thus, He is able to be our sin bearer and to die as our substitute because, in addition to being fully God, He is fully human. The 21^st Question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “Who is the redeemer of God’s elect?” And the answer is, “The only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, forever.” The Apostle Paul put it this way: “There is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5).

It would be easy for you to think that God cannot relate to your hardships in life. But that would be a mistake. Remember that Jesus, in the flesh as a human being, was tempted in all things as we are. Have you been betrayed? So has He. Have you been mistreated? So has He. Have you known sorrow? So has He. Have you ever been thirsty? Yes, so has He! And because we have such a great high priest who can sympathize with our every human experience, Hebrews 4:16 tells us that we can “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” We must never fail to worship Christ as our God, our fully divine Lord and King. But in so doing, we will be greatly helped in our daily Christian lives to remember that He was fully human also. He lived this life that we live. And as if to remind us never to forget, He says as He dies, “I am thirsty.” It is a very human experience—a very human thirst.

II. The Prophetic Thirst of Jesus

“I thirst.” It helps us understand and remember that Jesus was fully human in addition to being fully divine. That is the effect of the statement. But the effect of a thing is often different from the purpose of it. Did Jesus say these words for the purpose of telling us that He possessed a human nature? How could we ever know why He said this? Well, it would help if the Bible told us. And what do you know? It does! Look at verse 28, and let’s read it together slowly.

• “After this” – After what? What precedes this in John’s Gospel is the third saying, when Jesus entrusted Mary into the care of John. But we know from comparing the accounts of the four Gospels that darkness had covered the land and from the depths of that darkness, Jesus had cried out “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” as He bore in His body and soul the wrath that the sins of the whole human race deserved. So, it was after this.
• “Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished” – That is, He knew that the ransom had been paid, the debt had been settled, the penalty of sin had been satisfied and that death was rapidly approaching.
• “To fulfill Scripture, [He] said, “I am thirsty.” – Ah! So here is the reason then plainly stated! Why did Jesus say, “I am thirsty?” He said it to fulfill Scripture.

Every prophecy that had ever been written about the coming, the ministry, and the suffering of the Messiah had nearly been fulfilled. Just a small number of things remained, and they would be completed momentarily. But there was one specific aspect of the suffering of the Messiah that needed to be acknowledged before His death: His thirst. In Psalm 22, David spoke of His own suffering, but what he wrote exceeded his own experiences. He wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of a far off day in which the Messiah, the royal offspring of David, would suffer a torture that no one in David’s day ever experienced or witnessed. The 22^nd Psalm speaks of the forsaking by God that Jesus endured, and the betrayal and despising He experienced at the hands of men. It speaks of His bones being out of joint, the rupturing of His heart, the piercing of His hands and feet, the dividing of His garments. And in the midst of all this prophetic imagery of the cross, it says, “My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws” (Psalms 22:15). It was prophesied that the Messiah would thirst in His suffering.

Not only this, but in the 69^th Psalm, we read that the very drink that Jesus was offered was prophesied in Scripture as well. David is again writing of his own suffering as a foreshadowing of the suffering of the Messiah. And in the midst of the description we read in Psalm 69, we read, “They also gave me gall for my food and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (Psalms 69:21). And all of this was fulfilled with precision at the Cross. When He arrived at Golgotha, Matthew 27:34 says that they offered Jesus wine mixed with gall to drink. The word gall can have many meanings, but in this context it refers to a bitter-tasting poisonous herb that was mixed with sweet wine to make it palatable, and which was used as a narcotic, a rudimentary anesthesia, to kill pain. It was prophesied that Jesus would be given gall for His food. But it was not promised that He would take it. And He didn’t. Matthew and Mark both tell us that Jesus refused this concoction when it was offered to Him. He would not deaden the pain or soften the suffering of His ordeal, nor would He dull His senses or His faculties as He bore the sins of the world. But it was also promised that they would give Him vinegar to drink. And when He said, “I am thirsty,” there just happened to be a jar of “sour wine” standing nearby, and it was offered to Him and He received it. It was a cheap wine vinegar that soldiers often used to slake their thirst. It could not have been water. It could not have been freshly made wine. It had to be the wine-vinegar that the NASB translates “sour wine,” because that is what had been prophesied. Had they offered Him anything else, we would have an unfulfilled prophecy of the Messiah’s suffering.

The Scriptures are very specific about the Messiah: who He would be, how He would come, what He would do, how He would suffer. And every jot and tittle of those prophecies had to be fulfilled with precision, and they were. Jesus had to announce His thirst so that the world would know that He was thirsty, and so that someone would raise the vinegar to Him. Thus, His thirst, and even the beverage He was offered, are testimonies that confirm that He alone is the promised Messiah and redeemer of Israel and the world. He said what He said so that Scripture would be fulfilled.

III. The Enduring Thirst of Jesus

I want you to imagine, to pretend, for a moment with me that you were at the cross witnessing the death of Jesus. Pretend that you were there, and that you were standing nearby. Maybe you are one of the soldiers there. You are close enough to hear Jesus speak with labored breath these sayings, and you hear Him say with a groaning whisper, “I am thirsty.” Looking around you, you see the jar of wine vinegar. You see a sponge laying there, and a stalk of a hyssop bush that you can use to raise the vinegar-soaked sponge to His parched lips. Are you there in your mind? Now, let me ask you, do you do it? Do you offer Him drink to satisfy His thirst? Some of us perhaps are thinking through this carefully. If I do this, what will the consequences be for me? Will I be punished for doing this? Is it appropriate? Is it permissible? Others perhaps would give no thought to those concerns and fears. You would say immediately, “Of course! Here is a thirsty man! Here is drink! Why should I not give Him drink? Yes! I would do it! I would give the thirsty Jesus a drink!”

Even the youngest children know that it is fun and easy to play pretend. You can pretend to be anything or do anything you can imagine. And in some of our daydreams and fantasies we always do better than we do in real life. So, the next time you see Jesus thirsty, what are you going to do? Are you going to give Him a drink? Now you say, “Pastor, I think you’ve been drinking sour wine! When are we ever going to see Jesus thirsty?” But no, I’m not crazy – well, I might be, but not about this. You see, Jesus Himself said that we will find Him thirsty, and we will have the opportunity to satisfy His thirst.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us what it will be like in the day of judgment, and He says that the angels will gather the nations before Him. He will separate the entire human race as a shepherd separates sheep from goats. The sheep will be on His right and the goats on His left. And to the sheep He will say, “Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me” (Matt 25:34-36). And these who are His righteous sheep will say to Him, “Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?” And Jesus says that He will say to them, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me” (Matt 25:37-40). Now, who are these brothers of Jesus? Elsewhere, Jesus speaks of His brothers being His disciples (Matt 12:48-49; 28:10). This corresponds to the experience of the Saul on the road to Damascus, when the risen Jesus appeared to him and said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4). Saul was unaware that he had been persecuting Jesus; in his mind He was only persecuting Christians. But Jesus seems to indicate that how we treat His followers is in effect how we are treating Him. What we do to them, we do to Him. But there is another sense in which the Christian is compelled to act in a charitable way to any person, regardless of whether or not they are believers in Christ. That seems to be the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan. My neighbor, whom I am to love as myself, is anyone who has a need that I can meet. So, it seems that when Jesus says that whenever we have given drink to the least of His brethren, we’ve given it unto Him, that He intends to say that we should help anyone who has a need, giving particular attention to those of the family of faith. That, after all, is what the Apostle Paul says in Galatians 6:10 – “ So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith.” Perhaps he learned this lesson on the Damascus Road.

So, would you give Jesus a drink to satisfy His thirst? Know that around you today may be sitting a thirsty follower of Jesus, a brother or sister in the family of God who has a need that you have the means to meet. Will you serve them and meet that need? Jesus says that if you would, then what you are doing to them, you are actually doing for Him. And you are doing the same as you aid even the total stranger who may not even know Jesus. But your cup of cold water for the thirsty stranger may be the beginning of his or her journey to Jesus as they see Him in you through your act of lovingkindness. Jesus was thirsty on the cross, and His thirst endures. Will you offer Him drink?

IV. The Vicarious Thirst of Jesus

In the study of Christian doctrine, we sometimes encounter unfamiliar words that are difficult to understand. The recent trend has been to avoid those words in preaching and teaching so that we don’t confuse anyone. But I can’t help thinking that one of the purposes of preaching and teaching is to explain these words and concepts, rather than avoiding them. So, I don’t apologize for using hard words, but it is my goal to always explain them carefully when I use them. One of these hard words that we encounter, which is very important for us to understand, is the word vicarious. We use this word to refer to Jesus as our substitute. In His death on the cross, He became for us a vicarious atonement for our sins. He died in our place to atone for our sins so that they can be forgiven and we can be reconciled to God. So, we understand that a vicar is someone who stands in for another. Christ’s suffering and death is vicarious in that He is our substitute and our sacrifice as He takes our place under the judgment of God.

Now, there is a sense in which we can point to the thirst of Christ even as a vicarious act. He thirsted for us. His thirst reflects the physical reality that He was dying a slow death of dehydration as His blood and sweat poured from His body. And He did this for us. His thirst was not only physical but spiritual as well. As the Psalmist said, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You O God” (Psalm 42:1). Jesus, having been forsaken by His Father under the penalty of sin, thirsts for the presence of His Father once again. And He endured this for us. And in that forsaking, as He bore the penalty of our sin, it is as if He endured all of the fury and fire of hell on our behalf. We might recall that story that Jesus tells in Luke 16 of the rich man and Lazarus. Both men died, and Lazarus found himself transported to paradise with Abraham while the rich man went to Hades, the place of separation from God where the unrighteous await their eternal destination in hell. And Jesus says that the rich man could see across the great gulf that separated those two locations, and he cried out to Abraham asking him to send Lazarus to bring him aid. Do you remember what he said? In Luke 16:24, the rich man says, “send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.” The agony and unquenchable thirst that this rich man experienced in the torment of the flames of wrath were the same that Jesus experienced. And He experienced it for us. It was a vicarious thirst. He bore the penalty and the wrath of judgment that we deserve for our sins. There has never been a human being to live who did not deserve this. But in His loving grace and mercy, Jesus thirsted in the agony of judgment vicariously. He did it for us.

This was not the first time in Scripture that Jesus was thirsty and asked for drink. You may be familiar with that story in John 4 when Jesus came to Jacob’s well and asked the Samaritan woman for a drink. As they begin to dialogue about the well and the water there, Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14). You see Jesus was thirsty, and this woman had water that could satisfy His thirst, but it wouldn’t last forever. But Jesus wanted this woman to know that she also had a thirst in her life. And Jesus had water that she knew not of – living water that would spring up within her to eternal life. He said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (4:10). He said something similar in John 7 – “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37-38).

You see, everyone of us was born with a thirst for something that nothing in this world will satisfy. People try to satisfy it with money and possessions, with knowledge and power, with relationships and sex, with drugs and alcohol, with therapy and medication. But the emptiness is still there and the thirst is unquenched. We are like people adrift in a salt-water sea, dying of thirst. We are surrounded, in the words of Coleridge, by “water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” If we drink from the salt-water, it only adds to our thirst. You see, over-top of every fountain in this world that you are tempted to think will satisfy you, you need to envision the emblazoned words of Jesus: “Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again.” C. S. Lewis put it this way in the most brilliant sermon he ever preached: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.”[1] But that is the thing, you see, we are NOT pleased. We try to tell ourselves that we are, but soon enough we thirst again. Augustine said it this way: “You made us for Yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in You.”[2] But we are cut off from that rest and from the only living water that can eternally satisfy our thirst. Our sins have fixed a great gulf between us and our God and King who alone can satisfy our deepest longings. But thanks be to God, He has bridged the gap! In the person of Jesus Christ, He has borne our sins and their penalty. He has died our death! He has taken vicariously upon Himself our unquenchable thirst so that our thirst can be quenched eternally!

It is because Jesus thirsted for us that we find this description of heaven in Revelation 7:16-17 – “They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat; for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.” And it is for this reason that the Bible concludes with a glorious invitation: “Let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost” (Rev 22:17). The living water that satisfies eternally is freely offered to us by the grace of Him who thirsted in our place! Every longing that you have is pointing you to Him like thirst drives you to water. And nothing outside of Him will ever satisfy that thirst. Come and drink deeply from Christ. He thirsted for you so that you will never thirst again!

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[1] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 26.

[2] Augustine, Confessions (Penguin Classics edition; translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin; New York: Penguin Putnam, 1961), 21. 

My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me? (Matthew 27:39-54)

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Over these weeks leading up to Resurrection Sunday, we’ve been studying the seven sayings of Christ on the Cross. Some have called these sayings, “the last words of Jesus,” but that’s not entirely accurate. We know that after His death on the cross, He rose from the dead and spent many days teaching His disciples, and in fact He continues to speak by His Spirit and through His Word. So, these are not His “last words,” but they are important words that He speaks in the hours prior to His death. He did not say a lot in terms of quantity. He only uttered seven expressions, but these expressions are profound and rich in substance. Russell Bradley Jones says, “Everything at Calvary is significant, but in a very special sense the Saviour’s seven words, spoken from the heart of His vicarious suffering, interpret Him to mankind. He spoke seven times …. Not a word too many or too few.”[1] Today we move into the fourth of these sayings. Already we have seen how He prayed for His murderers, that the Father would have mercy and forgive them. We have seen how He assured the repentant criminal that he would be in paradise. And we have seen how the Lord Jesus entrusted His mother Mary into the care of His disciple John. The fourth saying that we examine today is a cry of anguish and agony to His Heavenly Father; the Lord Jesus says, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” It is said that the brilliant Martin Luther devoted himself to the study of this statement for a lengthy time, going without food and not rising from his chair while in deepest meditation on this text. At last Luther arose from his seat and exclaimed in amazement, “God forsaken of God! Who can understand that?”[2] But, with all due respect to the illustrious reformer, we must drive ourselves to understand this text and discover the riches that it offers. Various preachers and scholars have used different phrases throughout the centuries to describe this statement made by Jesus as He died. It has been called the cry of desolation, the cry of desertion, the cry of dereliction, the cry of despair, and the cry of desperation. But perhaps no one has better captured the true nature of this expression than R. C. Sproul. He says, “This cry represents the most agonizing protest ever uttered on this planet. It bursts forth in the moment of unparalleled pain. It is the scream of the damned.”[3]

It is interesting that of all the recorded words that Jesus ever spoke to God, this is the only time He ever referred to Him as God. In every other instance, Jesus refers to God as “Father.” But here, it is “God.” One scholar tells us that it was common for those who were crucified to scream out in rage and pain with “wild curses and the outbreaks of nameless despair.” But Jesus was not calling out curses against God. Even in the midst of His suffering, He is still cognizant of a personal relationship with His Father, as He says twice, “My God!” His is not a cry of disbelief or denouncement. But it is, as Sproul says, the scream of the damned. God the Son has been forsaken by God the Father. And like Jesus, we too want to know, “Why?” Why has the sinless Son of God, the perfect and righteous servant who has always done the will of the Father, experienced such undeserved condemnation and wrath? As we examine this text in its context in Matthew today, I want to address the choice that Jesus made to be forsaken by His Father; the testimony of all creation to this forsaking of the Son by the Father; and then finally, to answer the question, “Why?” So, let’s begin with the choice.

I. Jesus chose to be forsaken by His Father (vv39-44)

Some of you may remember the great controversy that erupted over the 1988 Martin Scorsese film, The Last Temptation of Christ. That movie and the book on which it is based shows no real understanding of the nature of Christ and the severity of the temptations that He uniquely faced. He faced every temptation that you and I face, but He also faced temptations that you and I will never comprehend. I think the real “last temptation of Christ” comes here in this passage. In verses 39-40, people passing by the cross where Jesus hung dying were saying, “Save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” In verses 41-43, the religious leaders were saying, “He saved others; He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him. He trusts in God; Let God rescue Him now, if He delights in Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” What was the meaning of this verbal abuse? Had they not already tortured and shamed Jesus enough? Were the scourging, and the beating, and the mocking, and the nailing and the hanging that He had already experienced not sufficient to satisfy their corrupted hearts? No, they continued to heap this abuse upon Jesus, but the abuse was more than just the spouting off of the mouth by His earthly adversaries. These words were inflamed by the fires of hell itself. These were verbalized Satanic temptations to divert Jesus from His redemptive mission to save humanity from sin. Satan had sought to derail Jesus’ journey to the cross at every turn. And here is one last-ditch effort. Jesus is being tempted to save Himself.

Make no mistake about it: Jesus did say that He was the Son of God and the King of Israel. And those things were true. And make no mistake about it: at any given moment, either He or His Father could bring this whole ordeal to a halt. He could come down from the cross. God could rescue Him. He could save Himself. You recall how, when Jesus was betrayed and arrested, Peter wanted to put up a fight. He drew his sword and began to swing it to defend himself and Jesus. And you recall how Jesus said to him, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt 26:53). And if He could do it then and there, He could do it here and now on the cross. But He didn’t. He had a choice to make under this intense temptation. He could save Himself, or He could save the world. Jesus did not give into this temptation, and He gave Himself up to death, choosing to be forsaken by His Father as He bore the sins of the world.

 

II. The universe bore witness that Christ was forsaken by His Father (vv45-46)

What happened in that moment as Christ died bearing the sins of all humanity can only be described as the outbreak of hell on earth. Hell is described as a place of darkness and isolation; a place of separation from God; a place where sin receives the full measure of wrath that it warrants. And all of those conditions exist here on earth in these very moments when Jesus is dying.

At noon last Wednesday, I was walking across the parking lot of the hospital enjoying the bright sunshine and 80 degree weather, thinking “Why did I ever give up playing golf?” At noon on the day that Jesus died, the sky turned completely black and remained that way for three hours. In what would normally be the brightest period of the day, from noon until 3:00 PM, there was utter darkness upon all the land. Some have speculated that this was a total eclipse, however those do not last for three hours. Even if they did, the fact that this was Passover indicates that it was during a full moon cycle, and total eclipses do not happen when the moon is in that phase. It was a miracle performed by God with no natural explanation. When miracles occur, they signify something, and in this case, the darkness was pointing to what Jesus was going through at that moment. God had declared through the prophet Amos that a day was coming in which He would make the sun go down at noon and make the earth dark in broad daylight (Amos 8:9). He said that it would be like a time of mourning for an only son (8:10). In fact, it was just that. It was as if all nature mourned the death of the only begotten Son of God for sin. The sun was veiled in darkness indicating the severity of judgment that was being poured out on man’s sin. It is interesting that around the exact same time, an Egyptian philosopher named Diogenes wrote of a time of extended darkness at midday and said, “Either the deity himself suffers, or he sympathizes with one that does.” Here was a man with no insight into God’s specific revelation, but who could understand that such an unprecedented phenomena had to do with the suffering of God. He had no way of knowing just how accurate his observation was. The divine Son of God was suffering in that darkness – suffering under the weight of judgment from His Father; suffering not for His own sins but for ours. The Father could not look upon Him as He bore that sin; and the sun was blotted out so that no one else could look upon Him either. 

Darkness is a frequent sign of judgment in the Bible. Jesus spoke of hell as a place of outer darkness. During the plagues on Egypt, before the final plague of the firstborn, God brought darkness over the entire land—the Bible calls it “a darkness which can be felt.” It was that kind of darkness over the land during Jesus’ death. It was the darkness of judgment as our sins were receiving their full penalty in the person of our substitute on the cross as He received the death we deserve. He underwent that ultimate separation from the Father that all of us deserve.

Jesus defined His own mission and ministry in Mark 10:45 saying, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” To ransom something is to pay a price of redemption. What does humanity need to be redeemed from? The Bible is clear from beginning to end that we are enslaved to sin. Ever since Adam and Eve fell to sin in the garden, each of their offspring through all these generations has been born in a state of natural rebellion against God. We are sinners by nature, but also by choice. We are prone to view ourselves as the center of our own existence and make choices based on what we want, regardless of how offensive it is to God or one another. So we are doubly enslaved to sin – by nature and by choice. And what is the penalty for sin? The Bible tells us in Romans 6:23 that it is death; “The wages of sin is death.” There is a sense in which physical death is the result of our sinful state. After all, death entered the human race because of sin. But then there is another sense in which sin produces a spiritual death, which is separation from God. When God said to Adam, “In the day that you eat of this fruit, you will surely die,” did Adam die physically that day? No, rather God allowed a substitute to die in Adam’s place. The Bible tells us that God made coverings for Adam and Eve, garments of skin. In order to make a garment of skin, something had to die. There had to be a substitute—a sacrifice.

By God’s mercy, Adam’s physical life was extended for many years beyond that day. But immediately, in the very moment that Adam sinned, he was separated from God in a state of spiritual death. Each of us is born in a state of spiritual death. In Ephesians, Paul says, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins.” Physically, they were alive, but they had been born spiritually dead, just as all of us are. That state of spiritual death is a separation from God. As Isaiah 59:2 says, “Your iniquities [or sins] have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.” And if we die physically in that state of spiritual death, our separation from God will be eternal in the place of unending torment that the Bible calls Hell.

So, if Jesus is going to give His life as a ransom for many, it means that He will have to pay the price of redemption to rescue us from our sins and their penalty. And this is exactly what the Scriptures tell us that He did. Because of our sins, we deserve to be cursed of God under His righteous wrath. But Jesus became accursed for us as He took the penalty of our sins upon Himself as our substitute. He received the wrath of God which He did not deserve, but which we do. Paul said in Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written (referring to Deut 21:23), "CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE.” He hung on the tree of Golgotha, the cross on which He died, to receive in Himself the curse of God poured out against sin.

When Jesus died on the cross, Matthew tells us here in verse 37 that a placard was inscribed which said, “The King of the Jews.” It was customary for a person who died by Roman execution to have their charges publicly displayed for all to see. For Jesus, the official charge against Him was blasphemy and high treason, as He made claims of His own deity and authority. However, in God’s eyes, the charges that brought about Jesus’ death were something different. Imagine if you could write every one of your sins on a tablet—all the sins you have ever committed, or will ever commit. Not just the big ones that stand out, but every single one of them, great and small. Then imagine that every person who has ever lived or will ever live does the same thing. Now imagine with me that one by one each of us takes those charges and nails them to the cross of Jesus. That is why He died. He died for every lie ever told, every murder ever committed, every act of adultery, theft, cruelty, deceit, dishonesty, and on and on we could go, ever committed by human beings. Isaiah had prophesied some 700 years before that the suffering Messiah would come, and that the Lord would lay on Him the iniquity of us all (Isa 53:6). As Jesus hung on the cross, the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, God made Him who knew no sin TO BE SIN on our behalf. When God looks upon the cross of Christ, He no longer sees His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased, but sees one enormous and grotesque mass of sin. And He pours out upon that mass of sin all of His righteous wrath and hatred for sin. Christ as our substitute receives the punishment from God that every human being who has ever lived or ever will deserves. And because God hates sin with such a holy passion, He cannot look upon it; He cannot tolerate its presence; therefore, the Son is forsaken by the Father in this moment of physical, emotional, and spiritual agony. God doesn’t tolerate sin, He doesn’t overlook sin, wink at it, or consider it to be no big deal. If you want to know what God thinks of sin, look at Jesus as He cries out with this scream of the damned. What does God think of sin? He wrapped His only begotten Son in it, and then condemned it, judged it, punished it, rejected it, cursed it and forsook it. So intense was the fury of His wrath that the sun was blotted out and the ground began to shake and the rocks split in two. The entire universe was bearing witness to the fact that hell on earth had been unleashed, and that Son of God was bearing man’s sin and its full measure of wrath under the holy judgment of the Father.

“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” This is the scream of the damned. And what is the answer to this prayer? Have you ever noticed that there are times when you are in intense agony and despair, when you cry out to God, it seems that He is silent in response? In A Grief Observed, we read C. S. Lewis’s attempt to journal through the grief of his wife’s death. At one point, he says, “When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing [God], … if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double-bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.” He says that he shared these thoughts with a friend, and his friend reminded him “that the same thing seems to have happened to Christ: ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’” Lewis said, “I know. Does that make it easier to understand?” [4] Perhaps not, but then again, I want to question an assumption that Lewis is making. Did Jesus really find, when He prayed this prayer, this scream of the damned, that the door was slammed in His face, double-bolted from the inside? Was there really no answer given? I suggest that there was an immediate answer to the question, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

III. The Father’s answer to the question of the Son is our hope of glory (vv51-54)

As Jesus dies on the cross, He is fulfilling the mission for which He was born. He came to die. He came to bear the sins of the world. In a sense, He is the only begotten Son, incarnate in the flesh, for the express purpose of coming to this moment in which He would be forsaken by His Father and utter this unbearable scream of the damned. But why? Two words answer the question pretty well: “For us.” Sproul says, “This cry … is the scream of the damned – for us.”[5] In the Nicene Creed, the only creed universally accepted by Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians, we read that Jesus “was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.” Why? “For our sake,” the creed says. All that He is, and all that He did, was, in the words of the creed, “For us and for our salvation.”

Notice how the answer is given immediately to the question of Christ. As the ground begins to shake, Matthew says that the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. That veil which separated the holy place from the holy of holies measured 60 feet in height by 30 feet wide. It was said to be as thick as the palm of a man’s hand and so heavy that it took a multitude of priests to manipulate it. Only the high priest could enter in, and only once a year, and only with the sacrificial blood for the atonement of the sins of the people. This veil was a loud and clear declaration that God is holy and set apart from sinful humanity. It announced to everyone near and far, “STAY OUT OF MY PRESENCE.” It said, “When you approach God, you can come this far but no further.” If you enter beyond that veil, you better be the foremost priest of all, and you better come on the holiest day of all, and you better bring the blood with you, and you better not stay long. The whole sacrificial system of that Temple revolved around that understanding. But when Jesus died, that old system met its expiration date. No longer would any man, woman or child come to God by that way again. The veil was torn in two, indicating that a way had been made for people to come into God’s presence. The way was made by the shedding of blood: not the blood of lambs and bulls, but the blood of Christ. He had become our High Priest, and through Him we have access to the Father.

And notice that Matthew says that as the earth shook, “the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many.” Matthew is the only Gospel-writer who records this information, and he does it in a rather matter-of-fact kind of way. There are far more details that we do not know than those that we know. All we know is what is said here in these two verses. We do not know how many of the dead were raised to life. We do not know if they were well known (David, Abraham, Isaiah, and people like that), or if they were “Average Joe” kind of folks. We do not know if they were people who had recently died or if they had died long ago. We do not know if their “resurrection” was only temporary, or was this a final resurrection, after which they ascended into heaven? We don’t know who they saw in Jerusalem, or what they did, or what they said. We want to know all of those things, but alas we have to say we do not, and cannot, know. The Bible doesn’t tell us all we want to know. It does tell us all we need to know. And what this miracle tells us is that the death of Jesus has brought unconquerable life to those who believe on Him. Jesus had told His disciples, “Because I live, you will live also.” But here is Jesus dying, so what kind of hope is that? It is a great hope, because death can neither hold Christ nor those who are His in its grasp. His death and resurrection infuses those who hope in Him with life abundant and eternal. Some, for whatever reason God intended, and according to His sovereign choice, had the opportunity to experience the power of His resurrection in advance of the rest of us. And the partial resurrection which occurred on that day as Jesus died “was a foretaste and a pledge of the final resurrection of all who believe on Jesus.” God was indicating through this miracle that “this is the destiny of all who believe on Jesus Christ as their Savior.”[6] We have a hope beyond this life and beyond the grave because Jesus was forsaken on our behalf. He died our death in order that we may have His deathproof life for eternity.

And then in verse 54 we meet a man who embodies the answer to both prayers that Jesus has prayed thus far in His dying hours. For the people who were putting Him to death, Jesus had prayed, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And then He prayed, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Then we see the centurion, the commanding officer of the death squad, beholding the Lord Jesus on the cross, dying for this man’s sins. And he says, “Truly this was the Son of God.” Why was the Son forsaken? So that this centurion, and you and I, and anyone else who comes to call upon Christ by faith as Lord and Savior would never be forsaken, but forgiven instead. He cried out with the scream of the damned so that we could sing forever the song of the redeemed. Revelation 5:9 tells us that for all eternity will sing to Jesus, “Worthy are You … for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.” This is the answer to the question. When Jesus asks, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”, the answer is “for us and for our salvation.” We must look to the cross and see Him dying there for our sins, that we may have access to God by His blood, that we may have life beyond death, that we may be forgiven because He was forsaken. And the cross beckons us to behold Him and say by faith, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

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[1] Russell Bradley Jones, Gold from Golgotha (Chicago: Moody, 1945), 12.

[2] Quoted in Jones, 64.

[3] Quoted in C. J. Mahaney, Living the Cross Centered Life (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2006), 89.

[4] C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 5-6.

[5] Mahaney, 89.

[6] James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of Matthew: Volume 2, The Triumph of the King, Matthew 18-28 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 626-627.