Mark 15:21-47
Date: July 16th, 2023
Speaker: Samuel Crites
Scripture: Mark 15:21-47
Exegetical Outline
Main Idea of Text: Jesus is tortured, mocked, and crucified; he dies in the afternoon and is buried in the evening.
15:21-23: Before 9 A.M., Jesus is taken to the place of his crucifixion and offered a sedative.
15:24-32: At 9 A.M., Jesus is crucified and mocked by the crowd.
15:33: At 12 P.M., Darkness covers the land for 3 hours.
15:34-41: At 3 P.M., Jesus fulfills Scripture and dies, accompanied by many witnesses.
15:34-36: Jesus quotes Psalm 22 and someone tries to give him bitter wine to drink (Ps. 69:21).
15:37: Jesus died.
15:38-41: There are three witnesses to his death:
15:38: The curtain of the temple is torn into two pieces.
15:39: The centurion on duty confesses that Jesus is the Son of God.
15:40-41: A group of women stood at a distance.
15:42-47: In the evening, Pilate gives Jesus’s body to Joseph of Arimathea, he is hastily prepared, and they put him in the tomb.
Homiletical Outline
Main Idea of Sermon: The death of Jesus is the death of the true Passover lamb, offered by God, to be a sufficient final sacrifice for sinners.
The death of the true Passover lamb was the work of God.
The death of the true Passover lamb is sufficient.
The death of the true Passover lamb is final.
Introduction
Today, we are going to see the climax to the Gospel of Mark. But what makes a Gospel the Gospel? Or, said differently what is the Gospel at all? Many people struggle to answer that question. Most will simply say that the Gospel is the good news, because that is what the Greek word euangellion literally means. But that doesn’t answer the question. It does not actually address what the news is or why it is good. I want you to consider this question as we read our sermon text today. What makes the Gospel good news?
Mark 15:21-47
21 And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. 22 And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). 23 And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. 24 And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. 25 And it was the third hour when they crucified him. 26 And the inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” 27 And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. 29 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!” 31 So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32 Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.
33 And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 35 And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” 36 And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” 37 And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 39 And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
40 There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41 When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.
42 And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 44 Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. 45 And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. 46 And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. 47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.
The main idea of our sermon this week is this: The death of Jesus is the death of the true Passover lamb, offered by God, to be a sufficient final sacrifice for sinners. As we read Mark’s account of Christ’s crucifixion and death, the echoes of the first Passover should ring in our mind.
Our sermon will have three points. First, the death of the true Passover lamb was the work of God. Unfortunately, most contemporary Christians miss the depth of what is taking place at the moment of Christ’s death, because they have an insufficient understanding of the Old Testament. They miss the wonder of God’s providential control over all of history as he planned this moment in eternity past, orchestrates all events to bring about this moment, and offers up his Son to be the sacrifice for you and for me. Who is responsible for the sacrifice of the Son of God? The ultimate and truest answer to that question is God himself.
The second point of our sermon is this: The death of the true Passover lamb is sufficient. From noon to 3 PM, darkness hangs over Golgotha in the same way that the angel of death hung over Egypt. The blood that dripped from Christ’s wounds painted the four posts of the cross. The death of Christ is a superior sacrifice and protection against the death than any lamb’s blood. By offering himself once for all sins, he sufficiently dealt with the harbinger of death. Death no longer has any claim on the people of God because the death of Christ was sufficient to satisfy the wrath of God against sin.
The third and final point is this: The death of the true Passover lamb is final. It was a real death with a real grave. They covered him in a linen shroud, laid him in a tomb and rolled a stone in front of the opening. The work of Christ was finished, because Christ had given up his life as a ransom for sinners. The angel of death passed over because the angel of death struck him. Our sermon text ends as the remains of the sacrifice are dealt with and the deafeningly inaudible sound of the stone settles into place over his grave.
The Gospel is the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the forgiveness of sin. It is good news, because the death of Jesus is the death of the true Passover lamb, offered by God, to be a sufficient and final sacrifice for sinners.
The death of the true Passover lamb was the work of God.
Let’s unpack this together, beginning with our first point: the death of the true Passover lamb was the work of God. The question of who is responsible for crucifying and putting to death the Son of God has plagued Christendom for two millennia. Some blame the Romans, some blame the Jews, but in truth, Scripture made the answer clear in Acts 4. Let’s look at Acts 4, beginning in verse 23:
Acts 4:23-28
23 When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24 And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, 25 who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,
“ ‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
and the peoples plot in vain?
26 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers were gathered together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed’—
27 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
Our starting place for understanding the crucifixion and death of the Son of God is that everything happened according to the definite plan and predestining sovereignty of God.
As I have been preparing for this sermon, this truth has struck me over and over again this past week. God designed the moment of Christ’s crucifixion and death before the foundations of the world, and then he sprinkled, throughout the Old Testament, the details of the plan in such a way that the very words that Christ speaks are according to the script of Psalm 22:1.
To put it into perspective, there are 32 unique quotations, references, and allusions to the Old Testament in this sermon text. In 26 verses there are 32 moments where God foretold and foreshadowed what was going to take place on this fateful day through the prophets and psalmists of Israel, hundreds, even thousands of years before Jesus was born. We are not going to hit them all, but here are just a few.
OT References in the Sermon Text
He was crucified because Isaiah 53:4-5 says:
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
2. He was mocked because Psalm 22:6-7 says:
6 But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me;
they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
And Lamentations 2:15 says:
15 All who pass along the way
clap their hands at you;
they hiss and wag their heads
at the daughter of Jerusalem:
“Is this the city that was called
the perfection of beauty,
the joy of all the earth?”
3. He is surrounded by his enemies who divide his garments among them because Psalm 22:16 says:
16 For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet—
17 I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me;
18 they divide my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots.
4. The sky darkens because the Prophet Amos, in Amos 8:9-10:
9 “And on that day,” declares the Lord GOD,
“I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
10 I will turn your feasts into mourning
and all your songs into lamentation;
I will bring sackcloth on every waist
and baldness on every head;
I will make it like the mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.
5. As Max showed us in our sermonette this morning, the cry of Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, his very words, come from Psalm 22:1.
6. They give him sour wine, because Psalm 69:21 says that they gave him poison for food and sour wine for drink.
7. They get him off the cross and into a grave because Deuteronomy 21:23 says that it is unlawful to leave a body on a tree, that it must be buried on the same day.
8. They give him Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, because Isaiah 53:9 says:
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
I could keep going. The overwhelming witness of Scripture is that this was no accidental murder. Jesus was not the unfortunate victim of a corrupt religious authority or a godless government. He was a purposeful sacrifice, offered up by God, to pay the penalty for you and for me.
In theological terms, this is called penal substitutionary atonement. Penal substitution is the biblical model for atonement. It describes the work of Christ, what he actually accomplished with his life and ministry. We are going to look at penal substitution closer, but first, let’s make sure that we all understand atonement. Atonement is the idea of righting a wrong, of fixing the problem between an offending party and an offended party. In our case, the offended party is God, and we are the offending party. Through Adam’s sin, all of humanity has fallen into condemnation because we have inherited our sin natures from our father, Adam. The entire story of Scripture has been the outworking of God’s plan to make atonement for the offense of Adam’s sin and make right what he broke.
Penal substitution explains how that atonement works. The bible teaches that atonement must first be penal, meaning atonement requires someone to pay the penalty or receive the punishment for the offense of sin. Romans 6:26 says:
Romans 6:26
For the wages of sin is death…
That is, the just consequence for committing sin is that the sinner must die. If there is going to be atonement for the separation between God and men, then someone must die. Under the old covenant, a temporary solution was created. Instead of the sinner
dying for himself, God allowed animals to stand in the place of the sinner, covering but not doing away with their sin. However, the blood of bulls and goats is not valuable enough to pay the penalty for our sins. Psalm 40:6 says:
Psalm 40:6
In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted,
but you have given me an open ear.
Burnt offering and sin offering
you have not required.
The issue is that the worthiness of the sacrifice does not match the value of the party offended.
The seriousness of sin is not about the individual sin act. The reason sin is serious is because of the importance and holiness of the one that is sinned against. This is a difficult concept to understand, but we all know it intuitively. Let me explain. If I walked up to a random person on the street and punched them in the face, I am looking a misdemeanor for assault and battery. Assuming it is a pretty clean cut case, I am looking at being convicted of a Class C misdemeanor and being fined $500. Now let’s say, for whatever reason, that person was a police officer. The exact same random act of violence, if convicted, is punishable by a minimum of 5 years in prison and a fine starting at $10,000. Why? Because society values a police officer, uniformed and on duty, as worth protecting at a higher level than the general person walking down the street. Now, to take the illustration to the extreme, what if the person I punched was the president of the United States? It is likely that I would not even survive the incident to find out what the criminal charges would be, because the Secret Service is authorized to use lethal force to protect the President’s person. The seriousness of the crime is not based on the event itself, but is proportional to the value of the one offended.
So, think of the most common, seemingly benign sin. David, in Psalm 51:4 says:
Psalm 51:4
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
Every sin, no matter how trivial in our own minds, is serious because God, himself, is the offended party. If I could face lethal force for attempting to assault the President of the United States, how much more serious is the merest sin when the offended party is the infinitely valuable creator of the universe. The wages of sin is death, eternal death, a punishment that will never end with no relief, because God is eternal, infinitely holy God. The path to atonement requires death, which requires atonement to be penal.
Atonement is also substitutionary, meaning, the accused does not face that punishment for themselves. Like the animal sacrifices in the Old Testament, atonement is achieved not by the beneficiary of atonement, but by another. In our case, the substitutionary sacrifice is the Jesus Christ, put forward by God because he is the only one valuable enough to stand in our place. If even the most mundane sin is infinitely offensive, then the substitute that pays the penalty for that sin must be infinitely valuable. There is no one and nothing more valuable inside or outside of creation than Jesus Christ. This is what Christ has done for us to secure our atonement. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21:
2 Corinthians 5:21
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Critics of penal substitutionary atonement will argue that it is never clearly laid out in Scripture. I don’t know how you get more penal or more substitutionary than 2 Corinthians 5:21. I mean, there it is. God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God. In this great exchange, Christ got everything you deserved, and you got everything he deserved; he substituted himself for you, so he would have your place and you would have his.
Now, to this point in the sermon, I have perfectly positioned us to make some purely preposterous mistakes. So let’s address some objections to penal substitutionary atonement. I have two objections and they both stem from a lack of understanding about who God is.
Our first mistake would be to see punishment as vindictive. If God requires us to forgive one another, why can’t he just forgive us without requiring a punishment for sin? I see this all the time when I evangelize lost people. They don’t actually know God, so they have a misunderstanding about who God is. They will say something like, “I know God will forgive me, because God is a good God.” And of course, their definition a good according to them. Whenever he does good things for them, then he is a good God.
The irony is that it actually is the goodness of God that requires God to punish sin. God is not like a human judge. A human judge adjudicates a law that is external to them, while God upholds a law that is based on the character of who he is. When passing judgment, he does not reference some moral standard of the universe, because he is the moral standard of the universe. He is goodness, justice, and holiness. These are intrinsic characteristics to who he is. Therefore, if he does not defend and uphold a just punishment for sin, namely eternal death, then he ceases to be good. A good God requires a just punishment for sins that offend his holiness.
The second error we could make is to see substitution as unjust, a form of divine child abuse. This is one of the most popular critiques of penal substitutionary atonement from modern, liberal theologians. God is abusing his Son by forcing him to take our place to receive a punishment that he does not deserve. A God that is love would never do such a thing.
This fundamentally misunderstands the Person of Christ and the nature of the Trinity. When I say that God offered up Jesus as the true Passover lamb, that does not mean that Jesus is a helpless 3rd party, as if he is not as sovereign as the Father. The Father does not unilaterally offer up the Son as the Passover lamb. Every action of the Trinity is done as one single action in perfect concord. As the second Person of the Trinity, Jesus is perfectly in step with the Father and completely sovereign in ordaining himself as our atoning sacrifice for sin. Jesus makes this clear in John 10, beginning in verse 14 and following:
John 10:14-18
14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.
John makes it clear: the Father charges the Son to lay down his life for the sheep, and it is the free, sovereign choice of the Son, in all of his divine power, to demonstrate his love toward us by sacrificing himself as the true Passover lamb.
In our first point, it is clear, God is the author of the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. From eternity past, God chose to make atonement for sin by standing in our place to receive the punishment that we deserve so that we would not have to. He chose to be our true Passover lamb.
The death of the true Passover lamb is sufficient.
Which brings us to our second point in the sermon. The death of the true Passover lamb is sufficient. Sufficient for what? Sufficient to make the angel of death pass over the people of God.
One of the things that I kept coming back to and something that I have pondered over for a while is why does darkness descend on the earth at noon? Many commentators will say things like it demonstrated the reaction of creation to the death of its Creator or that it was symbol for sin or a representation of the wrath of God that bore down on Christ. I am not sure any of these options is necessarily wrong, but I think they miss the completeness of the image. So let’s refresh what we remember about the original Passover in Exodus 12. Go ahead and turn with me to Exodus 12, beginning in verse 21
Exodus 12:21-32
21 Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. 22 Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. 23 For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. 24 You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. 25 And when you come to the land that the LORD will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. 26 And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27 you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the LORD’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’ ” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped.
28 Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.
29 At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. 30 And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. 31 Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, “Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the LORD, as you have said. 32 Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!”
This is the image that Mark wants us to have in our minds as he tells us what is taking place on Golgotha.
In the same way that the Israelites slaughtered a male lamb and used the blood to make marks on each of their doorposts, the blood flowing from Jesus’s head, hands, and feet marked the four posts of the cross. In the same way that the angel of death descended on the nation of Egypt, killing every first born, darkness hung over Jerusalem as the only-begotten Son of God, dying under the weight of God’s wrath. In the same way, this final plague set the nation of Israel free from captivity and slavery in a foreign land, the final sacrifice of the Son of God sets you and I free from the slavery of sin and death.
God has not just put forward just any sacrifice for sin, he has put forward a sufficient sacrifice for sin. Jesus is the one sacrifice that is so valuable that he brings an end to all sacrifices once and for all. The lambs in the first Passover were sufficient to protect the people from the angel of death, but they were not sufficient to permanently deal with sin. As we saw in our first point, atonement is possible because the infinitely offensive nature of sin is completely done away with by the infinitely valuable God who was the final Passover lamb.
Paul teaches us that the sufficiency of Christ demonstrates the righteousness of God.
He says this in Romans 3, beginning in verse 21:
Romans 3:21-26
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
God demonstrates his righteousness by putting forward a sufficient sacrifice truly accomplishes redemption for all those that put their faith in Jesus. The question is how? What does Paul mena that it demonstrates the righteousness of God? Paul says in verse 25 that God has a problem. He has passed over former sins, meaning that he did not give David what he deserved when he murdered Uriah and slept with Bathsheba. He did not make Moses pay the penalty for the Egyptian that he murdered. He did not convict Abraham for his idol worship.
No, instead he graciously passed over the sins of some, forgiving them instead of making pay the penalty for their sins. But our God is a God of justice. He could not allow those sins to go unpunished forever. On the cross, the justice and the mercy of God meet in perfect harmony. Meaning, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross is not only sufficient for the sins of those that came after him, but it is sufficient for all those saints that preceded him.
In this way, you can see that all of history turns on this moment. All the saints that looked forward and all of us that look back are made righteous by the one, infinitely valuable of the true Passover lamb. In our text, this is signified by the tearing of the veil. The veil was the symbol of the ultimate separation of sin between God and his people. It was a curtain of scarlet and blue that hung between the Most Holy Place in the temple and the Holy Place. In the Most Holy Place, no one was allowed to go, or even look into it, except the High Priests, once per year on the day of atonement. This was because the Most Holy Place was the literal dwelling place of the Shekinah glory of God on earth. The cloud that led the people in the wilderness during the day and the pillar of fire that led them at night resided over the mercy seat on top of the ark of the covenant in the Most Holy Place. So, when Jesus breathes his last and the veil is split in two, the reader should understand that atonement has been accomplished. Sin has been done away with and now men can commune directly with God.
This is good news for you and for me, because there is nothing that can separate us from the atoning work of Christ. The Gospel is universally applicable to anyone that would put their faith in Jesus. It is not limited by space or time. By space I mean, it is not limited to any ethnic group, geographical location, or socio-economic status. But it is also not limited by time. All those that hope in the atoning work of the Messiah were saved by his all-sufficient sacrifice. It is so sufficient that it can never be used up, worn out, or limited by any sinner, nor any type of sin.
In our first point, we saw that Jesus was put forward as the true Passover lamb by God himself. This was not a unilateral decision by the Father, but a coordinated act of divine grace of which all three Persons of the Trinity have an equally diverse role to play. In our second point, we have seen that the sacrifice of Christ as the true Passover lamb is sufficient for any sinner, past, present, or future, regardless of the sin they have committed. Nothing can ever exhaust the grace of God in the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
The death of the Passover lamb is final.
The third and final point of the sermon is this: the death of the Passover lamb is final. I mean this point in multiple senses. I am going to give you two quick ways that Jesus’s death was final.
Before I explain the finality of Christ’s death, first let me make a public disclaimer. Our sermon text leaves us with a sense of finality that is emphasized by the fact that our sermon text is limited to chapter 15. We are forced to wrestle and confront the fact that Jesus died. So I want to make these points at the end of our sermon with the understanding that the resurrection is coming. Let’s consider his death, so that in two weeks we can consider his resurrection.
First, the death of the Son of God is a final in that it was a real death. Jesus of Nazareth was truly hung on a tree, he truly said what Scripture says that he said, and he truly died. There is a long list of men that have attempted to disprove the historical fact that Jesus of Nazareth was a real man that was really crucified by the Roman government in Jerusalem.
Mark makes this clear, because there was a body to deal with at the end of the day. Joseph of Arimathea interceded on Christ’s behalf and requested permission to properly dispose of his body. He was in haste because the extra Sabbath day of Passover week began at nightfall and they had to get him into the grave by sundown. He bought a linen shroud and put him a tomb close by.
Second, Jesus’s death was final, because it brought a final end to the wrath of God against sin. It was a true propitiation, meaning it completely wiped away God’s wrath towards sin. Romans 8 says that:
Romans 8:1
8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
No condemnation. None. Can you imagine that? It is almost too good to be true. God is no longer angry with me. My sins have been done away with and I am free. Christ’s work is final and there never has to be another sacrifice ever again. He sits at the right hand of the Father, having finished the work he was sent to do.
The death of the true Passover lamb is the work of God, sufficient for the forgiveness of sins and the final, finished work of the Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
As we close our sermon, I want to return to our initial question. What is Gospel and why is it good news? Why would Jesus do this? We were his enemies. We didn’t want God. Ephesians 2 says that we didn’t follow God. We followed the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is at work in the sons of disobedience. We were not only rebels following the Enemy of God, we loved it. Our wickedness and depravity was not because of ignorance. We knew we were rebelling and there was not the slightest desire on anyone’s part to do anything different. In Romans 1:32, Paul says that we looked around at all who were rebelling against God and we gave hearty approval and encouragement, spurring each other on to evil and depravity. We were willful rebels, shaking our fists at a good God, and encouraging everyone around us to do the same. We were enemies. Why would God choose to send Jesus to be the true Passover lamb to stand in our place and receive the penalty that we justly deserve, death on a cross? Listen to Jesus’s words in John 3:16-18:
John 3:16-18
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Why did Jesus sacrifice himself for you and for me? Because he loved you, you, who was his enemy. You, Christian, he set his perfect covenant love upon you and chose to be the object of his love while you were still his enemy.
That’s good news, because to be his enemy means to face certain destruction. You had no hope but to face an eternity separated from all that is good, perfect, and true. You were in great peril and you didn’t even know it. In your dire predicament, God loved you enough to take punishment you deserve, he stood in your place making atonement for your sin, so that you would have your record wiped clean. All your wrongs were done away with and you were given a new heart so that you could truly have communion with the one you were made to love.
Let’s pray.