[AI translation] Dear Brothers and Sisters! It is on a Good Friday feast that I really feel the weighty responsibility of preaching the Word - especially the Word of Good Friday. For by preaching the Word a congregation can be led to Jesus under the cross of Calvary! The task is not so difficult because it is horrifying to be so close to a hanged man, and so terrible to watch a dying man suffer and to listen to the cries of a dying man coming out of his parched, burning throat, but rather because our eyes and ears are too used to everything that happened on that particular Good Friday.We are so used to talking about these things as if we had nothing to do with them! For example, notice that when we see a painting of the Crucified, we usually judge its artistic merit, we usually consider how the master solved the problem, the theme, whether he solved it well or badly. And even when we listen to a beautiful Passion music, we usually prefer to enjoy the musical experience of it rather than the experience of Jesus being crucified to give us an opportunity to enjoy the work, or to provide a motif for a beautiful picture or music. That is why the Good Friday sermon is so difficult, because the greatest task is to turn the aesthetic into a deep religiousness and humble faith, and to make the cross, which has been idealised for two thousand years, once again appear before us in its reality, so that we do not actually speak about the cross, but rather the cross speaks to us. That is why I have chosen as my leitmotif the words in which He Himself speaks of the meaning of His own crucifixion. For it is on the basis of these words that we try to see this cross of Calvary as Jesus saw it. Jesus was fully aware of all that awaited Him on that terrible Good Friday. Father, save me from this hour!"
I do not know whether you feel, brethren, that in the wake of these words we almost get a glimpse into the heart of Jesus, what He must have felt in the face of His own cross? We get a little taste of the horror of the crucifixion, we see something small of what Good Friday must have meant to Him, the events of which we often hear with such dispassionate indifference in a Good Friday service. Behold, Jesus says: "My soul is troubled." The sea is wont to be troubled in a storm. There is more than waves, there are whirlpools in turmoil, there is destruction in turmoil, turmoil is a terrible thing. What a terrible storm must have raged in that dear soul! In fact, one of our Hungarian translations renders these words of Jesus directly, "Now my soul is troubled." Do you feel, do you understand what Jesus is saying? His soul was all aflutter at the thought of the coming death on the cross. When he told his disciples about it, his soul and his whole being were so shaken that for a moment he almost had the thought of fleeing. Should he not rather ask, "Father, save me from this hour?" Can we even imagine, can we even feel this terrible anguish, this turbulent agony of the soul, which the thought of the cross evoked in the soul of Jesus?! And the anguish of which Jesus spoke is of great significance, because it is precisely this anguish that shows that this death on Calvary was a death of a different kind from any other death, from any other tragic human death, not an ordinary death, but a different death! Jesus knew beforehand what we only know afterwards, that this death was really death in the most terrible sense of the word, in the sense that the full weight of God's judgment of sin, of his wrath for sin, was brought down upon him.
So this was a cursed death, the death of damnation, hell itself. Jesus really knew what this death awaiting Him meant, and that is why He was in anguish when He thought about it, and why He was in agony there in the garden of the Garden of the Goats. Remember Him: He was on His knees on His knees, shedding blood as He spiritually prepared for it. But now someone might say: why, he was innocent, he was the only saint, the only sinless man in the world! He had no reason to fear the judgment of God punishing sin! If anyone, He is the only one who could stand before any severe divine judgment with his head held high! Brethren, it is true, indeed, He had no sin. But you and I have. It is this very thing that He took upon Himself, and it is this very trouble that shows that not only figuratively, but in reality, what the prophet of old said six centuries before, "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all," has come to pass. There must have been cause for anguish, for distress, for bodily torment, because the whole human race, laden with sins, had come under the judgment of God. Of course, he could not go into any severe divine judgment, and into any horrible, horrible death, not in distress, but without sin. But upon Him, truly upon Him, is your sin, and my sin, all that wickedness, all that lying, all that uncharitableness, all that malice, that we can only think of, and therefore are indignant. It is almost a poignant confirmation of the fact that the Lord has cast all our sins on Him. And if anyone had any doubt about himself, whether his sin was also upon Christ, let him be convinced by this confusion, this conviction.
But, brethren, Jesus not only sees the terrible end of His cross, but He also sees the glory of it. For this is why He came into this world: for this terrible hour of suffering, of humiliation, of damnation, for this terrible hour of death, because this is how God became man. Terrible as this hour is, yet with the full certainty of the victory of redemption it declares, as it were, "Now is the condemnation of the world; now is the prince of the world taken away!" Let us pause for a moment at these two very strange but very powerful statements! "Now is the condemnation of the world..." It sounds like a great shout of jubilation and triumph. And indeed it is, because it means that now, in the hour of the crucifixion, something new is beginning in the world: redemption. This word "condemnation" is the original language of the Bible: "crisis". So the whole sick human world came to the crisis there, at the cross of Christ. There is the great turning point where the problem of life or death is decided for him. And indeed, brothers and sisters, such a crisis, such a critical point in this world is this cross of Calvary, where the question of life or death is really decided for every man. Because, brothers and sisters, that cross in this world represents a great divine judgment, a universal, great divine judgment; and in two senses: either a judgment of acquittal or a judgment of condemnation. It depends on one's attitude towards it. It depends on how one sees this cross. Only from its human side, as a touching, tragic martyrdom, or from its divine side, as the ultimate, great attempt of the love of God the Redeemer to save man.
So that is really the big question: can we now, at this moment, or ever, see the cross of Christ as He sees it? We know, of course, in His condemnation our own acquittal, in His atonement the forgiveness of our own sins, in His humiliation our own release, in His death the birth for us of a whole new life. This is really the great question, whether we can look up to the cross of Calvary with the great faith that there, on the cross, God reached down for me, to take hold of me and you, and to begin something new, beautiful, just, good, useful and eternal in us.
And if it is true that the love of God is at work there on Calvary, and if it is true that the saving hand of God is reaching out to us through the cross, then, brothers and sisters, this is not a play in which we can only be present as spectators, not a performance or event that we can attend again one day, because it is Good Friday, but something must happen here in us and with us. "Now is the condemnation of this world" - so now, for you too, now, at this moment, when you yourself are grasping in faith the divine hand of salvation reaching out to you on the cross! The great crisis, the great turning point in your life will also be decided when you try to see the cross of Christ as He saw it.
Once upon a time there was a very famous man, one of the greatest kings of all time, called David. He was very richly blessed by God, and yet he longed for another wife. She got him for herself, and she had the cheating husband cunningly put to death, killed. Sin piled upon sin, and so she started down one of life's most dangerous slopes. From the sinful affair, an innocent, sweet child was born. We read in the account that "the Lord smote the child - whom? Not David? No, the child - for David's sin. Then the child became sick ..." - not David, the child, and in vain did all things, the child died for the sin of David. In the death of the child God judged the sin of the father. This death was the great crisis of David's life, the point, the critical point, where the direction of his whole life was reversed, where the hard, haughty heart of that willful man was broken. A tiny pile of graves divided his life into two distinct parts.
It has happened before that the death of a precious little child becomes a critical point in the lives of parents where everything turns around and life takes a whole new direction. Brothers and sisters, the death of Jesus is the real crisis in the life of every person, the moment when you realize in faith that God has judged your life in the death of Jesus, because He has punished you for your sins. And Jesus, the innocent, died - for you, the sinner. As if He had committed all the wickedness you had ever committed. Isn't it wonderful, brothers and sisters, that from here, from this realization of faith, a whole new phase of a person's life will really begin: a redeemed life, a life under grace; a life reconciled to God, man, the world and himself. So "Now is the condemnation of this world..."
And Jesus adds, "Now shall the prince of this world be taken away." The prince of this world... we can say the same thing in another way, in a more simple way, that mysterious evil in your heart and in the world, that mysterious evil force that makes us unable to be good, to remain pure, to do good - it is being taken out now, at the hour of Jesus' crucifixion. And that is what is so wonderful, there, then, that evil seems to have the greatest triumph, because it has succeeded in killing the only innocent one: Jesus. And then he himself receives the deathblow. It is precisely Christ's death on the cross that has broken the power of the evil one so that we are no longer at his mercy.
Behold, Jesus sees his cross as the taking away of evil from its former position of power by a crucifixion. Evil, the power that tempts people to sin, is dethroned, is no longer the supreme master in people's lives, can be disobeyed, can be confronted, can be turned from him, from the loser to Christ the victor. And if Jesus thus sees the significance of His own death on the cross, that by it the prince of the world has been taken away, then believe Him and say boldly, "Yes, Lord, now also from my heart has been taken away all wrath, all hatred, all impurity, all malice, all that is unworthy of You! For this is wonderful, that that cross of Calvary really has such power: the power to cast out evil and to free from bondage.
Jesus gives even further encouragement with these words, "And I, if I lift up from the earth, will draw all things to myself." Look around you at the wonderful attraction of Jesus lifted up on the cross! This is when most of us here and in every other church are under the influence of some mysterious divine attraction, and we are going towards God. Even the indifferent are moved, even the discouraged are opened, the sinful are soothed, and the angry are softened, for they sense something of the wonderful pull of divine love that works through the cross of Christ in this world.
Come, then, all of you who are here, whoever you are, brothers and sisters, for it is not a painted figure that lies on the cross, but our Saviour. He draws us to Himself now, you, me, all of us. He draws us, let us let Him draw us! If only we could be so caught up in His divine attraction that we could not escape it.
Behold, brothers and sisters, this is how Jesus spoke of His own crucifixion, and this is how the holy cross of Christ stands there now, and we can stand before it. Let each one now try truly, from the fullness of his heart, to say this prayer in the words of the hymn:
I look up to my Jesus under the cross,
My heart has no rest for my sins;
O Lord, punish not him who is broken in sorrow:
Let peace and pardon come upon me from thy mercy.
Canto 345, verse 3.
Amen.
Date: 16 April 1965 Good Friday