[AI translation] Yesterday morning, before I started preparing for this sermon, during my usual morning devotions, I read in the Old Testament passage, "Good news strengthens bones." (Prov 15,30b) I thought about how true it is, how great it is, when one receives good news: "It strengthens the bones"! Yes, it is a kind of inner strengthening, a refreshment: the bent back straightens, new strength is released in the limp body. This is the good news. And in fact, preaching is nothing other than the transmission, proclamation, proclamation of good news from God. Especially the Good Friday Gospel: it's only good news! It is sad good news, tragic good news, terrible good news, deadly good news, good news of joy. And when I thought about it like that, I begged the Lord very earnestly to let me know this good news that He wanted to communicate to us through His death. So let me try to tell it!A few days before His death, Jesus said this, which I read out as a basic verse, and which begins. Father, save me from this hour." (Jn12,27) Here we get a little glimpse into the heart of the Lord, what He must have felt at the cross, a little taste of the horror of the crucifixion - an insight into what Good Friday meant to Jesus, the events of which we can listen to with such complacent familiarity in a Good Friday service!
"My soul is troubled" are strange words from the lips of Jesus. In a storm the sea is wont to rage. A storm is more than a swell. What a storm must have raged in this precious soul! One modern translation renders the words directly: 'Now my soul is troubled. Do you understand? Jesus himself says that his soul was shaken at the thought of imminent death! So much so, that the instinct to flee is almost aroused in his mind, should he not ask: "Father, save me from this hour"?
The agony, the torment, the storm that the cross evoked in the soul of the Lord Jesus is unimaginable. But what is the good news? That it is precisely from this shock that we see that His death was indeed a death of redemption, an atoning death, a redemptive death.In the human form of Jesus of Nazareth, a part of the Trinitarian God walked here on earth, the eternal Word became flesh in Him, God dwelt in Him among us. Think of it: this Jesus would not be terrified at the approach of bodily death if it were only a transition from earthly life to eternal life for him as it is for redeemed man; if it were only a simple death. For Him death was really death, that is, the judgment of God punishing sin, the weight of divine wrath for sin, and therefore a damnable death. Not a blessed death, but a damned death, that is, the death of hell and damnation!
Jesus only really knew what death was! What death awaited him! That is why his soul trembled when he thought of it, why his spirit was troubled when he spoke of the approach of that hour, and why he agonized on his knees in the garden of Gethsemane. But why, for he was innocent, the only holy and sinless one in the world? He really had no reason to fear even the judgment of God! He could bravely face the most severe divine justice. Indeed, He had no sin, but He had you and I, and He took it upon Himself. His anguish shows that what God said through the prophet Isaiah, "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all," was not only symbolically but actually done. (Isa 53:6b) There is reason, then, to be anguished, to be terrified, to be shaken, because a whole world laden with sins is coming before God's judgment, because for the sins of us all He is suffering the punishment of damnation. Believe me: his soul would not be troubled if he could go to death without sin.
But it is upon him, it is truly upon him, your sin is upon him, and my sin is upon him - that is why he is troubled! And that is indeed why He has come to this hour! This hour gives us a sobering assurance that God has indeed laid the sin of us all on Jesus Christ. If you had any doubt about this before, let His wrath convince you now! But only for a moment His Spirit is troubled. Only for a moment or two is He tempted to flee, and then again He assumes that hour with full redemptive consciousness as the hour of the revelation of the glory of God. For for this hour he came: for this hour of suffering, of mockery, of all the damnation of hell, God became man! Terrible as that hour is, behold, he declares with the full assurance of his victory, "Now is the condemnation of this world; now shall the prince of this world be taken away." (John 12:31)
Let us pause for a moment on these two powerful statements. "Now is the condemnation of the world." It sounds like a jubilant, triumphant shout - and it is! It means that now, in the hour of the crucifixion, a new world, a redeemed world, is beginning. Now is the hour that God has appointed for the head of the serpent to be crushed. Now is the time for the glorious divine work to be done, which was determined so long before in the counsel of God. That which has been spoken of so long and so often in the Word of God. Which so long ago was the hope of the believer, and the terror of the devil. So, "Now is the condemnation of this world."
This word, condemnation, in the original language of the New Testament, is crisis. So we can also say: now is the crisis of the world. This whole sick world came to the crisis here, at the cross of Calvary. Here is the turning point where life or death is decided for it. Yes: such a crisis, such a critical point in this world is the cross of Christ, because it is really there that the problem of life and death is decided for everyone. Everyone is subject to God's judgment of condemnation or acquittal according to what Christ crucified meant to him. In Him is the judgment! Exonerating judgment for those who believe in Him, who believe that He hangs there on the cross for them and was judged in their place. But an inexcusable condemnation, a condemnation for all those who reject the grace offered in Him. Thus Jesus says: "Whosoever despiseth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that condemneth him: the word that I have spoken shall condemn him in the last day." (Jn 12,48)
Now is the crisis of this world! Now, for you too, now! That is, when you look up in faith to the crucified Christ. Then the crisis, the turning point, will come in your life, when the death of Christ becomes real for you. There is a story in the Old Testament that illustrates this truth very graphically. King David returned God's many, many precious gifts by seducing Uriah's wife. He had Uriah, the deceived husband, put to death. He piles sin upon sin, heading down the slippery slope to his doom. Out of the sinful affair an innocent child is born, but only to be used by the Lord to stop his servant from going down the slope. We read, "The Lord smote the child." (2 Sam 12:15) Who? Not David, but the child, for David's sin. And the child became sick! Not David, but the child! And all was in vain, the child died - for David's sin! In the death of the child, God judged the sin of the father. This death was the crisis of David's life. Here the hard heart of the sturdy man was broken, here the whole direction of his life was reversed: a small grave-heap divided his life into two distinct parts.
Oh, it is so often the case that in the lives of parents, the death of a precious child becomes the critical point where everything turns around, where life takes a new direction. Well, the real crisis in every man's life is the death of Christ, when you come to know by faith that God has judged your whole life in Christ's death, and punished you for all your sins! From this point on, a whole new stage of life begins for you, a stage of life under grace. Do you believe that in the death of Jesus on the cross, it was your futile life that God condemned? If so, then the crisis for you is now, the crisis of which Jesus spoke.
"Now the prince of this world is being taken away," Jesus goes on to say. So it is at the very time when the prince of this world, Satan, is apparently triumphant. Just when he thought he had finally wounded to death the executor of God's redemptive plan, Jesus. It was through this that he himself received the deathblow from Him. It is this very death on the cross that deprives Satan of his power, so that he can no longer hold man in bondage. From the moment Christ was lifted up on the cross, he was cast out as the prince of this world. He has been dethroned. He has lost his power, he is no longer master, he no longer has to be served! He can be defied, he can be disobeyed! It is even possible to turn from him, from the loser to Christ the victor! Believe him, and say to him, "Yes, from my heart too, Lord!
You can say this all the more boldly because He Himself encourages you with His words, "And I, if I raise him up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself." (verse 32) How interesting indeed: in fact, the Lord drew very few people to Himself while He was on earth. The crowds followed him more out of curiosity than anything else, but few indeed followed him with heart and soul. At the very end of his life, so few that only a handful of small friends remained at the foot of the cross. His real attraction to the Lord began when he had me lifted up on the cross. And why was the attraction of the crucified Lord so much stronger than that of the walking and miraculous Jesus? Simply because it was in Christ's death that God's amazing love was made manifest. His whole life was about love, but in his death on the cross the fullness, the glory, the richness of God's love was revealed. And love always attracts. It attracts everyone. Everyone longs for love, and where love is found, everyone is willing to go, to be attracted.
Do you feel the love of God in that Christ died for us? "Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13), Jesus once said. Many times a mother, when she sees her child suffering, says: "Oh, that I could take the suffering from him upon myself! She loves her child so much that she would gladly offer herself as a sacrifice for her child if she could - but she can't! On the cross it happened! Someone offered himself as a sacrifice for you, and God accepted that exchange!
That's why I am attracted to Christ lifted up on the cross. That is why it is true: "I draw all to myself" - including you! Just let it be! You too will fall under the spell of its attraction, and then you cannot escape it. At the sight of the cross, even the indifferent will be stilled and go away. At the sight of the cross, let the discouraged also be encouraged. At the sight of the cross, let sinners also come in peace. At the foot of the cross, all human afflictions may approach God with confidence, and there find eternal help and renewal.
Here is the good news of Good Friday. The holy cross of Christ stands, and we can stand before it. Let each one of us ask the Lord with all the fullness of his heart in the words of the song:
I look 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: 23 March 1951, Good Friday morning.
Lesson
Lk 23,33-49