The Death of Christ
Paul has had us up on the heights. Now he takes us down to the depths. He has taken us out among the stars and back before the beginning of time and has set before us the deity of Christ. Now he sets before us the death of Christ. The contrast could hardly be greater. Paul has been reminding us that God has no plan, no program, and no purpose either for our planet or for all of the vast reaches of space that does not find its center in the person of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. He confronts us now with the most amazing of all of the purposes of God—His purpose in redemption, His plan from a past eternity to save ruined sinners of Adam’s fallen race at infinite cost.
In a single sentence, down we come from the realm where Christ is crowned with glory and honor to the place where He was crucified in weakness and shame.
We are hurried unceremoniously to Calvary to see men nailing their Maker to a tree.
The verses that are now before us deal with the doctrine of reconciliation.
Reconciliation! Not once in the Bible is it ever said that God is reconciled to man. God has no need to be reconciled to us; we need to be reconciled to Him. The hostility is all on our part. God’s hands are outstretched to us in love and always have been. We are the ones who have turned away. The hostility is always on man’s side, not on God’s side.
“Fred,” she said, “do you remember when we was courting?”
“Yep!” he said, “Sure do!”
“Do you remember how you would hold my hand?”
“Sure do!”
“Do you remember how close we used to sit when we went out in that old jalopy of yours?”
“Yep! I remember.”
“Do you remember how you would put your one arm around me and drive with just one hand, Fred?”
“Sure do,” he said.
“Well,” she said, “how come we don’t sit like that no more?”
He said, “I ain’t moved!”
God does not need to be reconciled to us. We need to be reconciled to Him. The change of attitude must be ours, not His. He hasn’t moved! He is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). Blessed be His Name!
Paul begins with the means of our reconciliation. He says that God has “made peace through the blood of his cross.” What an astounding statement! One would have thought that God would have waged war over that blood. The Spirit of God says that He has “made peace” through it instead.
At the heart of that statement is God’s plan for our ruined race. That plan has its roots in a past eternity. Way back in a dateless, timeless past, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit decided that they would act in creation. With their omniscient foreknowledge of all things, they knew full well that if they acted in creation the time would come when they would have to act in redemption. Thus, the Lord Jesus is described as the Lamb that was slain from before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8). The triune God saw sin raise its head in the universe, sponsored by Lucifer, the anointed cherub.
They saw it give rise to graveyards, leper colonies, prisons, madhouses, and battlefields. They saw our race throw off the light yoke imposed by divine love and gird on, instead, the harsh chains of lust, hatred, and fear.
Then the problem arose (if it is permissible to think of God’s having a problem). God’s holiness said, “Punish them.” God’s love said, “Pardon them.” The solution was simple but sublime and costly beyond anything that we can conceive. God passed sentence against the human race, the maximum sentence commensurate with absolute holiness—death, followed by eternal damnation in those dread, mysterious fires prepared for the Devil himself and his fellow conspirators (Matt. 25:41). Then, in the person of the Lord Jesus, God paid the penalty Himself.
Thus, the demands of God’s holiness and the demands of His love have been met. The psalmist caught a glimpse of it when he wrote:
At Calvary, two opposite things are displayed. By crucifying the Son of God, our race exhibited how far it would go in rebellion against God. Sin came out into the open. It was unmasked and exposed for what it really is in all of its naked horror. At the Cross, man did his worst; human wickedness could do no more.
Calvary not only exhibited the greatest tragedy in man’s dealings with God but also displayed at the same time the greatest triumph in God’s dealings with men. For at Calvary God dealt once and for all with the entire question of sin and with the ancient mystery of iniquity. The vast burden of human sin was laid on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy One of Israel was “made sin” for us. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).
Both heaven and earth have been defiled by sin. Sin did not begin on earth; it began in heaven. It did not begin with Adam and Eve but in the heart of the highest and most glorious created being in the universe. It began in the heart of that very one who was behind the Gnostic heresy and its dark teaching, teaching that was designed to push Christ down, ever down, in the scale of things, and to exalt Satan in His place. So because sin has defiled both realms, God intends to create both a new heaven and a new earth. All trace of sin will be removed, and both spheres will be reconciled to God. The only marks of sin that will be seen in the new creation will be the marks of Calvary in the hands and feet of Jesus.
God’s reign extends to three realms; His reconciliation extends to only two. Jesus will indeed be confessed as Lord on earth, in heaven, and in hell (Phil. 2:9–11). Fallen men and fallen angels alike will own Him as Lord. Unrepentant human beings and unredeemable fallen angels and demons, however, will never be reconciled. Their estate, as terrible as it is, is eternal. It is their choice. The sentence is crystal clear: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still” (Rev. 22:11). Similarly, the reconciliation of the redeemed is eternal: “He that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” People go to a lost eternity not because they have rebelled against God but because they refuse to be reconciled with God. God’s reign, then, extends to three realms; reconciliation extends to only two realms
Nowhere is man’s alienation from God more evident than in his thinking and especially in his thinking about God. Ever since the Fall, when our first parents ate of the tree of knowledge, the human mind has been susceptible to error. Satan knows this and always goes after the mind (2 Cor. 4:3–4).
Man’s mental alienation from God is to be seen everywhere. Witness the countless false religions that flourish around the world. Witness the power with which a false philosophy such as evolution holds men’s minds captive. Or think how much easier it is to remember a smutty story than it is to memorize a passage of Scripture. How easy it is to conjure up impure fantasies. How easy it is to deceive people.
Fallen man, especially, cherishes many false, distorted, and wicked ideas about God (Rom. 1:21–32). People resist the revealed truth about God with all of the power of their minds, right down to the moment of salvation or the moment of death. Even after a person is saved and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, old errors die hard. Divine truth is distorted, diluted, or denied. Once an idea is lodged in the head, it is hard, if not impossible, to get it out again.
What a blessing that the Holy Spirit does not give up when we persist in our errors. He graciously continues to shine light into our hearts to reach our darkened minds.
Sin is the most destructive force in the universe. It debases us and ruins us. When the great artist Leonardo de Vinci decided to paint what became his masterpiece, The Last Supper, he sought for a long time to find a man whom he could use as a model for the picture of Christ. He finally found a man, a young man named Pietro Bandinelli, singing in one of the choirs of Rome. He hired him to sit for him as he immortalized his face as the face of Christ.
Years passed. Much of the painting was finished, but still the artist lacked a suitable model whom he could paint as Judas Iscariot, someone whose features bore the indelible marks of sin. Finally he found a beggar, a man of villainous countenance, exactly suited to portray the face of the traitor. He hired the man, who sat stolidly while the artist transferred his features to the face of Judas on the canvas. When he was finished and as he paid the man for his service, he said, “By the way, what is your name?” “Pietro Bandinelli,” the man replied. Sin had done its work and left its mark.
Sin debases character and ruins lives. Sin makes us enemies and aliens from God. All that lay between the man with the face of Jesus and the man with the face of Judas was a few short years of sin.
Sin alienates us from God mentally and morally. But still God’s love reaches out to us. The Holy Spirit brings His Word to bear upon our consciences. He shines the light of the gospel into our darkened minds. He lets us see how great are the ravages that sin has wrought in us and how greatly we need to be reconciled to God.
SALLY and Jack went to their grandpa’s house to visit. While they were there, Grandpa took them out to teach Jack how to use a slingshot. Jack was really good at it. After a little while, Grandpa went off, and by accident, Jack threw a rock with the slingshot, hit one of Grandpa’s ducks in the head, and killed it.
Sally said, “Ooh, I am going to tell.”
Terrified, Jack cried, “Please don’t tell.”
Sally agreed and they went back to the house.
When the kids arrived, Grandma announced that she and Sally would clean up the house.
With a sly look, Sally said, “Grandma, Jack would love to do the dishes, wouldn’t you, Jack? Jack doesn’t mind doing the dishes. In fact, Jack, tell Grandma how much you love doing dishes.”
Jack said, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Grandma, I like doing dishes.”
Determined to get a bunch of housework done, Grandma continued, “Well then, Sally we’re going to vacuum the floor.”
“Grandma,” Sally replied, “let me tell you about Jack and vacuuming. That boy is a natural-born vacuum person. Come on, Jack, tell Grandma how much you like to vacuum.”
Grimacing, Jack said through his teeth, “Grandma, I love being a vaccumer. Yeah, I do.”
“Well, then we’re going to dust the house.”
“Oh, dust the house, Grandma? Jack, tell her how much you like dusting the house.”
Jack was boiling now. “Yeah, I like dusting the house.” He knew he was trapped, not only for now but for the rest of his life.
Later that day, well after Jack had done more than his share of the work assigned to the two grandchildren, Grandpa said, “Jack, come here. I saw that little episode earlier today. Let me tell you something, Jack. I know about the duck, but I didn’t say anything, because I wanted to see how long you were going to let Sally make you her slave. All you had to do to keep her from holding you hostage was to tell me what you had done.”
God knows that you’ve killed the duck. You don’t have to hide it. Satan wants you to remember that you killed the duck and hold you hostage to your guilt. By confessing our sin to God and allowing Him to forgive us, we can release Satan’s hold on us