The Life of All Lives - Our Saviour Jesus - 8
The Crucifixion of Christ
If our last study dealt with an obscure event in the life of the Lord Jesus – the transfiguration – this study looks at what is surely the most prominent – the crucifixion. The very structure of the gospel narratives shows how important the four evangelists considered it to be, because of the amount of detail they go into when describing the cross and the events leading up to it. Indeed, one commentator is perhaps guilty of only slight exaggeration when he describes one of the four accounts as ‘a passion narrative with an extended introduction’.
The intelligent reader of the Bible begins to pick up the monumental importance of the cross from the threshold of the Old Testament. Right from the beginning, there are signposts that point unmistakably towards it. These signposts come in different forms.
First, there are historical signposts. For example, you may be familiar with the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis chapter 22, in the course of which we hear Abraham saying to Isaac, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Those words are heavy with meaning and take us forward hundreds of years to the moment when John the Baptist declared, as he saw Jesus walking by, “Look, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
So, when we read the story of Abraham being willing, in faith, to lay down the life of his son (confident, as we read in Hebrews chapter 11, that God could raise the dead), we are meant to go forward in our minds to another sacrifice to which Abraham’s actions pointed, when, as we read in Romans chapter 8, God ‘did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all’.
Then secondly, there are what we may call ceremonial signposts. For example, in Leviticus chapter 16 we read of the Day of Atonement, which occurred once a year. Part of the ceremony that happened on that day involved two goats. They both began the day alive and well, but the destiny of one was very different to the other. One was sacrificed, and its blood was taken right into the holiest of all inside the tabernacle, where God lived among His people, and it was then sprinkled on the atonement cover and in front of it. As for the other goat, the high priest was to place his hands on its head and ‘confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites – all their sins – and put them on the goat’s head.’ That goat was then taken and banished to a solitary place in the desert.
By this graphic and symbolic ceremony, the cross of Christ was anticipated. First, his sacrifice reached into heaven itself; as the writer to the Hebrews puts it in chapter 9:11, “he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves, but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.”
Then also, like the other goat, he was banished to the wilderness. The writer to the Hebrews tells us in chapter 13 that ‘Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through His own blood.’ The One who had from all eternity known unbroken fellowship with his Father knew what it was to be abandoned to the outer darkness, wringing from Him the cry, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
Finally, there were prophetic signposts. The best known is Isaiah chapter 53, which speaks of the Suffering Servant. About 700 years before the events to which they refer took place, Isaiah wrote these words: “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
There are two questions we should ask about the crucifixion. The first is: did it really happen? And the second is: if it really happened, why did it happen?
We can deal with the first question quite briefly, but without complacently assuming that everyone believes the Biblical claim that Jesus was crucified. However, the evidence for the crucifixion is very powerful; it lies not only in the Bible, which Christians accept as authoritative, but within secular sources too. The evidence for the historical fact of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ is overwhelming.
So we turn to the second question: exactly why did Jesus die? And it is to answer this point that we shall turn in particular to the words of Isaiah.
Now there are many who argue that the crucifixion was the unfortunate death of a good man that represents a demonstration of selfless love and devotion, which should spur us on by its subjective effect upon us as we reflect upon it. There is no doubt that the cross is capable of having this effect. However, it doesn’t come anywhere near a full explanation of the reason for the crucifixion.
So why did Jesus die? The answer is found in that little word ‘for’ that we read in Isaiah: he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. That is, He died not for His own sins, for He had none. No, when Jesus died, He died for His people’s sins. He died as their substitute. He paid a debt that He did not owe but we did, and which we could not pay, nor ever could even if we had a whole eternity in which to try. He bore the penalty that was ours, and so made it possible for God to justly forgive the sins of those who trust Christ for salvation.
We have listened to Isaiah from the Old Testament. Let us now listen to Peter from the New, in chapter 3 of his first letter: ‘He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed.’
And if you think you have heard those words somewhere else, you are quite right. Peter was drawing upon the very words of Isaiah that we have been thinking about. But notice this: the Christian not only knows the joy of sins forgiven, but will ‘die to sins and live for righteousness’. The only sure test of true Christian faith is holiness of life.