The Cross of Christ, Part 4 3-26-17

The Achievements of the Cross

As we move into our fourth study on the cross, the suffering, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have looked these last three weeks at the centrality, the cause, and the necessity of the cross. In our time together last week we located the problem of forgiveness and thus the necessity of the cross in the gravity of sin and the holiness of God that is in the realities of who we are and who God is. Christ died for us because of our sin. He died for God because of His love and justice. Charles Cranfield, in his commentary on Romans 3:25 that we studied last week said,"God, because in His mercy He willed to forgive sinful men, and in His holiness willed to forgive them righteously, that is, without any condoning of sin, purposed to direct against His own very self in the person of His Son the full weight of that righteous wrath which they deserved." That is as succinct and accurate a description of the motivations and activities of God in the cross as I have ever read. That is why it is typed out for you. Last week we expounded on the first half of that statement. Today we delve into the latter half, looking into the mystery of what the death of Christ at Calvary actually did. And our answer to that question is also typed out for you in what I hope will be a memorable statement. The accomplishment of the cross can be understood as a satisfaction of divine justice by the sacrifice of a sin-bearing substitute. To repeat. The accomplishment of the cross can be understood as a satisfaction of divine justice by the sacrifice of a sin-bearing substitute. Not only does that summarize all that we will study today - the four S words there also form the outline for this morning.

We begin with the word and the concept of satisfaction. Look at Matthew 20. Here Jesus is telling his disciples for the umpteenth time what was going to happen on their trip into Jerusalem. 18-19Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, 19 and will hand Him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up.”You could not have said it more clearly could you? And yet, did they get it? No.The disciples fought Jesus on this all the way. "No, Jesus, this won't happen to you. You're too good for that." And in fact, in Matthew 20, five minutes after hearing the Savior bear His heart about his coming passion the disciples are in a squabble over which of them would be the greatest. And like a Father dealing with his little kids Jesus has to take them aside and show them a better way. Here He says, 25-28You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. 26 It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, 27 and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” There you have it. There you have an explanation from the lips of Jesus as to the purpose of His laying down His life. He calls it a ransom. Now, that's a term we are familiar with both from movies and from real-life kidnappings. A ransom is a price paid by someone to free someone else from captivity, from bondage. It is usually offered in the context of considerable danger, of a threat to the life of someone valuable. And we saw last time that in the drama of redemption we are the ones in danger. We are the ones facing death because of sin. Romans 6:23aThe wages of sin is death. You could change the term "wages" there to "consequence." Or "punishment." You know, many times in our court system a judge will find someone guilty and sentence them to $500 or ten days in jail. What the judge is doing there is allowing for an option. You can either experience the punishment of jail time or be ransomed with cash. In the mind of that judge justice will be satisfied with either payment. You follow that? In redemption's courtroom God is the judge who has declared us guilty and sentenced us to certain and eternal death. But, there is a ransom provision. But what payment is equal to the punishment of eternal damnation? It is nothing less than the life and blood of the eternal, infinite Son of God Himself. Nothing less valuable will do it. The Lord Jesus comes, as a great and glorious Savior to give his life as a what? A ransom. We call Him our Redeemer because ransoms are paid by Redeemers who meet, who satisfy, the demands of divine justice.

Look at Colossians 2:13(ESV) You, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses. How can a just God do that? 14By canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. I had an anxious father call me once concerned about a daughter who was behind in her rent. He said, "If she doesn't pay her rent they are gonna throw her out on the street. Should I pay her rent?" He was asking me if he should redeem her by satisfying the demands of her contract. In the same way God's law says that if the price of your sin isn't paid judgment day will see you cast out into the outer darkness. The gospel comes to us saying,"Good news, Jesus has paid the debt you owed." What news! What glorious news! So it grieves me to have to tell you this. Some who go by the name of Christ have missed it, have distorted it and have failed to tell the whole truth. Roman Catholicism, as right on as it is at many points, misses on this one. Their confessions teach that Christ's death pays the penalty only for the sin of Adam, leaving you to pay the penalty for your own sins. Their catechisms say, "Eternal punishment is cancelled by either baptism or confession to a priest." And confession is followed by what? By penance, deeds done to make up for the wrong. The Baltimore Catechism says, "Penance is a sacrament by which sins committed after baptism are forgiven." Usually penance consists of praying the rosary or saying so many "Our Fathers". These practices are called, get this, "Works of Satisfaction." Catholicism sees that divine justice must be satisfied but tragically it has missed the New Testament teaching that such is just what Jesus came to do for us because we could never do it ourselves. He cancelled the debt, He took it out, He nailed it to the cross, He paid the ransom. "My hope is in the Lord who gave Himself for me and paid the price of all my sin on Calvary." This is the peace and confidence of every believing soul. The Heidelberg Catechism of the Reformed Church says this, "My only comfort in life and death is that I belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins."

Magnificent truth and we are just getting started. Satisfaction of divine justice - that's point one. See now that it came to pass thru or by sacrifice. Ephesians 5:1-2Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; 2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.At this point we need to get a bit Judaized. We need to see this teaching as the Old Testament Jew would for surely in offering up His own life Christ was fulfilling all that was taught and done in the Old Testament sacrificial system where sacrifices were offered as means of worship and as means of atonement, or appeasement of divine anger over sin. There is a ton of material we could look at, but let's just briefly glance at Passover and the Day of Atonement to see what they teach us about the sacrifice of Christ. The Lord Jesus is called the Lamb of God. I Corinthians 5 calls Him the Passover Lamb. Remember what happened there in Egypt? We read it in Exodus 12. God was preparing to come in judgment upon Egypt, and it would be a judgment of death. There would be death in every house, - every house. Either the first born son would die or else there would be the death, the sacrifice of a substitute, an unblemished male lamb whose blood would be sprinkled over the doors of the house. And this event became the beginning of a rather elaborate system of sacrifices in which the death of an animal is offered up to God as satisfaction for the demands of His law against sin.

Sin required atonement. This was the lesson. In the book of Leviticus God teaches much more about the theology of sacrifice. The high annual day of sacrifice in Israel was the day called Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Let's read what God told Aaron, the high priest, to do on that day. Leviticus 16:11“Then Aaron shall offer the bull of the sin offering which is for himself and make atonement for himself and for his household, and he shall slaughter the bull of the sin offering which is for himself.” First, Aaron had to be cleansed in order to serve as priest and this was done thru sacrifice. Aaron would have laid his hand on the animals head and then killed it. In so doing he testifies that the animal is his substitute, receiving the penalty he deserved. 15-16cThen he shall slaughter the goat of the sin offering which is for the people, and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. 16 He shall make atonement for the holy place, because of the impurities of the sons of Israel and because of their transgressions in regard to all their sins. So, the slaughtered goat was to do what? To make atonement. At-one-ment. God and men, distanced because of our sin, are become one again thru sacrifice. Now listen 21Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness.This is the animal called the scapegoat. And do you see what they were doing? They were symbolically laying on this goat all the sins of the people. He became sin for them and then was banished, sent out into the wilderness to represent the driving away of sin which is the result of the sacrifice of the other animal. Jesus Christ serves as the fulfillment of both goats - the one who bears away the sin, and the one put to death for that sin.

Now you see already in what we have read, the importance of our third point, which is actually last in our key sentence. Satisfaction of divine justice by the sacrifice of a sin-bearing substitute. We look now at the idea of substitute. When you think of sacrifice you have to think of substitutes because that's what it’s all about .Animals were substituted for men. At the Passover, the lamb died in place of the first born son. And in our salvation Christ the Lamb is substituted for us. Martin Luther called it the wonderful exchange. You know the New Testament speaks repeatedly about Christ dying for us. Romans 5:8But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.II Corinthians 5:14-15For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; 15 and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.Jesus says the good shepherd lays down His life for His sheep. What does all that mean? It means He died in our place, as our substitute, as the lamb slain so that we need not be slain. Remember how the high priest would lay his hand on the sacrifice and symbolically transfer the guilt of the people on to that animal? It was Christ, acting as our High Priest who laid those sins on himself when Hedied. So that when Christ died He was, in a real sense, the greatest sinner that has ever been. II Corinthians 5:21He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.Stott asks, “How could God express simultaneously His holiness in judgement and His love in pardon?" His answer, "Only by providing a divine substitute for the sinner, so that the substitute would receive the judgment and the sinner the pardon." Do yousee the wisdom and the beauty and the wonder of what God has done? "Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned He stood; sealed my pardon with His blood; Hallelujah what a Savior!"

So, we have satisfaction of divine justice by the sacrifice of a substitute, but we need to see and grasp that this substitute brings salvation only by bearing our sin. He is a sin-bearing substitute. That describes what He substitutes for. He is punished in our place. The greatest teaching on this in God's word is actually in the Old Testament, in Isaiah 53. Look at it, this passage so often quoted in the New Testament. 4Surely our griefs He Himself bore,and our sorrows He carried;yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,smitten of God, and afflicted.Listen for the language of substitution. 5-6But He was pierced through for our transgressions,He was crushed for our iniquities;the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,and by His scourging we are healed.6 All of us like sheep have gone astray,each of us has turned to his own way;but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us allto fall on Him.Marvelous, yet there is more. 10abcBut the Lord was pleasedto crush Him, putting Him to grief;if He would render Himself as a guilt offering. 11-12

As a result of the anguish of His soul,He will see it and be satisfied;by His knowledge the Righteous One,My Servant, will justify the many,as He will bear their iniquities.12 Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great,and He will divide the booty with the strong;because He poured out Himself to death,and was numbered with the transgressors;yet He Himself bore the sin of many,and interceded for the transgressors.And the reason this is so sensational, the glorious point behind this teaching is that if Jesus bears our sin, and dies doing so, then we...? No longer have to bear them, have to die for them. We may still suffer some temporal consequences of sin, the personal, physical, psychological, financial and social consequences of sin, but the penal consequences, the deserved penalty of alienation from God has been satisfied by Christ. My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more!!! Praise the Lord, Oh My soul. It occurs thru the miracle of imputation. God takes my sin and lays it on Jesus. He takes his righteousness and bestows it on me. Wonder of wonders. He becomes sin, I become righteous. Who shall declare all the triumphs of the cross!? Listen to one man's effort, an attempt to describe what Christ has done for us. Walter Wangerin, tells this story.

I saw a strange sight. I stumbled upon a story most strange, like nothing my life, my street sense,
my sly tongue had ever prepared me for. Even before the dawn one Friday morning I noticed
a young man, handsome and strong, walking the alleys of our City. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear, tenor voice:"Rags, Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags! Rags!" "Now, this is a wonder," I thought to myself, for the man stood six-feet-four, and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner city? I followed him. My curiosity drove me. And I wasn't disappointed. Soon the Ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into a handkerchief, sighing, and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking. The Ragman stopped his cart. Quietly, he walked to the woman, stepping round tin cans, dead toys, and Pampers. "Give me your rag," he said so gently, "and I'll give you another." He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver. Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing: he put her stained handkerchief to his own face; and then he began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left without a tear.'This is a wonder,' I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing Ragman like a child who cannot turn away from mystery. 'Rags! Rags! New Rags for old!