He is risen! Good morning. Today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, risen from the dead, a historical fact as sure as any you have ever heard. People saw Him. They spoke with Him, and He spoke with them. They touched Him, and He touched them. He was not a ghost. He was not a figment of their imagination. He was real. He was flesh and blood, and yet, somehow, more. I want to start this morning by reading the account in the gospel of Mark.
It was the third hour when they crucified Him. The written notice of the charge against Him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. They crucified two robbers with Him, one on His right and one on His left. Those who passed by hurled insults at Him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” – Mark 15:25-30
If you do not know what irony is, this passage is a good example. Jesus was going to destroy the “temple” and build it in three days, but the “temple” wasn’t the mere building down there in Jerusalem; the place that had been the location of the Holy of Holies, the Holy Spirit. The “temple” was another location of God, the body of Jesus Christ. And no, it wasn’t that He couldn’t come down from the cross; it was that He wouldn’t. He had come to Earth for this very reason, and He was not going to stop. To come down from that cross might have saved Himself, but it would have lost the whole world. Jesus had come to lay down His life, to pay for their sins.
In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked Him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but He can’t save Himself! Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with Him also heaped insults on Him. – Mark 15:31-32
We know from Luke 23 that one of them eventually changed his mind. One of them realized that Jesus had done nothing wrong, and asked Jesus to remember Him. Jesus told Him He would see Him in paradise. But when I think about this scene – can you picture it? I am angry. I am not so much angry that Jesus is in the cross; He is exactly where He has planned to be before the creation of the universe. No, I am angry at the chief priests and teachers of the law. They admit He saved others! Did you notice that? How many people did they save? They are idiots, and they are jerks.
But Jesus did not respond as I would have responded. He did not respond at all. Do you realize He died even for them? That He loved even them? Just as He died for you and me, just as He loves you and me. To be honest, if we better knew our sin, if we better knew the depths of our depravity, we would see that we are no better than they were. You may think you have never mocked Christ, but when you know His works, as they knew His works, and yet sin, that too is a kind of mocking.
At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?” When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.” One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave Him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said. – Mark 15:33-36
So this idiot of a man confuses “Eloi” with “Eli” thinking He is calling for Elijah. If he had known what Jesus had cried out he would no doubt have had even more fun. But notice that something changed at the sixth hour. The world became dark. By the way, the Roman (non-Christian) historian Thallus recorded that the sun did go dark at midday during the crucifixion. He, however, argued that it must have been a solar eclipse, even though we know that Passover occurs at full moons, not new moons, as is required for a solar eclipse, and take only a few minutes, not three hours.
Tertullian, the church historian, also mentions the eclipse and says that the evidence is still available: “You yourselves have the account of the world-portent still in your archives.”
Why did Jesus cry out as He did? It is because God poured out on Jesus the penalty for all the sins of all men.
God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. – 2 Cor.5:21
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. – I Peter 2:24
Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. 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. – Isaiah 53:4-5
Now, don’t get me wrong – I am thankful for what Jesus has done, going to the cross for my sin, but sometimes I just feel it is wrong that God would send His Son to the cross, that He would pour out the penalty for all sins of all men for all time compressed into this short time period. We honestly have no idea of what really happened here. We may be uncomfortable with this, but the Bible is clear that the justice of God demands eternal, infinite penalty for sin. To say this is false would be to say that God is wrong in having Hell.
There is a Christian book out right now by a pastor who has been very influential in evangelical circles that comes right out and says that our doctrine of Hell is wrong, that although there may be such a place, God will somehow work it out so that no one actually goes there. This book is wrong. It contradicts Scripture left and right. But part of me understands where he is coming from, why many feel pressure to find a way “out” for God. The bottom line is that we do have a hard time understanding eternal penalty for sin.
I have been thinking about this on and off for the last few months, and this week, after reading several things at one of my favorite web sites, christianthinktank.com, I was struck by an error in my thinking. We humans have no problem with the idea that punishment should be proportional to the crime. Someone who murders should get a more severe sentence than someone who steals, because the murderer has done something much worse to his fellow man. And at a basic level we don’t really have a problem with the “an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” mentality either.
Most Americans are not opposed to the death penalty for first degree murder, and among those who are opposed, a significant number of them are opposed simply because they don’t want a human government to have that much power, or because mistakes are made, or for other pragmatic reasons like this. There are other reasons some Christians have for opposing the death penalty, including the idea that we, being aware of the eternal consequences of a life that doesn’t come to Christ, should not want to “force things along.” I am not asking you to take a position one way or the other. My point is that these various reasons for opposition do not deny the fundamental argument that because someone stole another person’s life, a like repayment is not unreasonable.
So what was the error in my thinking? It is that I have previously thought of all sins as having finite effects. But I had to ask myself, why do I think this? Does it have any basis in reality? Probably not! God is eternal. More than that, He is beyond time. He invented time. He “is and was and is to come.” He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. So when we sin against God, it is an eternal crime against Him, is it not? The fact that we view ourselves as non-eternal (even though we are in fact eternal) is what I think trips us up. Why would we think that us spending 10 years in jail would be any kind of appropriate penalty for eternal sin against an eternal God? That 10 years is nothing to God, and it is also nothing to us, if we are going to live forever. Are our sins “eternal” to God? Do they affect Him forever? Unless they are paid for in some way, I would say yes.
I am sure you know that if someone does something horrible, something traumatic to a child it is something they tend to deal with to one degree or another for the rest of their lives. That’s not to say that there can be no healing; certainly there can be healing, but it is not the same. There are still lifelong consequences even with the healing. This is true for adults too, I believe; it’s just that as we get older we have so much scar tissue, so muany defenses and walls from our past hurts that we say it bounces off us. But if we hadn’t had all those past hurts, I believe the later hurts would do just as much damage to us as they would to a child. What about God? God is without sin. God is holy. Can our sins scar God eternally? These are deep questions. I would ask this: How can Jesus’ death on the cross, His separation from God, God’s pouring out His punishment for all sin of all time on Him there, not scar God eternally?
The other thought I had along these lines is that our sins can and do have eternal consequences not just to God, but to our fellow man. That child who was hurt grows up and still deals with those hurts. That child may marry and become a parent. This person, now a parent, goes on and hurts another generation. At it can go on generation after generation after generation. Not only this, but our sins can multiply as they go from generation to generation. That one hurt child grows up and those hurts affect all of his children. And those children grow up and hurt even more people and so on. Do you see how our sins can have eternal, horrendous effects?
We could go on and talk about how maybe those sins impede some from coming to Christ, if that were possible. (That’s a whole ‘nother complicated topic, so I won’t go there.) And we could also talk about whether, even when we who are believers are finally perfected in Christ, whether we still bear the scars of our past hurts. I think we can be both whole and restored and new and yet scarred. God can use all things for good, so He can redeem those scars, and turn them into something that, for example, makes us “deeper” people, or more compassionate, or so on, but they are yet scars. I could be wrong about some of this; these are all hard things! But my point in all this is that I am much less torn, much less conflicted, about the idea of eternal consequences for so-called finite sins. I now really question whether there is such a thing as a finite sin.
I bring all this up because it makes what happened on the cross even more shocking. It makes me, even more, shout, “This is wrong!” Given that hell is the appropriate consequence of our unredeemed sin against God, given that this consequence is eternal, what in the world happened there on that cross? We cannot imagine.
With a loud cry, Jesus breathed His last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard His cry and saw how He died, He said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” – Mark 15:37-39
The other gospels give additional details about the last events of Jesus life, including His very last words. In particular, John notes that at the very end Jesus said, “It is finished.” This is tremendously important. It means that Jesus’ work on the cross really paid for all sins, including future sins.
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. – I Peter 3:18
Unlike the other high priests, He does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for His own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when He offered himself. – Hebrews 7:27
This passage from Hebrews compares the temporary, foreshadowing system for dealing with sin established by God in Old Testament times with that of what Christ has done on the cross. Jesus was both the high priest, the one who makes sacrifices, and the sacrifice itself. His sacrifice, being once for all, put an end to the need for the Old Testament system, and God Himself verified this by tearing the thick, huge curtain in the Temple from top (where nobody could possibly reach) to bottom.
Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there. – Mark 15:40-41
Mark focuses here on the women because of what is to come.
It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). So as evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. Pilate was surprised to hear that He was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph. So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where He was laid. – Mark 15:42-47
And so we had the unthinkable for the disciples and for the women. Jesus was dead! How could this be? What would they do now? Had they been fools? Yes, Jesus had warned them that this would happen, and He told them what would happen next, but He veiled His words, and His disciples did not yet begin to understand them. And I can’t really blame them. We know the whole story, we know what is going to happen next. But they didn’t. They were living this. No doubt they were in total shock, the typical first stage of grief.
Now, the hurriedness of Jesus’ burial was somewhat unusual. It happened because of trying to finish up before the Sabbath. Now, John tells us that Nicodemus accompanied Joseph of Arimathea, and that together, they prepared the body in the traditional way, using a mixture of myrrh and aloes, and wrapped the body in strips of linen. Then, hurriedly, they went and put Jesus’ body in a nearby tomb, a new tomb that had never been used, and then they rolled shut the stone.
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” – Mark 16:1-3
Now why did these women want to anoint Jesus’ body? Maybe because they thought the men hadn’t done a very good job! Luke mentions that they were bringing the spices they had prepared. Perhaps this is what they were doing on that awful day and a half as they tried to understand the unthinkable. People who are in the shock of grief do not always think rationally, and it seems they did not think this through very well.
Now, I think another reason they may have decided to go to the tomb is that the traditional way of expressing grief in that culture included a time of weeping and mourning over the body while holding it. Yes, this made you “unclean” according to Jewish Law, but the Law also explained how you could be made clean again. The nature of Jesus’ death and the hurry to take His body meant that these women did not get a chance to do this, and perhaps they thought they could do this as they anointed His body with the spices. And so they made their way there and on the way realized that they had not thought about that massive stone.
They may not have realized that there were more impossible obstacles than just this: a Roman seal was placed over the tomb forbidding, on penalty of death, anyone from moving the stone. In addition, a Roman guard was posted to keep people away from Jesus’ body. Why did this happen? Matthew tells us. The Pharisees and chief priests went to Pilate and asked him to do these things, because they remembered that Jesus had said He would rise after three days. The Pharisees and priests were fearful that the disciples would steal the body and then claim He had risen. Pilate, not wanting even more trouble, agreed and did what they suggested.
One thing that is amazing to me, thinking about these things, is that the Pharisees and priests understood Jesus’ veiled message about rising from the dead, but His disciples did not! Maybe some of them did get the hint, but believing it could actually happen seemed to be something none of them could seriously consider.
But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. – Mark 16:4-5
What happened to the guard? Ah, that has to do with that “young man” there, actually an angel. This angel, prior to the arrival of the women, appeared like lightning, and his clothes were like snow. He rolled back the stone and sat on it, apparently either with an earthquake or the force of an earthquake. The guards were extremely afraid, and apparently left before the women came. (Or they may have been there wandering around in shock.) The angel’s appearance also frightened the women.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see Him, just as He told you.’” Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. – Mark 16:6-8
Matthew tells us that on their way, who met them? Jesus! Risen from the dead! In the flesh! Here is the account from Matthew:
So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” He said. They came to Him, clasped His feet and worshiped Him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see Me.” – Matt. 28:8-10
Jesus went on to appear to the disciples and to others. Paul in I Corinthians records this:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all He appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. – I Cor. 15:3-8
Why doesn’t Paul mention Jesus first appearing to the women? Probably because what Paul wrote here (which seems to be quoted by him, rather than created by him, so it is in fact an extremely early creed of the early church) was written as a kind of evidence statement, almost in a legal document sort of way, and in that culture at that time, the testimony of a woman was not considered valid. This creed was used at the time the people making the claim of seeing Jesus, most of them, anyway, were still alive. This is an important point; it means that while this creed was recited, if you could go to the cities of any of these people, you could talk to them face to face and they would say, “Yes, I saw the risen Lord.” Later they would be willing to die rather than recant their statements, and most of them became martyrs for their faith.
I want to be clear here, without the resurrection, there would be no Christianity. The resurrection of Jesus was what turned these heartbroken, in-shock, lost disciples, into bold, mature men, into leaders, into witnesses who would continue to live totally for Christ and tell all who would listen about Him rising from the dead – along with why He died and what it all meant – until they died martyr’s deaths. As Paul goes on in I Cor. 15:20: But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead!
There is so much more we could talk about here, a lifetime of things to talk about, but I want to spend my remaining time talking about “heart” things.
How much did God the Father love Jesus?
Isaiah, quoting God the Father speaking of the Christ (and also quoted by Matthew in Matthew 12), wrote this:
Here is My Servant, whom I uphold, My chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on Him and He will bring justice to the nations. – Isaiah 42:1
At the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist we have this:
As soon as Jesus was baptized, he [John] went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he [John] saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on Him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.” – Matthew 3:16-17
At the transfiguration of Jesus, on the high mountain, with Peter, James, and John, where Jesus’ face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as light, and where Jesus spoke with Moses and Elijah, we have this:
While he [that’s Peter, uttering some nonsense] was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is My Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!” – Matt. 17:3
How much did God the Father love Jesus? We have no inkling of how much. God couldn’t stop boasting on Him, declaring His love. Offhand, I cannot think of anything else God the Father said in the Gospels! When God the Father speaks, He declares how He loves and is pleased with His Son. For God the Father, that’s the only thing worth saying. And yet…
And yet, He sent His Son, whom He loved, to Earth to die for the sins of you and me. He sent Him to go on that cross, endure the unimaginable physical suffering, and even more to accept the penalty, eternal penalties for eternal sins, why? Because He loves you and He loves me.
Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins is shocking. It’s inappropriate. Who are we, what are we, to have God do this? He should have just wiped us out. All of heaven wouldn’t have batted an eye. But this – it’s scandalous. In my human thinking, in my understanding, it’s wrong. And yet He did it. Jesus died for us. But as the song goes, death couldn’t hold Him down. God raised Him from the dead because there could be no other outcome. God is love, and there is no love apart from God.
I am not all that comfortable shouting and hooting and hollering about Jesus rising from the dead. I cannot separate thoughts of the resurrection from thoughts of the shocking scandalous cross. I may not be able to shout, but I can shed tears of joy, and I encourage you to do the same. Join me in reciting this familiar passage of Scripture; I pray it will have new meaning and new freshness for you:
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16
It was the third hour when they crucified Him. The written notice of the charge against Him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. They crucified two robbers with Him, one on His right and one on His left. Those who passed by hurled insults at Him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” – Mark 15:25-30
If you do not know what irony is, this passage is a good example. Jesus was going to destroy the “temple” and build it in three days, but the “temple” wasn’t the mere building down there in Jerusalem; the place that had been the location of the Holy of Holies, the Holy Spirit. The “temple” was another location of God, the body of Jesus Christ. And no, it wasn’t that He couldn’t come down from the cross; it was that He wouldn’t. He had come to Earth for this very reason, and He was not going to stop. To come down from that cross might have saved Himself, but it would have lost the whole world. Jesus had come to lay down His life, to pay for their sins.
In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked Him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but He can’t save Himself! Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with Him also heaped insults on Him. – Mark 15:31-32
We know from Luke 23 that one of them eventually changed his mind. One of them realized that Jesus had done nothing wrong, and asked Jesus to remember Him. Jesus told Him He would see Him in paradise. But when I think about this scene – can you picture it? I am angry. I am not so much angry that Jesus is in the cross; He is exactly where He has planned to be before the creation of the universe. No, I am angry at the chief priests and teachers of the law. They admit He saved others! Did you notice that? How many people did they save? They are idiots, and they are jerks.
But Jesus did not respond as I would have responded. He did not respond at all. Do you realize He died even for them? That He loved even them? Just as He died for you and me, just as He loves you and me. To be honest, if we better knew our sin, if we better knew the depths of our depravity, we would see that we are no better than they were. You may think you have never mocked Christ, but when you know His works, as they knew His works, and yet sin, that too is a kind of mocking.
At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?” When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.” One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave Him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said. – Mark 15:33-36
So this idiot of a man confuses “Eloi” with “Eli” thinking He is calling for Elijah. If he had known what Jesus had cried out he would no doubt have had even more fun. But notice that something changed at the sixth hour. The world became dark. By the way, the Roman (non-Christian) historian Thallus recorded that the sun did go dark at midday during the crucifixion. He, however, argued that it must have been a solar eclipse, even though we know that Passover occurs at full moons, not new moons, as is required for a solar eclipse, and take only a few minutes, not three hours.
Tertullian, the church historian, also mentions the eclipse and says that the evidence is still available: “You yourselves have the account of the world-portent still in your archives.”
Why did Jesus cry out as He did? It is because God poured out on Jesus the penalty for all the sins of all men.
God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. – 2 Cor.5:21
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. – I Peter 2:24
Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. 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. – Isaiah 53:4-5
Now, don’t get me wrong – I am thankful for what Jesus has done, going to the cross for my sin, but sometimes I just feel it is wrong that God would send His Son to the cross, that He would pour out the penalty for all sins of all men for all time compressed into this short time period. We honestly have no idea of what really happened here. We may be uncomfortable with this, but the Bible is clear that the justice of God demands eternal, infinite penalty for sin. To say this is false would be to say that God is wrong in having Hell.
There is a Christian book out right now by a pastor who has been very influential in evangelical circles that comes right out and says that our doctrine of Hell is wrong, that although there may be such a place, God will somehow work it out so that no one actually goes there. This book is wrong. It contradicts Scripture left and right. But part of me understands where he is coming from, why many feel pressure to find a way “out” for God. The bottom line is that we do have a hard time understanding eternal penalty for sin.
I have been thinking about this on and off for the last few months, and this week, after reading several things at one of my favorite web sites, christianthinktank.com, I was struck by an error in my thinking. We humans have no problem with the idea that punishment should be proportional to the crime. Someone who murders should get a more severe sentence than someone who steals, because the murderer has done something much worse to his fellow man. And at a basic level we don’t really have a problem with the “an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” mentality either.
Most Americans are not opposed to the death penalty for first degree murder, and among those who are opposed, a significant number of them are opposed simply because they don’t want a human government to have that much power, or because mistakes are made, or for other pragmatic reasons like this. There are other reasons some Christians have for opposing the death penalty, including the idea that we, being aware of the eternal consequences of a life that doesn’t come to Christ, should not want to “force things along.” I am not asking you to take a position one way or the other. My point is that these various reasons for opposition do not deny the fundamental argument that because someone stole another person’s life, a like repayment is not unreasonable.
So what was the error in my thinking? It is that I have previously thought of all sins as having finite effects. But I had to ask myself, why do I think this? Does it have any basis in reality? Probably not! God is eternal. More than that, He is beyond time. He invented time. He “is and was and is to come.” He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. So when we sin against God, it is an eternal crime against Him, is it not? The fact that we view ourselves as non-eternal (even though we are in fact eternal) is what I think trips us up. Why would we think that us spending 10 years in jail would be any kind of appropriate penalty for eternal sin against an eternal God? That 10 years is nothing to God, and it is also nothing to us, if we are going to live forever. Are our sins “eternal” to God? Do they affect Him forever? Unless they are paid for in some way, I would say yes.
I am sure you know that if someone does something horrible, something traumatic to a child it is something they tend to deal with to one degree or another for the rest of their lives. That’s not to say that there can be no healing; certainly there can be healing, but it is not the same. There are still lifelong consequences even with the healing. This is true for adults too, I believe; it’s just that as we get older we have so much scar tissue, so muany defenses and walls from our past hurts that we say it bounces off us. But if we hadn’t had all those past hurts, I believe the later hurts would do just as much damage to us as they would to a child. What about God? God is without sin. God is holy. Can our sins scar God eternally? These are deep questions. I would ask this: How can Jesus’ death on the cross, His separation from God, God’s pouring out His punishment for all sin of all time on Him there, not scar God eternally?
The other thought I had along these lines is that our sins can and do have eternal consequences not just to God, but to our fellow man. That child who was hurt grows up and still deals with those hurts. That child may marry and become a parent. This person, now a parent, goes on and hurts another generation. At it can go on generation after generation after generation. Not only this, but our sins can multiply as they go from generation to generation. That one hurt child grows up and those hurts affect all of his children. And those children grow up and hurt even more people and so on. Do you see how our sins can have eternal, horrendous effects?
We could go on and talk about how maybe those sins impede some from coming to Christ, if that were possible. (That’s a whole ‘nother complicated topic, so I won’t go there.) And we could also talk about whether, even when we who are believers are finally perfected in Christ, whether we still bear the scars of our past hurts. I think we can be both whole and restored and new and yet scarred. God can use all things for good, so He can redeem those scars, and turn them into something that, for example, makes us “deeper” people, or more compassionate, or so on, but they are yet scars. I could be wrong about some of this; these are all hard things! But my point in all this is that I am much less torn, much less conflicted, about the idea of eternal consequences for so-called finite sins. I now really question whether there is such a thing as a finite sin.
I bring all this up because it makes what happened on the cross even more shocking. It makes me, even more, shout, “This is wrong!” Given that hell is the appropriate consequence of our unredeemed sin against God, given that this consequence is eternal, what in the world happened there on that cross? We cannot imagine.
With a loud cry, Jesus breathed His last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard His cry and saw how He died, He said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” – Mark 15:37-39
The other gospels give additional details about the last events of Jesus life, including His very last words. In particular, John notes that at the very end Jesus said, “It is finished.” This is tremendously important. It means that Jesus’ work on the cross really paid for all sins, including future sins.
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. – I Peter 3:18
Unlike the other high priests, He does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for His own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when He offered himself. – Hebrews 7:27
This passage from Hebrews compares the temporary, foreshadowing system for dealing with sin established by God in Old Testament times with that of what Christ has done on the cross. Jesus was both the high priest, the one who makes sacrifices, and the sacrifice itself. His sacrifice, being once for all, put an end to the need for the Old Testament system, and God Himself verified this by tearing the thick, huge curtain in the Temple from top (where nobody could possibly reach) to bottom.
Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there. – Mark 15:40-41
Mark focuses here on the women because of what is to come.
It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). So as evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. Pilate was surprised to hear that He was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph. So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where He was laid. – Mark 15:42-47
And so we had the unthinkable for the disciples and for the women. Jesus was dead! How could this be? What would they do now? Had they been fools? Yes, Jesus had warned them that this would happen, and He told them what would happen next, but He veiled His words, and His disciples did not yet begin to understand them. And I can’t really blame them. We know the whole story, we know what is going to happen next. But they didn’t. They were living this. No doubt they were in total shock, the typical first stage of grief.
Now, the hurriedness of Jesus’ burial was somewhat unusual. It happened because of trying to finish up before the Sabbath. Now, John tells us that Nicodemus accompanied Joseph of Arimathea, and that together, they prepared the body in the traditional way, using a mixture of myrrh and aloes, and wrapped the body in strips of linen. Then, hurriedly, they went and put Jesus’ body in a nearby tomb, a new tomb that had never been used, and then they rolled shut the stone.
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” – Mark 16:1-3
Now why did these women want to anoint Jesus’ body? Maybe because they thought the men hadn’t done a very good job! Luke mentions that they were bringing the spices they had prepared. Perhaps this is what they were doing on that awful day and a half as they tried to understand the unthinkable. People who are in the shock of grief do not always think rationally, and it seems they did not think this through very well.
Now, I think another reason they may have decided to go to the tomb is that the traditional way of expressing grief in that culture included a time of weeping and mourning over the body while holding it. Yes, this made you “unclean” according to Jewish Law, but the Law also explained how you could be made clean again. The nature of Jesus’ death and the hurry to take His body meant that these women did not get a chance to do this, and perhaps they thought they could do this as they anointed His body with the spices. And so they made their way there and on the way realized that they had not thought about that massive stone.
They may not have realized that there were more impossible obstacles than just this: a Roman seal was placed over the tomb forbidding, on penalty of death, anyone from moving the stone. In addition, a Roman guard was posted to keep people away from Jesus’ body. Why did this happen? Matthew tells us. The Pharisees and chief priests went to Pilate and asked him to do these things, because they remembered that Jesus had said He would rise after three days. The Pharisees and priests were fearful that the disciples would steal the body and then claim He had risen. Pilate, not wanting even more trouble, agreed and did what they suggested.
One thing that is amazing to me, thinking about these things, is that the Pharisees and priests understood Jesus’ veiled message about rising from the dead, but His disciples did not! Maybe some of them did get the hint, but believing it could actually happen seemed to be something none of them could seriously consider.
But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. – Mark 16:4-5
What happened to the guard? Ah, that has to do with that “young man” there, actually an angel. This angel, prior to the arrival of the women, appeared like lightning, and his clothes were like snow. He rolled back the stone and sat on it, apparently either with an earthquake or the force of an earthquake. The guards were extremely afraid, and apparently left before the women came. (Or they may have been there wandering around in shock.) The angel’s appearance also frightened the women.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see Him, just as He told you.’” Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. – Mark 16:6-8
Matthew tells us that on their way, who met them? Jesus! Risen from the dead! In the flesh! Here is the account from Matthew:
So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” He said. They came to Him, clasped His feet and worshiped Him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see Me.” – Matt. 28:8-10
Jesus went on to appear to the disciples and to others. Paul in I Corinthians records this:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all He appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. – I Cor. 15:3-8
Why doesn’t Paul mention Jesus first appearing to the women? Probably because what Paul wrote here (which seems to be quoted by him, rather than created by him, so it is in fact an extremely early creed of the early church) was written as a kind of evidence statement, almost in a legal document sort of way, and in that culture at that time, the testimony of a woman was not considered valid. This creed was used at the time the people making the claim of seeing Jesus, most of them, anyway, were still alive. This is an important point; it means that while this creed was recited, if you could go to the cities of any of these people, you could talk to them face to face and they would say, “Yes, I saw the risen Lord.” Later they would be willing to die rather than recant their statements, and most of them became martyrs for their faith.
I want to be clear here, without the resurrection, there would be no Christianity. The resurrection of Jesus was what turned these heartbroken, in-shock, lost disciples, into bold, mature men, into leaders, into witnesses who would continue to live totally for Christ and tell all who would listen about Him rising from the dead – along with why He died and what it all meant – until they died martyr’s deaths. As Paul goes on in I Cor. 15:20: But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead!
There is so much more we could talk about here, a lifetime of things to talk about, but I want to spend my remaining time talking about “heart” things.
How much did God the Father love Jesus?
Isaiah, quoting God the Father speaking of the Christ (and also quoted by Matthew in Matthew 12), wrote this:
Here is My Servant, whom I uphold, My chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on Him and He will bring justice to the nations. – Isaiah 42:1
At the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist we have this:
As soon as Jesus was baptized, he [John] went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he [John] saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on Him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.” – Matthew 3:16-17
At the transfiguration of Jesus, on the high mountain, with Peter, James, and John, where Jesus’ face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as light, and where Jesus spoke with Moses and Elijah, we have this:
While he [that’s Peter, uttering some nonsense] was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is My Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!” – Matt. 17:3
How much did God the Father love Jesus? We have no inkling of how much. God couldn’t stop boasting on Him, declaring His love. Offhand, I cannot think of anything else God the Father said in the Gospels! When God the Father speaks, He declares how He loves and is pleased with His Son. For God the Father, that’s the only thing worth saying. And yet…
And yet, He sent His Son, whom He loved, to Earth to die for the sins of you and me. He sent Him to go on that cross, endure the unimaginable physical suffering, and even more to accept the penalty, eternal penalties for eternal sins, why? Because He loves you and He loves me.
Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins is shocking. It’s inappropriate. Who are we, what are we, to have God do this? He should have just wiped us out. All of heaven wouldn’t have batted an eye. But this – it’s scandalous. In my human thinking, in my understanding, it’s wrong. And yet He did it. Jesus died for us. But as the song goes, death couldn’t hold Him down. God raised Him from the dead because there could be no other outcome. God is love, and there is no love apart from God.
I am not all that comfortable shouting and hooting and hollering about Jesus rising from the dead. I cannot separate thoughts of the resurrection from thoughts of the shocking scandalous cross. I may not be able to shout, but I can shed tears of joy, and I encourage you to do the same. Join me in reciting this familiar passage of Scripture; I pray it will have new meaning and new freshness for you:
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16
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