So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his
own cross, to the place called
the place of a skull. . . And there they crucified
him. . . (St. John 19:16-18)
Of all the heavy loads a man might bear, the
weight of Jesus’ Cross was the heaviest ever. It wasn’t just the
ponderous weight of the wood, thick and stout enough to bear the
body of a crucified man, strong enough to have the iron spikes of
crucifixion driven into it without splitting. It was what would
take place on that Cross as our Lord hung on it. It was the weight
of the sin of the world that Jesus carried that made His Cross so
heavy. It was the crushing weight of God’s wrath over human
iniquity, poured out on Jesus in our place, that made His Cross so
heavy. Who knows how many poor helpless victims the Romans
crucified during their heyday? But none of them carried a cross as
heavy as the one Jesus carried. None of them had to bear, or could
have borne, the weight of the sins of the world.
Only Jesus was equal to the weight of the Cross.
Only Jesus, the innocent Lamb of God appointed as the final,
perfect sacrifice, was capable of bearing the weight of our sin,
the weight of God’s wrath, the weight of the death we must die and
the hell we would certainly have been condemned to suffer were it
not for Jesus. No mere man is capable of carrying the heavy burden
of the sins of the world. Only Jesus, the GodMan, could do that.
And that of course is what the Cross of our Lord
is all about. The penalty of sin must be paid – but instead of
insisting that you and I pay the penalty of our misdeeds (which of
course would have been only fair), God in His grace set forth His
Son as our substitute. Jesus taking our place – that’s what the
Cross means. Taking our sin, our guilt, our condemnation, our
hell. Dying our death so that we might share in His life. It was
an awful price Jesus paid to accomplish these things for us. But
it was a price He gladly paid for you and me.
You can know how terribly destructive sin is by
contemplating what our sin did to Jesus. Because our sin was
imputed to Him just as though he was the worst sinner who ever
lived, He was treated by His Father in heaven exactly like the
worst sinner who ever lived. Abused, mocked, humiliated, tortured,
despised, the object of God’s hatred – this is what happened to
Jesus. It should have happened to you and me – not just for the
space of half-a-day, but for all eternity. For the wrath of
God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, Scripture says. And we see God’s
wrath against sin revealed most graphically in the crucifixion of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
But it was wrath that we earned, not Jesus. He
is the perfect, innocent Lamb without spot or blemish or stain of
sin. We’re the sinners. We’re the ones that break God’s
commandments, not Jesus. We’re the ones who play fast and loose
with the Word of God, not Jesus, who after all is the Word made
flesh. We’re the ones who seek to find a way to wiggle off the
hook of our wrongdoing when we get caught, or fix the blame on
someone else, or just out-and-out deny that we’ve done anything
wrong. We try to take care of our sin by sweeping it under the
carpet of denial and forgetfulness. But sweep even a little bit of
sin under the carpet and you’ve got a mound there that in God’s
eyes looms as large as Mt. Everest.
But Jesus, who had no sin, willingly became sin
for us. He didn’t try to get away. He didn’t say, no I don’t want
their sin and guilt; let them carry it themselves. According to
the prophet Isaiah, He took up our
infirmities and carried our sorrows. He was pierced for our
transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. We were the
ones who like sheep had gone astray, but the Lord has laid on Him
the iniquity of us all.
It was so Jesus’ perfectly holy life could be
made a guilt offering for us sinners that He gladly bore the
weight of the Cross. It was for us that He was made fun of, spit
on, slapped, scourged, and nailed to the Cross. It was for us He
endured all these hideously awful things. It was for us He shed
His blood, so we could be forgiven. It was for us that He died
that lonely death, forsaken by God and man, so we could be
eternally reconciled to God.
You all know what the phrase “done for” means.
If my house is flattened by a tornado and I’m looking at the ruins
the next day, I might say, “Well, it’s done for. We’re going to
have to build it back from the ground up.” If a politician is
soundly defeated in an election and voted out of office by an
overwhelming majority, we might say that his political career is
“done for.” And the buddies of a soldier mortally wounded in
combat might say that because of the extent of his wounds, he’s
“done for.”
And what we would say in these situations could
also be said of Jesus as He carried the weight of the Cross
through the streets of Jerusalem to Golgotha. He was as good as
done for. Now as far as I know there are no records of anyone
surviving a crucifixion. As a mode of execution crucifixion was
too brutal, too effective, for anyone to live through it. From the
moment sentence was passed, the victim was as good as done for.
But do you know what? Jesus was done for long
before Pontius Pilate ever pronounced sentence upon Him – in fact,
ages before Pilate handed Him over to be crucified. The Bible
describes Jesus as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the
world. From the instant of creation, from the fatal moment
Adam and Eve disobeyed God and plunged our race headfirst into sin
and death and condemnation, Jesus was done for. Immediately after
the fall into sin, God graciously promised a Savior – one who
would crush the devil’s head but would Himself be mortally wounded
in the conflict. Jesus would save our race from the guilt and
penalty of sin by dying in our place.
If I were to ask you what today is, most of you
would answer “Good Friday.” But today, March 25th,
is also the Festival of the Annunciation. This is the day the
Christian Church commemorates Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that
she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of
God, the Savior of the world. This is the day that God’s timeless
plan of salvation intersected human history, as the Second Person
of the Godhead became flesh in Mary’s womb so He could be born
nine months later.
Listen to the collect for the Annunciation of
our Lord: We implore you, O Lord, to pour forth Your grace upon
us that, as we have known the incarnation of Your Son Jesus Christ
by the message of the angel, so by His Cross and Passion we may be
brought to the glory of His resurrection. This collect reminds
us of something very important, something we Christians need to
recall not merely on Good Friday, but on each and every day of our
lives.
What we are to recall is this: The miracle of
the Incarnation, the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His
death on the Cross, were all done for us. These things were done
for us so that the grace and mercy of God could be poured out upon
us in our Baptism. So that we could know the joy of our heavenly
Father’s forgiveness, the high privilege of being named as His
beloved children for the sake of our crucified and resurrected
Lord. So that we who one day must die because of sin can die in
the glad confidence that one day God will bring us to the glory of
Jesus’ resurrection.
When our Lord in His final extremity uttered
these words from the Cross – It is finished! – He
wasn’t saying, as some might think, “I’m done for – My life is
ended.” No, He was saying that your salvation has been
accomplished. He was saying that the work of winning complete
forgiveness for all your sins has been done for you. It didn’t
have to be done by you; Jesus did it for you. And you are now
forgiven by God’s grace in Christ. You are reconciled to God by
the One who bore the weight of the Cross for you. You are now, by
grace, through faith in Jesus, by virtue of your Baptism, a child
of the heavenly Father. And upon you God continues to pours out
grace upon grace, mercy upon mercy, forgiveness beyond measure in
Water and Word and the Bread and Wine of the Sacrament in which
you eat and drink Jesus’ Body and Blood, given and shed for you.
So remember this when your sins oppress you: The
weight of your salvation was carried by Jesus. The work of your
salvation was done for you by Jesus. It’s a weight you don’t have
to carry. It’s a work you don’t have to do. It’s been carried for
you. It’s been done for you. That, dear friends, is what Good
Friday is all about.
In Nomine Patris. . .
