The Glory of Good Friday

00:00:00.000 | Well, happy Good Friday, or so we call it.

00:00:06.600 | It is a joyful day, even if it is the most solemn day in the Church calendar.

00:00:11.000 | And today we celebrate the cross of Jesus Christ.

00:00:15.200 | Last time we looked at the historical and the physical horrors of crucifixion, which

00:00:18.980 | was quite honestly heartbreaking and sickening.

00:00:24.280 | But there are glories in the cross that go far beyond the physical spectacle that can

00:00:28.120 | be dramatized in violence and blood on the big screen.

00:00:33.280 | But because these are theological and spiritual glories, they often go ignored or even denied

00:00:37.800 | in our culture, which leads to today's question from Jessica, a listener in Davis, California.

00:00:42.560 | "Pastor John, as I talk with 20-somethings about Christ and the gospel, I have repeatedly

00:00:47.360 | had people say that they don't believe that someone else paying the punishment for another

00:00:52.280 | is just.

00:00:53.280 | I too have internal pushbacks against this, but have come to know that substitutionary

00:00:59.280 | atonement has its roots in the Mosaic sacrificial system.

00:01:04.240 | Our generation, however, at least in California, is biblically illiterate and doesn't have

00:01:08.280 | this framework.

00:01:09.840 | How would you explain the justice of substitutionary atonement to this generation?"

00:01:15.040 | Well, not much more could be more important than the question of whether Christ was in

00:01:23.000 | fact a just and merciful substitute for sinners, so that when he died for his elect, he actually

00:01:34.040 | bore their punishment so that they can experience no condemnation.

00:01:38.480 | That is the heart of the Christian gospel.

00:01:41.840 | If that goes, everything goes, and let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we

00:01:46.920 | perish.

00:01:49.280 | Now there are at least two issues here.

00:01:52.860 | One is how biblical authority relates to the categories of thought in people's minds,

00:02:01.920 | and the other is how to help people today grasp the justice of the atonement, given

00:02:09.400 | what they presently have as categories in their mind.

00:02:14.360 | A word about that first issue.

00:02:16.080 | My approach to biblical authority in relation to John Piper's fallen and fallible mind

00:02:23.720 | is to try, at least try, to let the Bible shape and even create categories of thought

00:02:33.040 | in my mind.

00:02:34.040 | In other words, if I come to the Bible and I find I don't have a category to make sense

00:02:37.740 | out of something, I want to try to let the Bible shape or create new categories.

00:02:44.200 | The alternative, it seems to me, would be to insist that the Bible, God's word, whose

00:02:50.560 | ways are higher than my ways, be squeezed into my present ways of thinking.

00:02:56.720 | I mean, it's just absurd.

00:02:58.320 | It's absurd when I think about it.

00:03:00.360 | All over the world, people are trying to squeeze the Bible, limit the Bible into their conceptuality

00:03:06.240 | that they inherited from their sinful culture and parents.

00:03:11.600 | If people today are unwilling to have their way of thinking about the world changed, then

00:03:19.160 | either we will twist the Bible to fit our preconceptions or we will reject the Bible.

00:03:25.840 | Because the Bible is resolute in insisting that Christ died in the place of sinners so

00:03:33.400 | that the justice of God is satisfied and sinners escape punishment.

00:03:37.360 | So Galatians 3.13, Christ redeemed us from the curse, that's God's curse, the curse

00:03:43.240 | of the law, by becoming a curse for us.

00:03:49.440 | It is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree."

00:03:53.520 | Or Isaiah 53.5, "He was pierced for our transgressions."

00:03:59.240 | Our transgressions.

00:04:00.240 | He pierced, we transgressed, he's pierced.

00:04:03.060 | He was crushed for our iniquities.

00:04:05.920 | "Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed.

00:04:15.280 | He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree."

00:04:19.160 | 1 Peter 2.24.

00:04:20.160 | One more.

00:04:21.160 | I love this one because it's the kind of image I expect for a Sunday school teacher

00:04:25.760 | to create and actually Paul created it.

00:04:29.320 | God canceled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

00:04:37.720 | This record of debt, he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

00:04:44.280 | In other words, when the spike was put against Jesus' hand, actually the spike was lifted

00:04:51.720 | up, a document was inserted between the spike and the hand called "Record of John Piper's

00:04:59.440 | and Tony Ranke's Debts" and it was driven through the record, into the hand, into the

00:05:06.120 | wood and that record was settled, paid, finished.

00:05:12.000 | Now those are simply glorious truths and I grieve, I grieve that there are people who

00:05:18.640 | turn away from those truths as inconceivable or unjust, but I'm not surprised because

00:05:27.760 | Paul said Greeks see it as foolishness and Jews call it a stumbling block.

00:05:33.780 | So we need grace to have our categories of thought adjusted by the Bible.

00:05:40.060 | Now the second issue of how then do we try?

00:05:43.760 | That's what I want to do here for just a minute.

00:05:46.000 | So let me make an effort to try to describe the justice of the atonement.

00:05:53.120 | This is a little bit like trying to conceptualize the Trinity.

00:05:56.680 | It's always risky because human conceptuality of divine things might be inadequate.

00:06:03.520 | I mean, they are inadequate in that they're not comprehensive, but let's see if they

00:06:08.120 | can be true at least.

00:06:10.280 | So here goes.

00:06:11.280 | The fundamental issue here is what does sin do to God and how is this set right?

00:06:18.680 | The most important answer is that sin dishonors God.

00:06:24.080 | It detracts from his glory.

00:06:26.980 | It belittles him.

00:06:29.020 | It treats him as inferior in value to what we prefer in our sinful desire.

00:06:37.060 | I think that's what sin is.

00:06:39.480 | This is why the most important paragraph on the atonement in the Bible contains the words—this

00:06:45.880 | is Romans 3.23—"All have sinned and fall short or lack"—literally lack—"the

00:06:55.200 | glory of God."

00:06:56.200 | In other words, sin is related to glory and it's related as losing glory, that is, exchanging

00:07:04.440 | the glory of God for images.

00:07:06.640 | Chapter 1, verse 23.

00:07:08.400 | It's an effort to rob God of his glory.

00:07:11.540 | So the greatest problem in the universe is that God's creatures have gone on record

00:07:18.120 | as devaluing the glory of God.

00:07:22.040 | It's as if the image of the Roman Caesar was ripped off the wall and trampled by mobs,

00:07:31.440 | and treason like that has always been a capital crime everywhere in the world.

00:07:36.680 | Trampling the glory of the most glorious being is the most serious crime in the universe.

00:07:46.080 | How then is this situation to be remedied justly?

00:07:51.120 | How is justice to be done here?

00:07:54.120 | And the answer is that the injury done to the glory of God has to be repaired.

00:08:01.680 | That's what justice is.

00:08:05.360 | Justice is, or righteousness is, that the glory of God is to be restored to its rightful

00:08:12.040 | place of exaltation and admiration.

00:08:15.760 | This justice happens by stripping glory from the perpetrators in proportion to the way

00:08:24.760 | they have stripped it from God.

00:08:28.320 | That's the meaning of hell.

00:08:30.720 | It will take an eternity to strip sufficient glory from finite creatures.

00:08:35.360 | They don't have infinite glory, so it will take an infinite amount of time to balance

00:08:41.480 | the enormity of defacing the glory of an infinite being, and that punishment is therefore eternal.

00:08:49.960 | And the question is, can Christ perform this repair of the glory of God for the people

00:08:59.680 | of God?

00:09:00.720 | And the answer of the Bible is yes.

00:09:03.480 | And the reason is that Christ came precisely to vindicate the glory of God.

00:09:10.480 | That's not true of any criminal on the planet who's in prison today.

00:09:15.400 | That's why we can't do this kind of thing among men.

00:09:19.200 | The reason Christ came is precisely to repair, to vindicate the glory of God.

00:09:25.840 | Here's a glimpse of it in John 12, 27.

00:09:28.120 | "Now is my soul troubled," Jesus said.

00:09:31.560 | And what shall I say?

00:09:32.800 | "Father, save me from this hour," namely the hour of his death?

00:09:36.640 | No.

00:09:37.640 | "For this purpose I have come to this hour.

00:09:41.040 | Father, glorify your name."

00:09:44.320 | Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again."

00:09:49.560 | This is the ultimate reason for the death of Jesus.

00:09:53.580 | He came to repair the injury we had done to the glory of God.

00:10:00.720 | He laid aside his glory.

00:10:02.720 | Philippians 2, he emptied himself, laid aside his glory.

00:10:06.520 | He endured utter humiliation, not in a random way, but precisely for the glory of the Father.

00:10:16.520 | Christ's whole incarnation was a reversal of our attack on the glory of God.

00:10:24.360 | Since he's infinitely valuable, his loss of glory in his humiliation and death can

00:10:32.080 | cover all of our God-diminishing, God-dishonoring, God-defaming sins.

00:10:40.920 | And therefore, complete justice can be done in justifying the ungodly, like us.

00:10:48.720 | The glory of God is vindicated precisely in respect to the ways we have insulted the glory

00:10:55.920 | of God.

00:10:56.920 | Christ loses glory in suffering and dying precisely for the ways I have caused God to

00:11:05.200 | lose glory in my sins.

00:11:07.080 | And so God is shown to be glorious in passing over my sins for the sake of Jesus, who lived

00:11:15.240 | and died to restore the glory of his Father.

00:11:19.520 | And that's precisely what justice demands.

00:11:23.860 | So oh, oh, how I hope God will open the eyes of those who think that the heart of the Bible,

00:11:33.960 | the heart of the gospel, the best news in all the world is unjust.

00:11:39.160 | It is in fact the highest expression of justice that ever was, and the greatest act of mercy.

00:11:48.600 | Amen.

00:11:49.600 | There's endless glory in the cross.

00:11:51.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:11:52.240 | And I can't let this episode end without mentioning your book, Pastor John, titled

00:11:56.320 | 50 Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die.

00:11:59.760 | We've only touched on some of those ways and all of these ways, these 50 reasons why Jesus

00:12:04.360 | came to die on the cross, we will celebrate for all of eternity.

00:12:09.060 | You can download that book, 50 Reasons, and start reading it right now.

00:12:13.360 | Go to DesiringGod.org/books.

00:12:17.400 | We are now going to break for the weekend, and as we do from Pastor John and from myself

00:12:22.320 | and from the entire team of folks who serve you at Desiring God, we want to wish you all

00:12:27.200 | a very wonderful, joy-filled weekend reflecting on the death and resurrection of our precious

00:12:32.720 | Savior and his atoning blood.

00:12:36.080 | Pastor John and I will see you on Monday.

00:12:38.280 | Amen.

00:12:39.280 | Amen.

00:12:40.280 | Amen.

00:12:45.280 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

The Glory of Good Friday

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