Holy Week (4)

The Christ of the Cross

Behold, My servant will prosper,
He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted.
Just as many were astonished at you, My people,
So His appearance was marred more than any man
And His form more than the sons of men.
Thus He will sprinkle many nations,
Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him;
For what had not been told them they will see,
And what they had not heard they will understand.

Who has believed our message?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. (Isaiah 52:13 - 53:3)

“Marred more than any man...He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.”

Good Friday, or I think perhaps “Holy Friday”, is not about advertising or marketing, it is not about making Christianity attractive or appealing, it is not about us becoming happy, or wealthy, or smart, or attractive through Christianity - it is about a Person who has no attraction, no makeup on before He goes on stage, no entourage dedicated to making His life stress free and catering to His every whim. Jesus’ hair isn’t even carefully coiffured nor are His nails manicured.

Jesus has become “like one from whom men hide their face.” Crucifixion is an execution designed not only to be tortuous, but also to be publically shameful. To embrace Jesus Christ is to embrace His reproach, His shame. And so the author of Hebrews writes, “So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.” The Cross was a reproach in the first century, and it is a reproach today, a stumbling block, it gets in the way of people and true Christianity - or at least it should. It should get in the way in the sense that we cannot come to Christ without going to and through the Cross. We cannot know the Christ of Easter without knowing the Christ of Holy Friday.

And so Paul writes (1 Cor. 2:1-5), And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

How do we know if a message or teaching is true? We ask, “Where is the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ in this teaching, in this message, in this song?” A Christianity without the Cross is a Christianity without Christ. A church without the Cross at its center is a church without Christ at its center. A person without the Cross is a person without Christ.

On the Cross Jesus Christ, who knew no sin, becomes sin for us, as Paul writes (2 Cor. 5:20 - 21); Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Jesus Christ bears our sins, He takes our rebellion and transgressions upon Himself, He take us upon Himself, our very persons - and He becomes sin on our behalf - and in so doing He cries, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” Jesus becomes the object of God’s righteous anger and wrath, He becomes a perfect offering, a holocaust - and as His offering is perfected, and as it is completed, He cries, “It is finished.”

Where is the Cross in our lives? Where is the suffering Messiah? Will we follow Him? Will we be identified with Him? Will we cry with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”?

Do we hide our faces from Him during the week and only look at Him on Sundays and Good Fridays?

Or can we say with Paul (Galatians 6:14); “But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”?

Holy Week (3)

The Fellowship of the Cross

Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast; these then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip *came and *told Andrew; Andrew and Philip *came and *told Jesus. And Jesus *answered them, saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.

“Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.”  John 12:20 - 28a.

In the Gospel of John, unlike the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), we see little of what transpired between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday. Instead John chooses to focus his attention on Maundy Thursday - the night that Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, and His long talk with them in the Upper Room and during their walk to Gethsemane; these events are contained in John 13:1 - 18:11, a significant portion of John’s 21 chapters. What John does tell us about Jesus between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday is contained in John 12:20 - 50 and it begins with the passage quoted above.

Our text does not tell us whether Jesus actually met with the Greeks, but it does tell us what Jesus said in response to Andrew and Philip’s message from the Greeks.

“The hour has come…” The theme of “hour” is prominent in John’s Gospel; from 2:4, “Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come,” to 17:1, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify you…” The trajectory of the life of Jesus Christ is time sensitive, with each orbit of the earth around the Sun His hour draws closer, and yet closer, and yet closer...until we come to Holy Week. During His recorded ministry He goes to Jerusalem at Passover, again, yet again, and then comes the Great Passover of the cosmos, the Passover when the Hour of the Lamb has come - the Passover of God’s Great Sacrifice.

Now if these Greeks were indeed Greeks and not simply Greek-speaking Jews, then the added significance is that the peoples of the earth are seeking the True and Living God and the hour has come for all peoples to be gathered into one in Christ. But that cannot happen until Jesus dies (Ephesians 2:11 - 22), that cannot happen in its fullness until the Grain of Wheat falls into the ground and dies.

Jesus must die so that He will not remain alone, and as Jesus says in John 10:14 - 16, “I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.”

But Jesus is not only telling us about His calling and impending sacrificial death, He is also calling those who desire to serve Him to follow Him into death as a way of life, “If anyone serves Me, he must follow me; and where I am, there My servant will be also…” This following, as He makes clear, is bound up in His words, “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal” (see also Mark 8:34 - 38).

This suffering - resurrection motif fills up the New Testament and the Bible can’t be accurately taught without this being a major theme; it is a theme which is not isolated in the life of Jesus Christ, it is a theme that He calls His people to live, it is a way of life. We die with Christ so that we may live with Christ. We learn to be grains of wheat falling into the ground that others may live, while we are certainly not The Grain of Wheat, we are nevertheless grains of wheat that are the fruit of The Grain of Wheat and our union with Christ is such that His life becomes our life and our life is melded into His life - we are one with Christ in the Trinity (see John Chapter 17).

Are we learning what it is to know Christ in His sufferings? (Philippians 3:8 - 14; Romans 8:18 - 39). Are we embracing the fellowship of the Cross of Christ? Are we laying down our lives for others (1 John 3:16)? Is the Cross imprinted on us (Galatians 6:11 - 18)? Is the work of the Cross apparent in our lives? In the lives of our churches?

Strange as it may seem, we are delivered from the fear of death (Hebrews 2:14 - 18) so that we might die for others. So that our lives might be lived for others and not for ourselves.

When we follow the Way of Jesus in the fellowship of the Cross we are with Jesus - “Where I am, there my servant will be also.” Today we can be where Jesus is as we find our fellowship with Him in the Father, as we embrace His Cross, as His Cross works within us and through us. This is a holy place, a place in the Son of God, a place where His Presence envelops us and leads us and guides us and comforts us...as we comfort and live for others.