Good Friday Service: "The Offense of the Cross"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

The late German theologian Jürgen Boltmann interpreted Scripture through the lens of his World War II and post-World War II experiences.

So he's not always commendable for his theology.

Boltmann wrote in one of his most popular works: the cross is not and cannot be loved.

The cross is not and cannot be loved.

That assertion seems to align with Scripture's explanation that the cross is offensive.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth and 1 Corinthians 1, verse 23, saying, We preach Christ crucified, an offense to Jews, and foolishness to Gentiles.

1 Corinthians 1:23

The offensive nature of the cross suggests that Boltman is correct.

However, I would suggest that he's wrong.

The cross can and should be loved.

In Galatians chapter 5, verse 11, the Apostle Paul wrote again about the offensiveness of the cross to some of the very first people to become Christians.

Galatians 5:11

He implied that forgetting the cross was dangerous to the Christian faith.

See, those early Christians were tempted to forget the cross, to move on from the cross in order to avoid the mocking and the persecution and the pain and the discomfort that came with a belief in an offensive message.

The apostle's letter to the church in Galatia was pretty pointed.

To believe in Jesus is to believe in something offensive.

And removing the offense involves removing the power of the message and preaching a different gospel.

Those, though, who can see beyond, or maybe through, the veil of offense surrounding the cross, begin to see the depth of God's love and mercy on full display.

Those individuals love the cross of Jesus as though it's through the offense of the cross that the true nature of God's grace is revealed.

Think with me for a few moments this evening about the offense of the cross and how such an offensive thing can still be loved for its incredible hope.

First, we'll think for a few moments about the offensiveness of the cross to humanity, and then we'll think about its offensiveness to God before considering how such an offensive element can be loved as a means of hope.

First, the cross is offensive to humanity.

But we have to get beyond an obstacle to realize that.

It's displayed as beautiful stained glass windows.

We employ it as an accessory in jewelry form or in decorations in homes and hospitals.

Many modern cultures have made the cross acceptable and desirable.

Our modern culture has so softened the message of the cross and the offense of the cross that one poet wrote of it like this.

And I quote, there the cross stands, thickly wreathed in roses.

Who put the roses on the cross?

The wreath grows bigger so that on every side the harsh cross is surrounded by gentleness.

However, the cross has not always been wreathed in gentleness and surrounded with the scent of roses.

Instead, in different forms over thousands of years, the cross has been a means of execution and torture, a despicable means of death.

A slow and excruciating death, the cross was a degrading punishment for only the lowliest of peoples and criminals.

The cross was considered inappropriate to speak of in public.

Around 70 BC, the Roman statesman Cicero defended the Roman senator Gaius Rabirius from a murder charge.

The prosecutor was pushing for the death penalty via crucifixion.

Cicero argued the very word cross should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, from his eyes, and from his ears.

Conquered rebels, disobedient slaves, and defeated enemies were often consigned to a form of crucifixion as a means of humiliating punishment.

Multiple ancient peoples called the cross the worst of deaths, and it became a taunt against those associated with it.

History records, my friends, that our softened view of the cross is unusual.

The scriptures also point to the offensiveness of the cross when God commanded ancient Israel to not let a person's body hang on a tree overnight.

So we can begin then to imagine why the message of a crucified Savior was polarizing in the decades following the Lord's crucifixion.

That's why the Apostle Paul told the Corinthian church that it was foolish, moronic.

A message that educated and wise people would instantly reject as foolish.

He labeled it offensive.

A word that communicated the scandalous nature of the faith in a crucified and risen Messiah.

Around 200 A.D., a Roman writer recorded the religion of the Christians is foolish since they worship a crucified man.

He further wrote that such a belief ought to be rooted out and destroyed.

Peak absurdity was to believe in a man crucified, buried, and risen from the dead.

Christians were mocked as poor devils, that's a quote.

Poor devils who denied the world's gods in order to honor a crucified victim.

One historian remarked, the enemies of Christianity always referred to the disgracefulness of the death of Jesus with great emphasis and malicious pleasure, mocking the idea of a God or a son of a God dying on a cross.

Because a crucified God in the Roman world was a contradiction.

Proclaimed that message as the means of salvation from sin through a ludicrous and offensive message that was simply foolish and offensive to any thinking person.

Another writer stated it like this: to believe that the one pre-existent Son of the one true God had appeared in very recent times in out-of-the-way Galilee as a member of the obscure people of the Jews, and even worse, that he died the death of a common criminal on the cross could only be regarded as madness.

The real gods of Greece and Rome could be distinguished from mortal men by the very fact that they were immortal.

They had absolutely nothing in common with the cross because it was a sign of shame.

It was called the infamous stake, the barren or criminal wood, and the terrible cross.

My friends, we beautify the cross, but we must regain its offensiveness.

For nearly 3,000 years, the cross was known as an instrument of death and cruelty, punishments, and torture.

Second century pastor of the church in Sardis, named Melito, spoke of the cross in this way.

Second century, just a hundred and so years removed from the Lord Jesus.

He who hung the earth in place hangs there.

He who fixed the heavens is fixed there.

He who made all things fast is made fast upon a tree.

The master has been insulted.

God has been murdered.

Oh, strange murder, strange crime.

The master has been treated in an unseemly fashion, his body naked and not even deemed worthy of a covering, that his nakedness might not be seen.

Therefore, the lights of heaven turned away and the day darkened that it might hide him who was stripped upon a cross.

No wonder.

The Jewish Mishnah declared only blasphemers and idolaters would be hanged.

The Mishnah says, Why is this one hanged?

Because he cursed the name, and the name of heaven was found defiled through him.

And so we read in our gospel accounts that the high priest declared, you've heard it yourself, he has uttered blasphemy.

The Jewish people came to despise hanging someone on a cross, in part because it was a method of Roman cruelty, but also because it was a vivid picture of the fullness of God's curse on disobedience.

In living color and hanging on a piece of wood crucifixion pictured God's cursing the sin of the condemned.

No one, no one hung publicly on a piece of wood could be blessed with God's favor.

Instead, they were accursed, receiving only his wrath.

The cross was despicable.

It was the opposite of blessing.

It was scandalous and horrid.

If we are to understand the message of the cross of Jesus, then we must think of it not only as a decoration or a thing of beauty, but as a hangman's gallows, as a guillotine, or as an electric chair with immensely more gore.

But we have surrounded the cross with roses and gentleness.

And we soften and distort the gospel and the love of God by removing the offense of the cross.

No, my friends.

Look at the offensiveness of the cross.

Look at the offensiveness of the cross, for it's only there that we begin to grasp the good news of God's love.

It's offensive to humanity, but it's also offensive to God.

Why would we say that the cross is offensive to God?

Interestingly, a book was written between the time of the Old Testament and the time of Jesus, giving commentary on some passages of Scripture.

It's known as the Temple Scroll.

It details how those guilty of treason or blasphemy were to be condemned by being hung on a tree.

And one scholar comments on what this ancient scroll teaches about crucifixion, saying, quote, a sinner of this kind, that is a blasphemer or treasoner, should be killed in the most awesome way by being hanged on a tree before his people, whom he has betrayed, and before God, whom he has blasphemed.

And while he is hanging on the tree, he is, according to the word of the Torah, accursed by God and men.

Other Jewish rabbis declared that one hanged on a tree was an affront to God and a blasphemy to him.

Rabbi Mir said, Anyone who is hanged on a tree leaves the name of God profaned.

Thus we learn that when people feel sorry at such a sight, even more does God himself.

That's why Galatians 3.13 quotes Deuteronomy 21 23.

Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.

That statement, first given by Moses, refers to an executed criminal.

Therefore, the person was not cursed because the body was left exposed on a tree.

Instead, they were hung on a tree because they were accursed.

But the Lord Jesus did not deserve to be under a curse.

He is the Son of God, a lamb without blemish or spot, sinless.

So as a matter of divine law, there was no way for Jesus to be under the curse.

He was perfectly obedient to God's law without error.

Jesus could not be under the divine curse of God because of his actions.

That's why we have 2 Corinthians 5 21, which says, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin.

Jesus became one accursed, even though he had not lifted a finger against God's law.

From a human perspective, it was the greatest failure of human justice the world has ever seen.

He became a curse.

He bore the offense of the cross when it was not his to carry.

It was a deliberate, willful choice by God the Son.

The burden of sin carried by Christ on the cross was something that would otherwise never be his.

In fact, the prophet Isaiah spoke of it, saying he was wounded.

Why?

For our transgressions.

He was crushed.

Why?

For our iniquities.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray.

We've turned every one of us to his own way.

And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

The curse that we earned.

That we earned.

Isaiah 53, 12.

He was numbered.

The sinless one was numbered among the transgressors.

God the Son, who deserved no condemnation, willingly became an offense instead of as the substitute for you, me, and every human being who would see through the veil of the offensiveness of the cross to believe in that crucified one.

Someone has said that Scripture's most beautiful words are for us.

We cannot free ourselves from the bondage of slavery to God's law.

We are bound to it, unable to free ourselves from it.

Our sin debt is so immense, we can't cover the cost.

Even should we be cursed by hanging on the tree, we could not cover the cost.

It is too great a price.

We are enslaved, imprisoned, and under the curse of God against transgressors.

Our sin was eternal because it was against an eternal being.

But Jesus had done no wrong.

That absolute perfection of God the Son, though provided the means for him to be the perfect substitute.

The means of paying for my curse, for your curse, was becoming the cursed one.

And so in enduring the cross, Jesus bore our offense and died the death that was ours.

In the second century, a man by the name of Justin wrote a long treatise called A Dialogue, in which he's interacting with a Jewish person.

And in this interaction, he puts an objection into the mouth of this Jewish person named Tripho.

And he has this Jewish person say, and I quote, but this so-called Messiah of yours was dishonorable and inglorious, so much so that the last curse contained in the Torah fell on him, for he was crucified.

But whether the Messiah should be so shamefully crucified about this, we are in doubt.

For whoever is crucified is said in the Torah to be accursed.

It's offensive to mankind, and it's offensive to God.

So how can it be that such a thing like the cross can bear such hope?

It can bear such hope because the center of the gospel, the center of the good news that comes from God lies within the offense.

Of first importance, the apostle Paul says, in the good news of salvation, is not the love of God.

He says, I delivered to you that which is of first importance, that Christ died.

The Apostle Paul experienced a harsh reaction to the offensive nature of the cross throughout his missionary work.

Some believe that he deliberately wanted to provoke his opponents with the offensiveness of the cross.

One commentator says in this way, the word of the cross is the spearhead of his message.

And because the apostle Paul understands the cross as the real cruel instrument of execution, the instrument of the bloody execution of Jesus, it is impossible to separate the atoning death of Jesus from the word of the cross.

The spearhead cannot be broken off from the spear.

Rather, the death of Jesus for the Apostle Paul, which he never forgets, is that Jesus did not die a gentle death.

He died like a common slave or a common criminal in torment on a tree of shame.

He did not die any death, he was given up for us all on the cross in a cruel and contemptible way.

And so God's people sing when I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory.

Died.

My, my richest gain, I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.

The writer of that hymn is looking at the cross, the sign of love so amazing, so divine that it demands my soul, my life, my all.

And so it is here, friends, at the cross, that inglorious, offensive thing that ought to turn stomachs and stir repulsion and humanity in God.

It's there that we see through the fog of its offensiveness.

And if our sight is clear enough, we begin to love the cross and even more love the one upon the cross.

For it's there, at the cross, that we see the love of God poured out for us.

I love the way one writer put it.

Those who pause to contemplate the Good Friday mystery, to reflect, to ponder and to pray, will come above all to discover that when we look at the face of the crucified Jesus, we are looking into the face of the God who loved the world so much that he gave his only Son not to condemn but to save.

And on that cruel cross, we see the good shepherd loving his own sheep and giving his life for them.

No one has greater love than this to lay down one's life for one's friends.

And so Jesus, having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the uttermost.

This is the love on Good Friday, which shines out at the very moment when the darkness seemed, after all, to have overcome the light.

And he closes with this.

And this, this is the love upon which we stake our lives, our loves and our hopes.

We come to Good Friday, he says, like beggars to a banquet, starved of love and suddenly finding more than we can cope with.

Jesus, the innocent, the promised Messiah, became accursed on the cross so that those in bondage to sin and its curse might be released.

At once the cross was his curse and his glory.

The judgment for our sin, but his triumph.

Will you be offended by this event and this message of the cross, or will you receive it and love him?

This death is the ground of all our good.

Whatever we have is a fruit that grew upon the cross.

Had he not suffered, we would have been rejected forever from the throne of God and salvation would have never appeared, wrote Stephen Sharnock about Christ crucified.

If you receive this with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, seeing through the veil of its offensiveness to see the love of God on display, then you can say with John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim's Progress, and now my heart is full of joy, my eyes full of tears, and my affections running over with love to the name and the ways of Jesus Christ.

Lord Jesus, may we run over with joy and with love as we see through the offensiveness of the cross and see you giving up your life for those you love.

May we look to you.

Not as the one who remains upon the cross, but as the one who is crucified, buried, and risen again.

Because some Sunday comes.

Receive our praise, receive our hope, and receive our love.

For we give you praise in Jesus' name.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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