Behold, The Man, Your King :: John 18-19

1. What do you say when God dies?

Some might say it doesn’t matter. 

Others might say: No, He didn’t. 

We should say: 

THANKS BE TO GOD: HE’S THE ONE WHO DIED.

Today is Good Friday, or better yet, God’s Friday. This is the day the Lord has made. This is the Day of Atonement. This is the day that God died. 

One may wonder why it would matter that God died ... how could God die ... or even, what’s good about this truth that God died. After all, what’s good about suffering? What’s good about sacrifice? What’s good about death? I know no man (or woman) who likes suffering, sacrifice, or death. No one looks forward to death ... especially death by crucifixion.

Crucifixion is the most painful death ever invented by man. The practice most likely began with the Assyrians and Babylonians, but it was systemically practiced by the Persians six hundred years before Christ. At first, the victims were usually tied, feet dangling, to a tree. But then the Romans came along and began using crosses. It could take days to die that way.

The crucifixion of Jesus is where we get our word excruciating, a word that literally means out of the cross. After reading about what happens in crucifixion, I’m not so sure that excruciating is strong enough.

By being nailed to the cross, Jesus had an impossible anatomical position to maintain. His knees were flexed at about 45 degrees, forcing him to bear his weight with the muscles of his thighs. But because of the position, you can’t do that for more than a few minutes without severe cramping in the thighs and calves. So his weight was borne on his feet, which as you know had nails driven through them. 

As the strength of his leg muscles tired, the weight of his body was transferred to his hands, wrists, arms, and shoulders. Because of the nails in his hands, the pain shot through his arms. Within minutes of being raised on the cross, his shoulders became dislocated. So too were his elbows and wrists. As the result of these dislocations, his arms were stretched out nine inches longer than normal. At least, that’s what the Shroud of Turin reveals to us. 

After his wrists, elbows, shoulders were dislocated, the weight of his body caused traction on his chest. His rib cage was drawn up and out. It became painful to even breathe. He couldn’t push down on his feet. He couldn’t pull himself up. And lest you forget, Jesus was scourged before all of this ... whipped within an inch of his life. The whips the Romans used ... not only lashed the flesh ... but they had little barbs attached to rip the flesh apart. He received the 40 minus one! Left alone, he certainly would have bled to death. Or died from the shock and trauma of the beating alone.  

The cruelty and humiliation of it all didn’t stop there. Stripped naked and shamed, nailed to a cross, beaten and bleeding, Jesus couldn’t breathe properly. The CO2 levels in his body rose quickly. This made his heart race. It made his blood pressure plummet, perhaps as low as 80/50. I think I would rather be boiled to death, or burned alive. How could anything be worse than what we did to our Lord? And yes, your sin did this to our Lord. This is the result of your sin. God died for your sin. 

2. And thanks be to God: He took this punishment for us.

Our God is a just God. He is a God of Truth. He declared that sin must be punished. Sin has no place with God. Sin demands death. The sinner must die. So God stood in for you.

Behold, the Man! ... Behold, your king! (Jn 19:5, 14), Pilate declared. He was the innocent one, thanks be to God. 

It truly matters that God did this for you. It matters ... because to atone for our sin ... we needed the perfect sacrifice. And we can't provide that. We are sinners who sin. Our sacrifices are never enough. So God sent the man Jesus, who knew no sin because he is God. Jesus lived life without sin because he is God. He did this to become the lamb of God who takes the sin of the world away.

Your sin killed our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of the Universe. Your sin killed God in the flesh. Behold, the man! Jesus bore the full wrath of God ... not just the sins of the past, but the sins of today, and the sins of tomorrow ... your sin ... my sin ... all sin ... the sin that is killing you and the world. Jesus paid the ultimate price for sin so that you won’t have to face the complete separation from God in the eternal punishment of this kind of living hell. God did what we couldn't do. 

And now it is finished. When Jesus bowed his head and gave up his spirit, he was not simply flashing The End at the conclusion of our sinful picture. God declared sin has no power over you. It is finished. God atoned for our sins. It is finished. This is the good news we can begin proclaiming tonight. God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rm 5:8). This is the Gospel that became certain today.

It would be a sad state of existence if God had left us to die in our sins, trapped in our self-made hell, separated from him in darkness eternally. But God didn’t create us so that he could abandon us or condemn us (Eph 2:10). Instead, he did that against his own son, the Beloved One. 

And on that Good News alone, we don’t have to wait until Easter to celebrate God’s victory for us. Indeed, we should not wait at all. Shout it out! God died on the cross for you!

Behold, the man! Behold, your king! God has nailed sin and death to his cross. 

Behold, the man! Behold, your king! God has liberated you from the curse.

Behold, the man! Behold, your king! God has taken away the punishment we deserve. 

And now for us who are in Christ ... on account of baptism ... his and ours ... we have passed through death into a new beginning, both now and forever. For in Christ, death was not the end of his life, but the fulfillment of it ... to set you free.