Or, The God Who Sacrifices and Saves
Scripture: John 3:14-15; 8:28-29; 12:32-33
Date: April 5, 2015
Speaker: Sean Higgins
I have the privilege and joy of speaking to you week after week. I love you all, and you must love me also to listen to me talk so much. I am regularly struck not only by my remaining sinfulness and my preaching weaknesses but also by the foolishness of this whole undertaking. Depending on your point of view, I say some of the most foolish things up here.
I thought for this morning, this special Christian holy day, and since everyone is dressed up nice, that I would try to speak extra foolish, to speak about something that takes foolishness and multiplies it by a factor of Q. It’s going to be madness. Some might even find it offensive. For a lot of us, though, it is the power and glory of God.
When Paul told the Corinthians that he “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2) it might seem as if he was going on a verbal or doctrine diet. Actually, there isn’t enough language in the world to fully tell the story of Jesus Christ and Him crucified and risen. Yet when Paul made that assertion he also recognized how foolish it sounded. He knew his audience.
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:21–24)
Stupidity to some, a stumbling block to others. As if a God who became man wasn’t humiliating, and as if that God-man enduring mockery and abuse wasn’t degrading, Paul said that this is the power and wisdom of God. We believers are supposed to boast in this Lord (1 Corinthians 1:31). By worldly standards this narrative is despicable. We know that it is divine.
On Easter Sunday we remember and retell the message about Jesus who died and rose again. When we go over the gospel, we are doing deep theology because this account reveals more than a thing God did one time in Jerusalem. This news reveals the nature of God. He must be lifted up as the God who sacrifices and saves.
The phrase “lifted up” does double duty for Christians. It means that God must be exalted to superlative heights, elevated to the summit of praise, as when Peter said that Jesus is “exalted at the right hand of God” (Acts 2:33). It also refers to the way that God got the most glory for Himself. That way of greatest glory was a way of death: being lifted up on the cross.
Jesus used this “lifted up” phrase about His future on earth more than one time and to a variety of hearers. We know this because the apostle John wrote about three of those episodes. Jesus shows that He knew the details about what would happen to Him. Even more, Jesus shows that this is how we would know His divinity. Let’s look at each statement in context and then see what conclusions there are for us.
A ruler of the Jews named Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. He probably hoped to find out if Jesus was the kind of man who could advance his career. Instead, Jesus addressed his spiritual condition and told Nicodemus that he must be born again. Nicodemus asked a few questions which, being the teacher of Israel, he should have already known. He wasn’t tracking with the truth about the Son of Man who descended from heaven, but Jesus got to the point.
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3:14–15)
Jesus compares Himself to the bronze serpent in Numbers 21:4-9. God’s people were complaining to Moses, even going so far as to say that they wished that they were slaves again in Egypt. It’s not Stockholm Syndrome, it was discontent and unbelief. So the LORD sent burning snakes among the people that bit them and caused many to die. When some pleaded for salvation, the LORD told Moses to make a bronze serpent, set it on a pole, and any who looked at the serpent would live.
The problem Nicodemus and his generation faced was more serious, the consequences more lasting, and the cost of salvation much greater than bronze. It was the body of Jesus. Though Israel was complaining, and as their sin was destroying them, if they looked to Jesus as he died on the cross they would live eternally.
The Israelites were required to look up to the very symbol of the judgement they deserved. So we look to Christ lifted up on the cross and see what we deserved.
This is the answer to Nicodemus’ questions: How can these things be? How can a man be born again? How can He be born of water and Spirit? How can he see and enter kingdom life? The answer to all of these is the same: Jesus had to die on the cross. Jesus came to be lifted up for the sake of eternal life. He came to sacrifice in order to save.
Religious leaders listened to Jesus teach and criticized His arrogance. Jesus told them that His Father bore witness about Him. They questioned where His Father was (8:18-19). Jesus told them that He was going away. They thought that He was talking about His death, and He was. But He wasn’t going to kill Himself, they were going to kill Him. His death was the key to identifying Him even as they questioned who He was (8:25).
So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” (John 8:28–29)
Wouldn’t we expect divine authority to manifest itself in Jesus being lifted up on a throne? Wouldn’t we expect the Father to tell the Son about their glory and dignity so that the Son would represent them well? What would that look like? Parades of praise? Pomp and circumstance? Military muscle? The take down of powerful rivals? It was none of those. And it was foolish to those who did not understand.
The way that the Son of the Father would be known is: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he.” This only make sense if the nature of sacrifice comes from the nature of God.
When the Father sent the Son on mission with authority, His authority got Him to the precise place He wanted to be: a throne through sacrifice. Jesus spoke what the Father taught Him. What were those eternal sessions about? What were the unit objectives? Divine glory through sacrifice. What does Jesus reveal? What the Father told Him, that the nature of greatness comes through sacrifice and service, not being served. How could the Son being lifted up, being killed, please the Father? His death has to be part of the always , right? Because sacrifice is what God does. Loving sacrifice is the way of the Trinity, not just an idea they came up with for someone else to try.
Everything about Jesus’ earthly ministry was an embodiment of the Father’s heart. Golgotha was the full display of the Godhead. The cross fulfilled God’s righteousness. The cross gave God’s grace. The cross demonstrated God’s love. The cross verified God’s character as a God who sacrifices and saves.
Jesus was back in Jerusalem, this time having entered to many hailing Him as the Messiah. Some Greeks were in town for the Passover and wanted to see Jesus. When Andrew and Philip tried to set up the meeting, Jesus answered, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified . That screams for a full-stop, rearrange the front page of the newspaper reaction. More than a few times in the first eleven and a half chapters Jesus (or John) said it was not His hour. (He told His mother, 2:4; He wasn’t arrested, 7:30 and 8:20.) Now is His hour and He’ll repeat it over the next few days (13:1; 17:1).
It is time for the Son of Man to be glorified . He already made His “triumphal” entry but that wasn’t His glory. The banquet in Bethany and anointing wasn’t His glory. Giving sight to the man born blind, healing the paralytic, these were not the hour of His glorification. Now was His hour.
Previously when Jesus referred to Himself as the Son of Man He anticipated His death. His very next statement in verse 24 refers to death and John explains in verse 33 that Jesus was telling people about His death. The hour for glorification was the hour for death.
How is this an answer to the Greeks who said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus”? It is an answer because those who truly desire to see Jesus must see Jesus’ death. Why? Because the hour of glorification, the hour when the Father’s name would be glorified, was the hour of being lifted up.
And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. (John 12:32–33)
Jesus didn’t actually say “all people” but “all.” The object is all His own, all the ones the Father gave to Him (John 6:37-40), all His sheep (John 10:11, 15). But he had Jewish and Gentile sheep (John 10:16). He had offended and ridiculing sheep to die for and draw into the fold.
This is an application of the grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying as it bears much fruit (John 12:24). Because the Creator created earth to spin one way and not another, because the Word who was God and was with God who created all things to behave the way He wanted, seeds look forward to being buried. They know their purpose and they anticipate the product of their being planted, the yield that comes from them yielding to death. The fruit of Jesus’ death, of His being lifted up, is pulling many into the gravity of relationship with Son and Father. If the Spirit is pleased to take this truth and plant it deep in us, then the harvest will explode and the whole earth will be filled with His glory.
Why did Christ need to be lifted up so that men could have eternal life? Why did the Father want His Son lifted up? Why did the world need to be drawn to Him? Because the world was dead and blind and running from God. Sin puts us in a position to need deliverance just as the complaining Israelites, the religious persons who believed lies, and the Gentiles who were far off from hope. Jesus came to sacrifice and save. That is the foolishness of God.
But the foolishness of the world is to try to deal with sin some other way. Men ignore it, hide it, or deny it. Whether passively or actively, no man can take care of it on his own. And no man needs to to. It’s foolish to try. God sacrifices because it is His nature. God saves because that’s who He is. His compass always points true to eternal life.
The wise of the world can’t know God through their wisdom. To preach Christ crucified causes them to take offense or to laugh. But we know that the death and resurrection of Christ is the good news. In the gospel we learn how we can be saved. In the gospel we learn the nature of our God.
God is the sovereign, creator and controller of all. He does everything for His own glory. What distinguishes Him from the devil and from earthly tyrants and bullies is that He sacrifices Himself to forgive His opposition and then shares His glory with them. The difference between the claims of our God and gods of man and men who would be gods is His nature. We know it because He said so. But we also know it in the Word becoming flesh, dwelling among us, and dying for our sins.
Nicodemus represents the should-have-known-betters. The Pharisees represent those who had become slaves of lies. The Greeks represent those who were interested but had insufficient information. They can all be saved if they look to Jesus lifted up.
Easter is about the glory of God. His righteousness is vindicated as sin is punished. His power is magnifies as He conquers death. His faithfulness is confirmed as He fulfills His promises. And His nature shines as full of grace and truth, the God who sacrifices and saves. The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.