III . HIS VICARIOUS DEATH

John 19: 28-30, 34; 1 John 5: 6-9 (omitting v 7)

We have been contemplating on former occasions the Lord in His personal glory as the Son, the One who is, was, and ever will be, God over all, blessed for ever, the true God. On the last occasion we contemplated Him in His Manhood, the man Christ Jesus, seeing that He was very Man; Man in every sense; truly Man, but Man of an entirely new order, altogether distinct from the Adam man, the very opposite in every sense to man as born after the flesh. Man wholly for the good pleasure of God; the One in whom God found the answer to every thought of His; the One in whom He was glorified, glorified in Man, even as He had been dishonoured in Man.

We were saying those were the two pillars on which Christianity is built up; to lose either would be to lose everything. To consolidate the matter, we might refer to Peter’s confession which involved both sides of the truth. The Lord raised the question, “Who do men say that I the Son of man am?” That is the great question of the day. Then He appealed to the disciples and said, “Who do ye say that I am?” and Peter confessed, “Thou art the Christ” (the anointed Man). That is what “the Christ” means—the One whom God could anoint as being altogether for His pleasure. “Thou art the Christ”; then the other side of the truth, “the Son of the living God”—a divine Person, and the Lord said, “On this rock I will build my assembly”, Matt 16: 13-18. I hope we can every one of us answer to the appeal of the Lord in this way and can say, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”. We acknowledge Him to be the anointed Man, the Son of the living God.

Now if the religious teachers of the day have lost the true Christ, it is no wonder they have lost the truth as to His death, and what I purpose to-night is to consider the true character and value of His death.

He came to die; He “came by water and blood”, 1 John 5: 6. He came into man’s estate in order that He might die. It says, He was “made a little lower (or inferior) than the angels for the suffering of death … that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man”, Heb 2: 9. Men say He died as a martyr, or, as an example of self-sacrifice for the good of others. They speak of those who have perished in the late war as in like manner giving their lives in self-sacrifice for the good of their country. They compare it with the death of Christ. Now if that is all there was in the death of Christ, we have nothing. It is true He did die as a martyr, as a witness for the truth, and His death was a great self-sacrifice (Eph 5: 2), but then what I want to say is that there is very much more than that in it.

Now the reason men have those false thoughts as to the death of Christ is that they ignore the presence of sin in the universe of God and in themselves. Anyone who has any feeble conception of sin, could not possibly speak of the death of Christ in that way. It was the coming in of sin that necessitated His death, and it is well to remember that sin began in heaven. Satan fell through pride from the position in which God had placed him, and many of the angels fell with him, of whom it says they are kept in chains and reserved against the day of judgment, Jude 6. The day of judgment is coming when sin will be judged, also Satan and his angels, and men who have despised the death of Christ and the grace of God. That is where sin began; it brought confusion into heaven, and disturbed the peace of the throne of God, and then, as we know, “by one man sin entered into the world” Rom 5: 12. Sin came into the world by one man, under the influence, no doubt, of Satan, and death by sin, so that the creature was ruined, the creation marred, and everything was lost.

Now apart from the death of the Son of God, everything for God’s glory, and everything for man, would have been totally lost; but God had a remedy. He had foreseen everything, and He had provided a Lamb before the foundation of the world. One who could take up the whole question of sin, deal with it for the glory of God, and ultimately completely remove it out of God’s universe. John the Baptist bore witness to Him when he said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”, John 1: 29.

Now all the way down the line God had given witness to this fact that nothing but death could meet the question of sin, and deliver man from its consequences, so that immediately Adam had sinned, we find that God clothed him. What did He clothe him with? With that which was the fruit of death—with skins. If there were skins, there must have been the death of the animals. Now this shows that the only righteousness in which a man can stand before God, must be the fruit of death.

The apostle says, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth”, Rom 10: 4. God’s provision was Christ Himself, but as risen from the dead. Now again, directly man was driven out of Eden, God gave testimony to Cain and Abel. We are not told how, but God gave testimony to them as to how a sinful man turned out of paradise might return to God and obtain favour with Him. Abel offered his victim of the firstlings of his flock. It was a sweet savour offering, and the result was that Abel obtained witness that he was righteous. Cain, acting according to his own mind and will, despised God’s testimony and the means God had appointed. God said to him, “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door”, Gen 4: 7. He despised the appointed way.

Now all the way down the line you get the same testimony in the different offerings. Noah offered sacrifices, which rose up as a sweet savour, and God said, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake”, “And God blessed Noah”, Gen 8: 21; 9: 1. God made a covenant with Noah and his sons and with the creation, on the ground of Noah’s sacrifices. Later God made a covenant with Abraham and confirmed it on the ground of sacrifice, see Gen 15.

When God was about to redeem Israel, death must take place—nothing could expiate sin but the death of a victim. They were to put the blood on the side posts and lintel of their houses, and God said, “when I see the blood, I will pass over you”, Exod 12: 13. The blood was the witness that the penalty of sin had been borne, and God’s righteous claims had been met. Then the sacrifices ordained all through the Jewish economy all pointed on to the different ways in which the death of Christ was seen, that great sacrifice which was to be accomplished, by which the question of sin, and the state of the sinner, alone could be met. This was the only ground on which God could dwell in the midst of a sinful people, and the only ground on which He could bless them. “Without shedding of blood is no remission”, Heb 9: 22.

Now I thought we might look at the different ways in which the death of Christ is presented in the gospels. Its greatest aspect is seen in the gospel of John, where it is presented in relation to the glory of God, but we will begin with Matt 27: 45-54. Here we have the sin offering aspect of the death of Christ, that which shows to us what the true character of sin is. Here we have the Holy One of God, the blessed One of whom we were speaking last week, the One of whom it says, “who did no sin” (1 Pet 2: 22), and “in him is no sin” (1 John 3: 5), and again, He “knew no sin”, 2 Cor 5: 21. Here was One who, unlike the rest of men, was not subject to death. He was the living One, the One who had a right to live because He was the righteous One, the Holy One of God. Such an One as that takes the place here as victim, takes our place, stood in our stead, took our sins upon Him. Think of what happened in those three hours of darkness from the sixth hour until the ninth hour. Man had already done his worst, had given expression to all the hatred and wickedness of the human heart and crucified the Son of God, and now man is entirely shut out, thick darkness enshrouded the earth; man had nothing to say now. The Lamb is on God’s altar (as the prophet Isaiah says), “it pleased the Lord to bruise him, he hath put him to grief, when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin”, chap 53: 10. Jehovah took the victim, and made Him an offering for sin just as He said to Abraham of old, “Take now thy son, thine only son ... and offer him there for a burnt offering”, Gen 22: 2. But when the time came He spared him, God said, “Lay not thine hand upon the lad”, v 12. He spared not His own Son, “but delivered him up for us all”, Rom 8: 32. There was no victim to take the place of Christ; God could not stay His hand, it pleased Jehovah to bruise Him; “thou hast put him to grief”. You cannot dwell on it too much. That is the vicarious character of the death of Christ. At the end of that awful period, during which He suffered (what no human being can ever comprehend) the righteous judgment of a holy God against sin, He said, “It is finished”, John 19: 30. His personal holiness made Him feel what death was as none other ever could feel it. Every unrepentant sinner will know it, and suffer it in their measure when they are cast into the lake of fire, but none will feel it as He felt it. Death for Him was not simply giving up the ghost, it was not simply the act of expiring. He tasted death in all that death was as the wrath of a holy God against sin. All that, as we know from another gospel, was passed through before He expired. In Luke’s gospel, before He expired, He said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my Spirit”, Luke 23: 46. He could not say, “Father”, during those three hours of darkness. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me; why art thou so far from helping me?”, Ps 22: 1. Had He given any cause for this? No, He was there in obedience to the will of God. He had prayed in the garden, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt”, Matt 26: 39. There never was a death like that! Men may bear the judgment of God another day, but that will be receiving the just reward of their deeds, but here it was the Holy One suffering for us as the victim to satisfy divine claims. Who can measure them? He glorified God and said, “It is finished”, and the consequence is that, for God, sin has been removed. He appeared once in the end of the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, Heb 9: 26.

Thank God, sin has been removed and God is free now to come out in all the activities of His grace and love to accomplish all His will, and to establish a world in which everything will be to His glory. Sin does not block the way now. We sing sometimes,

His hand, His heart, His house is free.

Now the effect is shown in what follows. First of all it says, “The veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom”, Matt 27: 51. God surely did this; because if man had done it, it would have been rent from the bottom to top. It meant the removal of the legal system of which that veil was the symbol. There was no approach to God under this legal system; God was hidden, and man was kept at a distance, but now the veil is rent, all that is done away with. No doubt this system had been established by God, but now His hand sets it aside, and, thank God, we are not on the ground of the law. We do not have to do with God on legal grounds; God is no longer hidden, and we are no longer kept in the distance. We are on the ground of grace; we are saved by grace; we are blessed by grace; we can draw nigh with liberty and boldness.

There was an earthquake, and the rocks were rent. I take that to represent the fact that the whole kingdom of Satan was shaken to its foundation. Satan had a kingdom, he is the prince of this present world, and men are his vassals, but now, as the result of the death of Christ, Satan’s power is annulled. The apostle says, “Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son”, Col 1: 12, 13.

Every true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is saved, and has found entrance into the kingdom of God. He has found safety and blessing in God’s kingdom; here is the foundation of it.

Then, again, “the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection”, Matt 27: 52. What does this signify? The fact that the power of death and the grave were broken. Here were men (like ourselves) who died and were buried, but who came out of their graves as a witness to what had taken place in the death of Christ. This shows what a wonderful effect the death of Christ had; God vindicated in regard to sin; the kingdom of Satan overthrown, and death annulled.

I now turn to Mark’s gospel, chap 16: 14-16, 19, 20. The result of the death of Christ here is that glad tidings of a present salvation are to be preached throughout the whole creation. There is no limitation, there is salvation for all men, in the One who died and is risen again. “He that believes”. Believes what? The testimony to the Man who had died, and had risen out of death; “shall be saved”. For all such the judgment of God is set aside, and the power of Satan and of death annulled.

Then at the end of the chapter we find man going up into heaven. This is a new thing and something that has never been known before—a Man going up into heaven, and taking His place in the very presence of God. It is recorded here as a testimony to that which results from the death of Christ. He is the pattern and the example of what God’s pleasure in man is, and Christ is gone up as the forerunner, and has taken possession of the place for us. That is our true place, and in a little while we shall go there too.

In Luke’s gospel ( chaps 23: 39-46; 24: 46-48, 50-53), again we get an account of the rending of the veil with a rather different signification. In Luke the thought is God being free to come out in all the fulness of His grace, so that man, as reconciled, may go in. How it must have delighted the heart of God to rend that veil and be able to say, ‘I am free now to come out towards sinful creatures in pardoning and saving grace’. So we get in the last chapter, “It behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem”.

The testimony was to be rendered among all the nations; God delights in forgiveness.

Another great point was what we see in the repentant thief. He justified the Lord and said, “this Man hath done nothing amiss”, and then “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom”. The Lord said, “To-day thou shalt be with me in paradise”. Now is that not wonderful? Here is a sinner dying for his sins, yet going that day into the paradise of God. The paradise that was lost was not regained, but the paradise of God is opened to Man, the paradise that God created for Himself. So wonderful was the work of Christ, that He was able to take up the thief, and changing him into another kind of man, take him, to be with Him in paradise. This is an expression of the grace in which God has come out. The grace which saves, changes the man by a work wrought in him, and thus fits him, to be with Christ, grace reigning through righteousness by Jesus Christ our Lord.

A further result in the end of chapter 24 is that we see a priestly company on earth. It says, “And they were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God”. It is our privilege now to be filled with the blessing of God and the joy of His love, and to respond to it, in continually praising God. “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me”, Ps 50: 23. This is Luke’s presentation of the death of Christ.

Now I turn to John 12: 20-24, 27-30. I think that is a very marvellous expression; the Lord looking at death in all its terrors, says, “Now is my soul troubled”. He might well say that. “Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour”. He had come to this hour for this very cause; “Father, glorify thy name”. There was no other way; there was no other means by which it was possible for the Father to glorify His name. He would accept all that was in that hour, in His devotion to the Father’s will and glory.

Now what does this mean, the Father glorifying His name? He does not speak here of God, but of the Father glorifying His name. I believe the way in which the Father is glorifying His name is in the deliverance of man from all the fruits of sin, and establishing in him all the good pleasure of His will, that which He had purposed in Himself before ever Adam was made, that which He is now accomplishing for the satisfaction of His love, for the gratification of His own heart. It is in the carrying out, and in making good in man of all those purposes of divine wisdom and love that the Father glorifies His name. Now He (Christ) would remove everything that stood in the way. He would suffer everything that the Father might do all He had in His purpose to do. I believe that to take in not only the special blessing of the church, that gives us a place with the Son in the Father’s house, but also the blessing of every family named of the Father in the coming day. “Of whom every family in the heavens and on earth is named”, Eph 3: 15. These will be all blessed of the Father in the eternal universe of bliss. When all this has been accomplished, the Father’s will will be done, and with this in view the Son, with the full knowledge of all that was in the Father’s mind, goes into death. “For this cause came I unto this hour”. He has saved us from Satan’s power, and has given us a righteous place before Him, and He is working in us and carrying out in every one all this to His own satisfaction, and to His eternal glory. There is another thought here (John 12: 23), when He saw the Greeks coming up and desiring to see Him, the future day of His glory, as Son of man, passed before Him. Jesus answered and said, “The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified”. That is the day when He will be publicly glorified as Son of man, and His universal dominion established; a day of blessing for heaven and earth. It will be a wonderful day, evil will be subdued, and men will be blessed and divine order established, under the universal Headship of the Son of man. Then all things will be reconciled to God. But who will inherit the blessing? Those who are saved and blessed in virtue of the death of Christ.

He says, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone”. Apart from His death He would be all alone. He dies that He might not be alone. Thank God, He is not alone. He has already those He can speak of as “my brethren”. At the end of this gospel, when He arose from the dead, He could take up His disciples and say, “go to my brethren”, John 20: 17. Again, “in the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praises”, Heb 2: 12. In another day He will have another company in Israel and a great company saved from the Gentiles. All this is the fruit of His death. See the latter part of Psalm 22.

That we may be with Him, we must be like Him. Christ through going into death has become the last Adam, the life-giving Spirit, and He has begotten a harvest all like Himself. Every true believer is of Him and therefore like Him.

In chapter 13: 31, 32, it says, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him”. In what sense was the Son of Man glorified? In His death all His moral perfections were fully manifested; His absolute devotion to God’s will; His absolute obedience—in that sense He was glorified as Son of man, and God was glorified in Him. Think of all that God is as God, and how all that He had created for His pleasure and glory had been marred through sin! The creation over which man had been set as head had been ruined, but here is One who undertakes to glorify God in regard to all that sin had done.

Well, I take it that all that God is, and all that was due to God from Man, all that His glory demanded in regard to sin, was rendered to God in the death of the Son of man. The believer can look at this glory now because it has been satisfied and glorified in His death. All that He has accomplished, and all that will be accomplished in bringing in the new heaven and the new earth—in which righteousness will dwell, and in which God will fill all things—is based upon the death of Christ, and will display the glory of the Son of man. Every intelligent being will answer to what God is. The basis and foundation of it has been laid in the death of Jesus. Without the death of Jesus everything would have been lost. God will glorify Him, “Thou art worthy … for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every … tongue … and people, and nation”, Rev 5: 9. Amen.