THE CROSS OF JESUS
John 19: 6 to “crucify him”; 16-42
‘There is nothing like the cross’. This was said by Mr J.N. Darby in his ministry 1. You might think his ministry is complex, and then you come to this very simple statement: ‘There is nothing like the cross’. Have you gone over in your mind this scene, unique in the history of mankind? There is nothing like the cross.
We have an old encyclopædia in the house, and it has a picture which portrays the history of time. At the back of it you have the pyramids and Egypt and all that there was thousands of years ago, then you have the Roman constructions, and nearer to the front is industry and all that there was up to the day when the book was written. But in the centre is the cross, the cross in the centre of all, and I think that affects you. There is something that is distinguished in the whole of history; in fact, not only the whole of history of time, for has the cross not been referred to as ‘the centre of the history of eternity’ 2. Think of that; there is a cross and it has made all the difference.
It has made all the difference to lives. You get many, many persons who have lived lives contrary to God. I suppose Saul of Tarsus is the one who is the clearest example. His was a life that was contrary to God, and then he came to that point where the One who had been on the cross presented Himself to him, and Paul’s became an utterly changed life. You get it in the figure that maybe you know in the book ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’. Christian, who John Bunyan writes about, is a man living in the city of Destruction and the word comes to him, ‘Fly from the wrath to come’. He knows the problems, he knows the sorrows of that city of Destruction, which speaks of the world that exists around us, and he moves out, but he has his burden on his back. I do not know if anyone here has a burden of sin upon their back, a burden of sin on their heart and their conscience. That man moved forward. He was distracted, diverted by someone to the law, but that could do nothing for him. And then he came to the cross, his burden rolled away, and your burden can roll away today as you come to the cross, to the Man who accomplished everything for your salvation at the cross. That is wonderful. Christian moves on in a Christian pathway, and you see how things open up and he enters into more and more blessing. That story was a figure, I think a figure of the life of John Bunyan himself; he had known that experience. How many people can speak of that experience they have come through? They are sinners, and they come to a point when they come to the cross, and there is a changed life thereafter: they begin a life that is according to God. There is nothing like the cross: what a transaction was made there!
There were men in this world, these chief priests, who should have been the ones who were receiving this Man, Jesus, with acclaim. They should have been receiving Him as their own, the one Messiah they had been looking for over centuries. What are they saying? They are saying, ‘crucify him’; they do not want this Man Jesus. You can sit in your seat in this place, and in effect you can be saying in your heart, ‘crucify him’. You can sit and hear the gospel and say, ‘I reject that’. There was a story told recently of someone who went out from a gospel preaching, a powerful gospel preaching, and was killed shortly afterwards. The note she had put in her notebook in that preaching was: ‘I will take my chance’. Effectively, she was someone sitting under the power of the gospel and saying, ‘crucify him’. I trust nobody is rejecting the Lord Jesus as the gospel comes to you. I trust your hearts are open to this Saviour in all His glory, in all His worth, in all His beauty, and in all the effectiveness of His work at the cross.
“Crucify, crucify him”: that was the world’s view, and it is still the world’s view. Men have not given Him His place, and the tendency and the tenor of the world remains what it was then: ‘crucify Him, we do not want this Man’. And that is one reason why, even as a believer, you have to be careful. You have to be careful of the world that surrounds you because it may be, it may be, that, even as a believer, you give space to a world that has rejected the Saviour. That is part of the word to you in the gospel.
But here Jesus comes and you have this magnificent statement, “And he went out, bearing his cross”. Think of that: the Lord of glory, God Himself, come near in manhood. He came near and men would do what they could against the Lord Jesus, but they could only do to Him what God allowed them to do. In God’s ways, the sacrifice would be completely tested, and its sinlessness and its perfection displayed in a way that could only be if the Lord suffered for righteousness, as He did. And there that One, in all the right that He has, and all the glory that He has, goes forth and it says, “And he went out, bearing his cross”. He took that matter on Himself. He took upon Himself the whole question of sin and sins there at the cross and He went forward there; He did it in consciousness; He did it in awareness. Someone made a comment after the reading about the way that Jesus went forward knowing what was before Him. How much was before Him, the shame and the spitting, and He was aware of everything.
What a difference there was to the repetition of the sacrifices in the Old Testament. There were sheep, and there were bullocks, and there were goats, and each animal was brought forward and was offered without intelligence as to what was before it. There was one figure, Isaac, who went forward willingly, but even he did not know: he wondered what was going to happen. The Lord Jesus went forward here in the full consciousness of what lay before Him, of the death that would be His. He had gone through it anticipatively with His Father, suffered in that way in anticipation of what lay before Him. What lay before Him was the cup of God’s judgment and death, and the horror that such a death must be to One who Himself is the Lord of life. And all that for me! I can say, and I trust that you can say, ‘All that for me’. He went that way for me: especially in these three hours of darkness, He was there for me. Have you said that? Do you know that death, the penalty of death that the Lord Jesus bore, was the penalty that lay upon you, and that these three hours were suffered that you might be blessed? How wonderful that He was prepared to go that way. He went that way, going forward, taking the issue up Himself: “And he went out, bearing his cross”. There is nothing like the cross – that cross.
There were three crosses there. There was, as we know from other scriptures, a man there on a cross on one side. There was a cross and a man on it who was using his last breath that we know of recorded to rail against Jesus. Well, there was a man on the other side: we know that he was using his last breath to acknowledge that Jesus is a King; that this One is a King and Lord. The question has often been asked: ‘Which side are you on?’. You are either on the side of the one who was railing against Jesus, or on the side of the one who was trusting Him, whatever may befall him. And there between them was the One who makes the difference, the One who makes the difference to everything for mankind, to everything in history. There He was in the middle, the Saviour of the world – the One who was there was as ready to save the one as He was to save the other, as ready to save you if you are rejecting Him now, as to save one who is trusting Him now. He is available: you have the opportunity now. Think of that, a man in his last hours breathing his last breath and all he could do was to rail against Jesus. Other persons have done that; persons have done that in many different circumstances through the centuries, persons who have gone, gone to their graves rejecting the Saviour, rejecting Him although often knowing about Him, yet saying, ‘I will not have Him; I will take my chance’.
How urgent the gospel is therefore, that you should lay hold of the opportunity that you have and take your place as one who has trusted the Saviour, take your place while there is the opportunity. Think of that second malefactor – how long did he have? He must have had these six hours on the cross beside the Saviour, as far as we can understand, until at the end they broke his legs. What would these six hours be? The hymn puts it:
‘The dying thief beheld that Lamb
Expiring by his side,
And proved the value of the Name
Of Jesus crucified.’
But it goes on
‘We, too, the cleansing power have known
Of Christ’s atoning blood … Hymn 145
You can know it now, and you can know it today, and you can know it forever. That man was taken to paradise, immediately into the full pleasure of what paradise means. I cannot explain it, but I know it is the place of supreme delight. And not only that, Jesus said “with me”. I cannot explain that fully either but that was what the Lord Jesus said, “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”, Luke 23:43. That is the opportunity that is open to everyone in the gospel: now is the day of salvation.
We see the way that the Saviour went, and there is so much detail in every part of it; to the believer, every phrase in it is resonant with meaning and with feeling. Think of the humiliation of the Saviour as He took His place there: “In his humiliation his judgment has been taken away”, Acts 8:33. Pilate had already said, “I find in him no fault whatever” (John 19:4), but yet He was being crucified. No charge could truly be laid against Him – nothing. The charge they did put on the cross was, “Jesus the Nazaræan, the King of the Jews”. How wonderful that God ensured that title was put there! They did not put another charge against Him; they did not think up another charge to put there. They put that title and that was true: Jesus the Nazaræan was the Man who had walked in humility in this scene, but having all the rights of the Messiah, the King of the Jews. There He was, and I suppose you could say that, as that charge was set there, it condemned the nation that had rejected Him. But He will come! He will come again and the King of Israel will take His place as King of Israel, and will rule and will reign. What it will be to that nation when He is there in all His glory!
Think of the humiliation of what men did to Jesus, even in casting lots over His garments, in dividing His clothes between them. I suppose it was for a long time a tradition that the executioners would get the clothing of the one whom they were executing. The soldiers took these four parts; what it would have been to have taken home one of these garments. Somebody took home a body coat that belonged to Jesus. There was something there that represented the secret and mystery of a life that had been lived in perfection and beauty for God. Somebody had that garment; you wonder if the person who had it could be affected. The soldiers had seen – they had participated in – the rejection and the execution of the Lord of glory, and one of them had this garment. We can think about that soldier, but the gospel is to do with you. In principle, you have that garment; you have it in the Scriptures, and you have it in the teaching. You have that seamless garment; in principle you have it in your hand, and you can look at it. You can look at the perfection of Jesus; you can look at the glory of it; you can look at what He is as shown in the Scriptures. You can take that away, and yet you might do that and not be affected by it. But I trust you have been. I trust that, as you look at that life in all its beauty and its perfection, woven from the top, you see everything for the delight of the Father, everything worked out for the Father’s glory – you see all that and you value it as precious. And in doing that, you trust, you trust this Saviour, you have your full confiding trust in the One who you can depend on, who has been to the cross for you.
We move onto the wonderful fact that the Lord Jesus expired. He said, “It is finished”; there had been a work that was finished. I know there is something of this which anticipates what was completely finished when He was raised again, and everything was acknowledged there, but there was something finished. There were three hours which were finished, in which the sins of those who have trusted in Him were borne. Does that mean you? The sins of those who trusted in Him were borne, were borne in every detail of them before God, so that those who trust in Him will not be charged with them, and will never have these matters brought up.
Another thing I have heard that affected me was that the Lord Jesus knows my sins better than I know them – the sins that I have forgotten, sins which maybe I did not appreciate were as sinful as they were. He knows them; He bore them, every one of them. Every one has been dealt with, every one dealt with in fulness and perfection so that God is never going to say to me that I am chargeable or punishable for my sins, because the punishment has been borne. Indeed, God would not be righteous to charge me with my sins, because the Substitute, the Lord Jesus, has done what was necessary for my salvation. How blessed that is! How wonderful it is that such a Saviour has completed the work so that I can be before God, clothed in the glory of His righteousness.
He said, “It is finished”, and then He bowed His head; “and having bowed his head, he delivered up his spirit”. That is, He went into death because death was a penalty for my sins and death is a penalty for your sins. The Lord Jesus took that upon Himself. There was something necessary for your salvation, and He has provided it. He has provided what was needed, He has secured what was needed. How wonderful and blessed that is! You needed somebody to take on the penalty of sin for you, and Jesus has done that. You needed a work of atonement in its fulness, and here it is. The witness of the completion of that work of atonement is that there is blood – the precious blood of Jesus, the witness that God is satisfied, and that the Lord Jesus has gone into death. That blood is so precious that through it is redemption: “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of offences, according to the riches of his grace”, Eph.1:7. His blood has been poured out because what you needed is precious blood. You needed a Redeemer to purchase you. You needed the blood to cleanse you. You needed the blood as a witness before God, so that He says, “when I see the blood, I will pass over you” (Exod.12:13), that cover from the judgment that would otherwise be upon you.
If you look at Mr. J. N. Darby’s book ‘The Sufferings of Christ’, he goes through all that the cross means, one thing after the other 3. I cannot remember or enumerate them, but he wrote that if this was needed, then the Lord Jesus has done it, if the next was needed, if the next again was needed, He has done it. How wonderful and precious that whatever was needed, He has done, so that nobody is going to say to you, ‘You have to pay the price’. You have not to pay anything; you have not to settle anything; you have not to cleanse anything. There is what was needed, and what was done, and what was finished, and it is there available for you to trust in the Saviour, to trust in His blood, to trust in the work that He has done on that cross at Calvary.
You see how God provided, also, in care for the Lord Jesus. It is a wonderful thing to think of the Lord Jesus needing care. Here His body in its reality was dead, the body of Jesus. He went into death for you. His body needed someone to care, and God provided the care. What a privilege that was for this man, Joseph; what a privilege. And although now you do not have exactly that privilege, since no one can have that privilege like these persons here, you can have the privilege of caring for what is the Lord’s; you can take that up. What a privilege it is to care for what belongs to the Lord Jesus. That is what someone who loves Him would do. You see how this man Joseph is described: “a disciple of Jesus”. Are you a disciple of Jesus? You may say, ‘I have trusted in Him. He is my Saviour. I have trusted in Him, and I know Jesus as the One who has done everything for me’. Are you a disciple of Jesus? That is more. Disciples follow Him. This man was one who followed Him, whose life was committed to Jesus. So that, because of that, he was able to have a great privilege in care for the body of the Lord Jesus.
Then John goes on to the fact that the Lord Jesus was in the grave. That was another necessity for you; think of that. Not long ago we buried a sister; we can say that it is never very long since we buried someone. How many there have been over the years. We have all known that; perhaps your grandparents, perhaps others. Think of these persons in the grave, but those that we have buried knew Jesus. They knew Jesus, and their bodies were laid in the grave. It is affecting that, if you look at a grave, you might say, ‘That is a cold and terrible place’, but you can also say, ‘Jesus has been there’. Jesus has been there first; think of that. He has even taken that place, the lowest place, “the heart of the earth”, Matt.12:40. He has been there; He has been there for me, He has been there for you, out of love for you, out of His desire that you should never know, shall I say, the hopelessness and the helplessness of the grave, that you, as believing in Him, should never be disconsolate about that thought of the grave. Because the persons we have buried had trusted Jesus, we buried them in view of the resurrection, in view of taking their place in resurrection with Jesus, and indeed of ascending, of being caught up to be with Him. How wonderful that the believer has such a hope even in the time of the greatest hopelessness that affects mankind – death and burial. Jesus was there; He was there.
Well, He is not still there. He has been in the grave; how wonderful. We could keep reading on and on and on: how blessed this scripture is as you go through it. There is a woman there; she goes to the tomb. She is disconsolate because she does not have her Saviour. She might have said, ‘Where can I go?’. She goes to the place where He was, and there she is met by a living, a risen Saviour, One who would speak to her. So He is a risen and loving Saviour who would speak to you now, and you can know Him in the gospel as a living and a risen One, One who will change your life. Why? Because He has been to the cross for you and He has taken everything on, every issue for the believer. Every issue has been taken on by Him there on your behalf. How blessed that is. Do you know Him? Do you know Him as the One in whom you can trust?
Now I want to go back a bit in this wonderful passage of scripture to some persons who are mentioned in it and who test me. Go back to verse 25: “And by the cross of Jesus stood his mother, and the sister of his mother, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala”. Think of that: persons who are prepared to stand by the cross of Jesus. Are you? Are you prepared to stand by His cross, a place of great humiliation? We cannot fully grasp what the humiliation of the cross was. There is a reference in Acts where it speaks about having hanged Jesus on a cross (Acts 5:30); the footnote says, ‘literally ‘on wood:’ used for stocks, cross and such ignominious and forcible means of punishment’ (note ‘d’). That is what the cross means; the cross is a place of shame, the cross is a place that the world would regard as a shameful place. How wonderful that there are persons here at such a time ready to take their place and stand by the cross of Jesus. Are you? Every time you speak of the name of the Lord Jesus, confess that Name – how much it means to Him that there is somebody who is ready to be with Him!
You have these women, and it is wonderful to see what God had in these women who were prepared to stand by the cross. What sympathies there were in these persons. John, of course, was there too; he does not draw attention to himself until he has to, as “the disciple standing by”. He does not exactly put himself in the same place, but he has to mention that he was there as the Lord Jesus draws attention to him: “the disciple standing by, whom he loved”. Do you know yourself in that way? You can. It is wonderful to think of the fact that we recognise who this is; we recognise this man. John does not say that it was himself; he says, “the disciple … whom he loved”. Well, would you know yourself as one of the disciples who Jesus loved? That would be fine, to live your life as this man did in the consciousness of being the disciple who Jesus loved. What love it has been! It is love displayed in its perfection and fulness at that cross, and here he is, the disciple whom Jesus loved.
Finally, I would just like to make reference to another thing. When we spoke about the blood of Jesus, we did not go on to the other thought: it was not only blood, but “there came out blood and water”. Think of that. It was something of a miracle. If you put blood and water together, they would come out in one mingled stream, but here they were distinct – “blood and water”. There is that blood of Jesus for your cleansing as a sinner; there is that blood for your redemption; there is that blood that we have spoken of, the blood that was entirely sufficient in the eye of God . But then the Lord Jesus gives you everything; He gives you not only the blood but the water. I find that testing, but the effect of the death of Jesus is to be for your purification. If you are a believer on Him – and I cannot assume that, but I appeal to everyone to become a believer – the blood of Jesus is of effect still, and so is the water, which is a purification and a cleansing. You are in a world that is impure, and you are well advised to keep as far away from it as you can to avoid its impurity. Yet you have to be in a scene that in one sense touches you; touches you in what you are, according to what you are naturally, and you would be defiled by it. So you need to keep going back to the work of Jesus, keep going back to the effectiveness of that work; keep the work of Jesus before you for a cleansing, so that you are separated through that cleansing from the effects of the impurities that are in this scene.
How complete the work of Jesus is. There is nothing like the cross. There is nothing like the death of Jesus. There is what is distinctive in all that runs through this. How wonderful it is. It would cause us to worship in response to the glory of the One who has gone this way for us. Now He is at the right hand of God. We are waiting for Him to come; how blessed it is that we are waiting for Him to come! But that means that this day of grace is not going to continue forever. Today, today, is your opportunity to come into the blessing, and if you have come into the blessing, to be enriched in the blessing. If you have come into that blessing, how much enrichment there is!
May the Lord bless the word.
Preaching of the gospel, Linlithgow
8 December 2019
David C Brown
Edited and published monthly by John Brown and Paul Martin
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