What Was the Death of Christ? Why is it Our Focus? Why Does it Matter?

What was the death of Christ?

This article is from a 10-minute video excerpt from a recent sermon:

• Jesus' Physical Suffering is Not the Focus
• A Reconciling Death
• A Propitiating Death
• A Redeeming Death
• A Conquering Death
• A Justifying Death
• What the Death of Christ is That we Proclaim
  

Jesus' Physical Suffering is Not the Focus

In terms of the Lord's Supper we are focused with tunnel vision upon the death. This is abnormal but this is good.

What was the death of Christ? It was the most awful of deaths. I couldn't describe a death that was worse than the Lord Jesus Christ's.

Not only was it a death that was under terrible circumstances in the time of a Roman execution, him being hung upon a cross, not tied there but pinned there with nails through his wrists and his feet.

Already the feeling of the crown of thorns now aching in his head, the bruises upon his back, the welts, the sores, all of those things oozing out a bunch of blood.

The spit that went into those wounds as they mock him. The heat of the day, the exposure to the elements that he experienced together with the emotional pain of his friends, practically abandoning him in his darkest hour.

All of those things, his own nation rejecting him, the authorities that are mocking him, mocking his every breath as he lifts himself up to take in another one.

Those circumstances certainly made it a terrible death, but that's not all. Nor should we even come to that kind of a level of thinking, only that level of thinking about the death of Christ.

Jesus' Death was a Reconciling Death

What was the death of Christ? Why is it so significant that we take the Lord's Supper together and that we proclaim outwardly this death?

It takes more than a physician to understand the death of Christ. It takes a Christian, it takes a theologian to understand the death of Christ.

What was he doing? What kind of death was it?

Brothers and sisters, it was a reconciling death. It was a death that is different than when you and I die.

It was a death that had a purpose for someone else.

He didn't die by accident. He didn't die merely as a martyr. He did not die because of sin that he himself had.

He died in order to extinguish the animosity between God and us.

We are told in Scripture that we were enemies of God. He's not looking down on us with delight and smiling and loving everything that we're doing and so excited and having a ball in heaven about us that God just can't get us off of his mind.

But rather we are his enemies, aiming our thoughts at him, aiming our words at his throne, aiming our actions in hostility against God, wanting elbow room, pushing him out of the way, getting him out of our life.

So Christ's death was a reconciling death. We were enemies.

God has taken the initiative to make us friends.

He has done that by Jesus's death taking care of the sin problem, that there would be no more record of sin to our account, that he could receive us as friends, as family, adopt us into his family.

Jesus' Death was a Propitiating Death

Not only that, his death was a propitiating death.

The death of Christ averts God's anger. It satisfies that holy fury that God's own internal justice is dead set against.

That we who have offended God's holiness and deserve it being a right thing for God to fling a soul into hell forever because we have offended infinite deity and majesty.

God in his great love sends his son to extinguish the wrath of God for us, to absorb it as if he had absorbed the waters of Noah's flood into a sponge and then wrung it out upon Christ's head.

There at the cross Jesus in his death drank that awful and bitter cup that only God's enemies drink though he was his beloved.

So the death of Christ satisfies the wrath of God, turns his anger from us. It is a propitiating death.

Jesus' Death was a Redeeming Death

Not only that, it is a redeeming death.

We need someone with more power than us to redeem us, to ransom us. We have been enslaved by sin.

We're not only hostile enemies to God but we are shackled in the very sins which we love. We kiss our shackles but we are slaves without rights.

Christ's death by the very merit of his blood, him being God and man, is able to secure for us the payment that was necessary to free us, to emancipate us.

We would be free from sins tyranny and dominion. No longer would it have us under its thumb but Jesus's blood in his death frees us.

Jesus' Death was a Conquering Death

Not only that, it is a conquering death.

Our greatest enemy, the devil himself, had us and he was our father as Jesus says in John 8.

We were under tyranny of a greater sort than just the tyranny of bondage in Egypt.

But to the devil himself, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now energizes the sons of disobedience and so Jesus in his death had totally disarmed all of those principalities, stripped them of their armor, of their weapons against us, of their stranglehold upon us.

He has no more claim on us.

Jesus' Death was a Justifying Death

Not only that, it was a justifying death.

Sin was the problem. Not just hell. Sin is the problem.

It is the great malady of your soul. It is the thing that God sends sinners to hell for.

A person who goes to hell remains unchanged and in their nature is only going to spurt up more and more sin.

Sin is the problem and that Jesus dealt with at the cross.

He bearing our guilt, that liability to punishment, Jesus paid the debt in full.

He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

So all of our record was nailed to the cross so that Jesus's holy record of righteousness, everything he has done right his entire life from youth up, can be given to the believer as a free gift and you have a grand entrance into heaven.

What the Death of Christ is That we Proclaim

That is what the death of Christ is.

That we proclaim, not just me now, but we all proclaim.

That this atonement is something that is a reconciling, propitiating, redeeming, conquering, justifying death of Christ.

And it is what we need, it is what we trust in.

If we trust in the least thing else, we have abandoned ship and we have nothing at all and we are of all people most to be pitied.

But if you have this Christ, you trust in him then you will find you have a home, you have God as your father, there is no more beef between you and God.

The judge has come off the bench and he has invited you home and Jesus is your Lord and he is a good master and then you are then empowered to go out and proclaim.

How long?

Until he comes.

(From the full sermon:  A Herald in Every Helping)