Where Love and Wrath Collide

The Passion of Christ in John 19

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The passion of our.

Lord Jesus Christ recorded for us in the gospel of John chapter 19. Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged Him. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head and arrayed Him in a purple robe.

They came up to Him saying, Hail, King of the Jews. And then they struck Him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, See I am bringing Him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in Him.

So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, Behold the man. When the chief priests and the officers saw Him they cried out, Crucify Him. Crucify Him. Pilate said to them, Take Him yourselves and crucify Him for I find no guilt in Him.

The Jews answered him, We have a law and according to that law He ought to die because He has made Himself the Son of God. When Pilate heard this statement he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, Where are you from?

But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to Him, You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you? Jesus answered him, You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to you from above.

Therefore He who delivered me over to you has the greater sin. From then on Pilate sought to release Him. But the Jews cried out, If you release this man you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.

So when Pilate heard these words he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgment seat at a place called the Stone Pavement in an Aramaic Gabbatha. Now it was the day of preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour.

He said to the Jews, Behold your king. They cried out, Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him! Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king? The chief priest answered, We have no king but Caesar.

So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. O Lord, have mercy on us. So they took Jesus and he went out bearing his own cross to the place called the Place of the Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.

They crucified him and with him two others, one on either side and Jesus between them. Pilate also wrote an inscription included on the cross. It read Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this inscription for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city.

And it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priest of the Jews said to Pilate, Do not write the king of the Jews, but rather that this man said, I am the king of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments, divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier, also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless and woven in one piece from top to bottom.

So they said to one another, Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be. This was to fulfill the scripture which says, They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

So the soldiers did these things. O Lord, have mercy on us. Standing by the foot of Jesus' cross were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, Woman, behold your son.

And when he had said to the disciple, Behold your mother. And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said to fulfill the scripture, I thirst.

A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, It is finished. And he bowed his head, and he gave up his spirit.

Since it was the day of preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a high day, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.

So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the others who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.

He who saw it has borne witness. His testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth, that you also may believe. For these things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled. Not one of his bones will be broken.

And again another scripture says, They will look on him whom they have pierced. And after these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus.

And Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight.

So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been laid.

So because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there. O Lord, have mercy on us. In the name of Jesus. Today is the day of atonement. Ah, you know, the sacrifices of the Old Testament, they never could wash away our sins.

But the once for all sacrifice of Jesus, who is the sinless, spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, he is our Passover Lamb, he is our High Priest, he is our King, he is the Great Prophet, prophesied by Moses.

And here we find Jesus doing exactly what he came to do. The Scriptures cannot be broken. Christ knows the Scriptures, and the Scriptures foretold that God would provide the Lamb, that he would provide the sacrifice necessary for the sins of the world, for your sins and mine.

Thinking on this idea that all of this was planned ahead, let me remind you of one of our Christmas hymns. We sang this just a few months ago, and I thought the white was disappearing and gone for good, it's come back, it feels like Christmas today as we get ready for Easter.

But here again the words of this very well-known Christmas hymn. What child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping, whom angels greet with anthems sweet, while shepherds watch her keeping.

This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing, haste, haste to bring him laud, the Babe, the Son of Mary. But it's that second stanza that really stands out in this Christmas hymn, and one that is appropriate, I think, to consider in light of what we're remembering today.

Why lies he in such mean a state, where ox and ass are feeding? Good Christians fear for sinners here, the silent word is pleading. Nails, spears, shall pierce him through, the cross be born for me, for you.

Hail, hail, the Word made flesh, the Babe, the Son of Mary. You see, Christ humbled himself, although he was by nature God, he humbled himself and took on the form of a servant, and was obedient to the Father, obedient even to the point of death, death on the cross, because it was the will of God the Father to save us through the Son, Jesus Christ.

And it's in this regard, then, we consider a portion of our Gospel text. It begins with the words, Pilate took Jesus and he flogged him. The details of flogging are gruesome, and the Romans were really good at it.

Basically, if you take a whip, put nine leather lashes on it, and then just to make sure that it really does the intended job that it was created for, you take bits of bone and glass, kind of work it into the leather, so that when a soldier takes that whip and throws it onto the back of its victim, the lashes stick, and then you just yank that thing off, and off comes flesh, and there's blood, and there's quivering muscle.

Christ's passion is truly in gear at this point. I think about the fact that this Lenten season, we worked our way through the story of Joseph, and in the opening scene, the first scene, that first chapter of the story, Act 1, there you have Joseph, the dearly beloved, favorite son of his father.

Sounds a lot like Jesus, if you think about it. And, well, being the favorite, he has this multicolored coat. Multicolored kind of invokes, if you would, the throne of Christ. Read the book of Revelation, the throne of Christ, this glassy sea before it.

But behind him, there is this multicolored rainbow of precious stones, of onyx, and carbuncle, and other things. Well, that multicolored coat of Joseph kind of looks a lot like that. So, Joseph being hated, despised, and his brothers being jealous of him, they plot to murder him.

But here's the difficult thing, and the types and shadows. How can you have Joseph be a type and shadow of Christ if you kill the fellow? You'd have to raise him from the dead, and that's a unique thing to Christ.

So, the next best thing, rather than murder him, they sell him off into slavery, and then they take that coat of many colors, rip it into shreds, dip part of it into goat's blood, and then take it to their father, and say to him, tell us if this is your son's coat.

And Israel recognizes it. And from that moment, he begins to mourn. Surely my son has been torn to pieces by wild animals. But he hadn't. But Jesus was. Literally, torn to pieces. By wild, sinful humans.

You and I. So the soldiers then twisted together a crown of thorns, put it on his head, arrayed him in a purple robe, and they came up to him saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And then they struck him with their hands.

And I would note, Christ is in complete control here. At no point does he wave off or buckle. Buckle with doubts, and think that maybe he needs to go a different route at this point. No, he's dead set on obeying the Father.

If it's possible, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but your will be done in the will of God as it was to crush him, so that he can bear our sin. And you'll note, being in charge here, this is the coronation ceremony that Christ chose for himself.

Even the official Roman government recognizes him as king. Pilate went out again, said to them, See, I'm bringing him out to you, so that you may know I find no guilt in him. And with these words, Pilate condemns himself.

He condemns himself because his job is to execute justice. There are courts, there are actual procedures, there are, well, Roman law, the Pax Romana demands certain things be done a particular way. None of that's going on.

And he's given his official judgment as the governor. The man is not guilty. But is he? Now, it's true, Christ was tempted in every way that we have been tempted yet is without sin. But the word of God cannot be broken.

Cannot be broken. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquity. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. God has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Although Pilate sees that he's not guilty, what he doesn't see is that Christ is carrying the load of the world's sin.

Christ is as guilty at this moment as you and I are of being innocent of any sin because of what Christ has done for us. God laid on him the iniquity of us all and by faith, God clothes us in the righteousness of Christ.

Well, Jesus' substitutionary work is already in full swing. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, Behold the man. When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, Crucify him!

Crucify him! Ah, the mob speaks. And here's mob justice in full swing. If you want to know, the mob is alive and well today. They hold court on Twitter and Facebook, the court of public opinion. You could say, and it's not a twisting of scripture, Jesus was legitimately canceled.

That's exactly what we're seeing happening here. And note everybody who's canceled in the court of public opinion, it's the same injustice today as it was then. Crucify him. Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and crucify him.

I find no guilt in him. Twice he exonerates Christ. So the Jews answered him, We have a law. According to that law, he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God. Ah, and there's where you lie.

Christ did not make himself the Son of God. He truly is that. He never lied once. It is the devil who lies. So when Pilate heard this statement, that he was the Son of God, he was even more afraid. And this is out of character for Pilate.

Pilate was not exactly known for being timid. In fact, he was known for being brutal and a little bit bloodthirsty, a little bit too much so, so much that he was recalled by the Roman emperor later after this because he was just too brutal, even for Roman standards.

But here, hearing that Jesus is the Son of God, he's kind of doing the math and saying, You know what? Something's wrong here. 2 plus 2 doesn't equal 22. This guy's not even defending himself. Something's off.

And so he's afraid at this point. And remember, we learn from one of the other gospel texts, from the Gospel of Matthew, his wife has already sent a note saying, Have nothing to do with that fellow, that righteous man.

I've had a terrible dream about him. Let him go. Let him go. So now Pilate goes in and talks to Jesus. Where are you from? What a stupid question. But the reality is that we all ask this question. Our God stands before us, and we don't even know him.

That's the blindness of sin. His God is standing right there, the God who created him, formed him in the womb of his mother, called him into being by his word, and he doesn't even know him. Where are you from?

Jesus gave him no answer. Pilate said to him, You will not speak to me? Do you not know I have authority to release you, and I have authority to crucify you? It's as if he's saying, Come on, give me something here, Jesus.

I want to let you go. I know you're innocent. Jesus answered, You'd have no authority over me unless it had been given to you from above. Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.

And note by saying that, Jesus is making it clear to Pilate, he has sin in this matter. There is blood on his hands. Jesus truly is innocent. His own words condemn him. So from that point on, Pilate sought to release him.

The Jews cried out, If you release this man, you're not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar. So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out, sat down on the judgment seat at a place called the stone pavement in an Aramaic Gabbatha, and that was the day of preparation of the Passover.

And here's an interesting note. Put this together here. The day of preparation of the Passover. Didn't Jesus just celebrate the Passover with his disciples? Yes, he did. And he celebrated it a day early.

It's kind of like, well, celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve. If you've ever done that, I give you an absolution. You're forgiven. But you get the idea. It's along those lines. Christ, and in celebrating the Passover on the eve of the Passover, he changes everything, and that's where he institutes the new covenant, the sign of the new covenant, his body and blood given and shed for the forgiveness of our sins, seen with our eyes then in the Lord's Supper.

And here it's the day of preparation, which means something important is going to happen at twilight. If you remember the Maundy Thursday Old Testament text from the book of Exodus was the instituting of the Passover.

They were to take a lamb. It could be a lamb from either the sheep or the goats, and it had to be a certain age, it had to be spotless, and it was to die at twilight. And you were to take its blood and put it over the lentils of your house, of your door, so that when the destroyer, who is God, when he passes through, he would pass over your house and you would not perish.

Twilight. What time is that? Three in the afternoon. And you're going to note, when Christ says it is finished, and he gives up his spirit, he gives up his spirit after being on the cross for six hours, from nine in the morning at noon the sun disappears and goes dark, and then in the dark at three in the afternoon he dies.

The exact time that all those Jews were killing their Passover lambs. Concurrent. Same time. It's not an accident. Christ knows what he's doing. All of this was planned. This is what it takes to save you and to save me.

It was the day of preparation. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, Behold your king! They cried out, Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him! Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king?

The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. So he delivered them over to be crucified. And we know the details. Nailed to the cross after stumbling on the way to Golgotha. Nailed to the cross, suspended between heaven and earth, between two thieves, while people walking by mocked him and derided him, and, well, the pain, the agony, the blood of it is just a mess.

Gore is a good word. It's in this regard, then, that I consider the meditations on God's divine mercy written by the great Lutheran theologian Johann Gerhardt. In this classic treasury, Johann has a chapter specifically dedicated to meditating on the severity of divine wrath against sin, considered in the passion and death of Christ.

And it's here, then, where the rubber meets the road for you and for me. Because as we look at Christ hanging on the cross, what do we see? Aside from everybody just completely failing, Christ being in complete control and winning the victory by dying, there's something more than that here.

And if you look just a little harder, you can see it quite clearly. The cross is the collision point between the love of God for his fallen creation and the wrath of God. Both of them are fully on display, uncut, 200 proof.

And it causes us to have to take pause and consider our own culpability in the death of Christ and also the great love that God has for us. Gerhardt writes,. And that's right. So this Good Friday, let the mob just get it out of your head.

Don't talk about them sinners. It's time to get real here. We even sang about it in our hymn. Let me remind you of the verse. I have wrought disaster. It is my sin that nailed Christ to the cross. It is my sin that has brought about the disaster that the author of life, the very Son of God, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, one substance with the Father.

It is my sin that destroyed him. Those cruel nails are my sins with which I have pierced his hands and his feet. Those horrible thorns are my sins with which I have crowned his holy head, the head worshiped and honored by the whole angelic host in all powers.

Those sharply pointed lashes are my sins with which I have scourged his faultless body, which is the permanent temple of divinity. A terrible beast has torn Jesus to pieces, this heavenly Joseph, and has stained his robe with blood.

And I, I, a wretched sinner, am the terrible beast because it is my sins that have rushed in mass against this, your beloved Son. If this, your obedient Son, suffers in anguish because of the sins of another, what will be meted out to disobedient and wayward children because of their sins?

Truly, the wounds of my soul must be great, and they must be deadly, if they can only be healed because your only begotten Son is so wretchedly struck down.". And these are true words. The wounds of our soul and our body because of sin makes us children of wrath, like all the rest of mankind.

The wounds of my soul are great, and so are yours if they can only be healed because Jesus was struck down, and that's the point they are. Truly, the disease of my soul must be great and deadly if it can only be cured because the heavenly physician, the author of life itself, dies on a cross.

I see the torment of my Savior. I hear His wretched wailings on the cross. He is tormented because of me. He complains loudly that His Father has forsaken Him because of my sins. And now sin doesn't seem so safe.

Christ's cry of dereliction is one of the most frightening bits of His suffering. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And Gerhard rightly points out, it is my sins that cause Jesus to be forsaken.

If the weight of another's sins strike down the all-powerful Son of God, how unbearable will the wrath of God and His inestimable furor be against the unprofitable servant? O dry and unfruitful wood, sold to the fires of eternal hell, what will be your lot if this is what happens to the green wood?

Christ is the green tree of life. Christ is a vigorous tree rooted in divinity, part and parcel of humanity, famed for His virtues, possessing leaves of holy words and yielding the fruit of good works.

He is the cedar of modesty and the vine of peace, the palm of patience and the olive of mercy. But if the fire of God's divine wrath burned against this green wood, the tree of life, because of the sins of others, how much more will it completely consume the sinner as a dry tree because of unfruitful works?

How great and bloody the letters of my sin appear when written on the body of Christ. I'm going to read that sentence again. How great and bloody the letters of my sin appear when written on the body of Christ.

Paul writes in Colossians 2 that the record of debt that stood against us, the record of debt is a portion of that book, all of our sins are recorded in the books. But the record of debt, the record where all of our sins are recorded, it says it was cancelled, the whole thing ripped out, nailed to the cross.

But here's the thing, those sins have names. Your sins and mine, they have names. Names like idolatry, blasphemy, sins of, well, being tepid towards the word of God, or dishonoring our parents, or the sin of murder and adultery and stealing and lying and bearing false witness and coveting, they all have names.

There are words that describe them. And when they are recorded, their names and their details were recorded in that portion of the book. And Johan just picks this up with this idea that there's Christ being whipped and the lash that it leaves on his back is not a lash just of a straight line, but of words.

Idolatry!

Murder! Theft! Coveting! Not in the abstract. Your idolatry. Your murder. Your lying. Your theft. Your dishonor. Your adultery. The lot. How great and bloody the letters of my sin appear when written on the body of Christ.

How striking, O most righteous God, is your wrath against my iniquity. And here's where we see it. What Jesus is suffering is what you deserved. You want to see how serious it is? There's the Son of God, bleeding and dying in your place.

That should have been you. How tightly I must have been held in captivity because so precious a ransom was given to release me. How great the stains of my sin must have been because streams of blood from the body of Christ flowed to wash them all away.

O most righteous God, yet most kind Father, behold how unjustly your Son suffered for me. Forget how unworthily I, your wretched servant, have acted. Look then to Christ's deep wounds and plunge my sins into the deepest depths of the sea of your mercy.

And that is exactly what is going on here. Because Christ has died for you and this was his plan. This is the victory. This is what was promised all the way back in the garden. The seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent and he does so because he labors for six hours on Friday afternoon, three of them in the dark, suffering, bleeding, dying so that you can be forgiven and reconciled to God.

And that's what he did. It was not a defeat. It was a victory. And so we hear then the words of our responsory. Because of what Christ has done, we have an advocate with the Father. And Jesus now is the propitiation for our sins.

He was delivered up to death. He was delivered for the sins of the people. And we who meditate on this and trust in him, having had our sins washed away, we are those who are numbered with the blessed.

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is put away. It was your sin that put Christ on the cross. But his death that makes you blessed. Because by his death, he has killed death forever.

He's atoned for your sins, canceled the record of debt that stood against you, and you are blessed because you are forgiven and your sins have been put away forever into the sea of God's mercy and his forgetfulness, cast as far as the east as from the west.

This is not a day to consider defeat. This is a day to humbly thank God for his victory so that we can be saved. In the name of Jesus,.

Amen.

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