John 19:17-42, The Submission Mission, Dr. John B. Carpenter

The Reading of John 19:17-42

John chapter 19, we'll be reading from really the end of verse 16 to the end of the chapter. Hear the word of the Lord. So they took Jesus and he went out bearing his own cross to the place called the place of a skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.

There they crucified him and with him two others, one on either side and Jesus between them. Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It said, 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 and Latin and in Greek. So the chief priest and the Jews said to Pilate, do not write the king of the Jews, but rather this man said, I am king of the Jews.

Pilate answered, what I have written I have written. When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts. One part for each soldier, also his tunic, but the tunic was seamless 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, but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleopas, 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.

Then he 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 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, that they might be taken away.

So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Pilate 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. 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 75 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.

The Submission Mission of Christ

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Whoever waited and worked hard, some goal, and reveled in the satisfaction of finally reaching it, graduated from school. You have commencement, and then you probably go out, have a party, go out to eat or at least something.

After years of hard work, just to mark that accomplishment, got married after a long wait, been through the military, and then finally honorably discharged. It's probably something to celebrate, I guess.

Saved its crowns to start your own business, and then finally it's up and running and it's paying the bills. Maybe it's to achieve something great for ourselves, the crown of a diploma or a wedding ring or an income.

It's even more fulfilling when what you work for has taken years, when there's been anticipation, there's been planning, there's been lots of work. To have a mission and fulfill it is a happy experience, even, I suppose, if the mission is to die.

This is the moment. This is the hour that Jesus looked forward to, the time he called his hour. All the way back in the second chapter of this gospel, he rebuffed his own mother and told her, my hour has not yet come.

He was working toward it and now it has come. Now he is lifted up. He is exalted for all to see. When he first told the disciples in chapter 3, verse 14, that he was going to be lifted up, they probably assumed that he was raised to a high place of power, a throne, you know, made a king, promoted.

It was a metaphor, they thought, they assumed, for the exaltation, for the power that he would grasp, and they would ride his coattails to that glory. They had no idea that he meant this, this literal lifting up from the ground by being nailed to a cross.

Not this, but the gospel of John is telling us that he was indeed raised, that he was made a king. He is enthroned, not only in the resurrection or the ascension, but in this, in the crucifixion itself.

This is the hour for which he had come into the world. But what exactly was his mission? Was he a great peacemaker or wise man giving out his light to the world who became a victim? We could look at his crucifixion as a great atrocity, a murderer of an only truly innocent man, the victim of a corrupt self-serving establishment.

And that's all true. This is an atrocity. It's a vicious murder. The religious leaders are not interested in hearing the Word of God, killed the Word made flesh. The civil authorities and the person upon whose pilot, not interested in truth and justice, murdered truth for political expedience.

If that's all it was, just the victimization of an innocent man, then that would mean the crucifixion was an accident. It was an assault on his mission, an interruption of what he came to do. It's a detour.

But we know that that is not the case. The cross was not a detour while on his mission. The cross is at the heart of his mission. He's more than a victim. He wasn't simply caught up in a chain of events that were out of his control.

For you see, the Lord Jesus tells us while speaking to Peter in chapter 18, verse 11, we saw just a few weeks ago, he said that, this is the cup that the Father has given me. The Father gave this to the Son.

This is the cup that he gave to the Son. Peter later saw clearly on the day of Pentecost, standing before many of these same men, shouted and demanded that Jesus be crucified. That though, yes, he was killed by the hands of lawless men, Peter said, it all happened according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

In Acts chapter 2, verse 23, it was God's cup. He prepared it. He handed it to the Son. Jesus was killed not simply by murderous hypocrites, not even by the passive expedience of an immoral system. He was sacrificed.

Now, that doesn't let those people off the hook. God used their sin, and they will be responsible for their sin. But ultimately, and this is our point, God did it. The Father killed the Son. The religious hypocrites and the Romans were just the tools in his hands, or what he used to accomplish his mission.

Just as the Passover lambs were being slaughtered that very day, at the very same time, Jesus was being killed. So too, God is sacrificing his Son, and the double-edged sword he used is religious hypocrites and Roman pragmatists.

The soldiers thought that they were mocking him when they put a crown of thorns on his head. But this is his coronation. He had already humbled himself simply by taking the form of a man, being born in flesh, by submitting to his parents as a child, by being a submissive subject of his government, by being bound by the limitations of human nature, experiencing hunger and thirst and exhaustion.

He did all this voluntarily. In the hours leading up to this point, he humbled himself even more. The Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, eternal God, begotten of the Father, knelt and washed the disciples' feet.

He submitted to the indignity of doing a servant's task. He submitted to the sadness of a betrayal loyalty, to know the denial of one of his closest friends. He submitted to the pain of being abandoned.

That's what he came for, to submit. He was going to submit himself even to being beaten and tortured, and he submitted himself to the cruel mockery. And then he was going to submit himself even to death.

That's his mission. First, he is let out, bearing his own cross, in verse 17. The whole journey to the cross is covered just in one verse. And then he is brought to the place of sacrifice, Golgotha, the place of a skull, a prominent crossroads, a high profile.

Many people assume it's a hill, but actually the Bible never says it's a hill. It's probably just a prominent intersection where as many people as possible would see it. So they executed condemned criminals there as a warning to others, you know, to be displayed in their humiliation, their agony, as a model, a way to say to people, this will happen to you too if you do not submit.

Jesus does submit and is crucified there. God does it using Roman hands. Jesus has already suffered beating. Now he suffers perhaps the cruelest form of execution ever devised. The inspired apostle doesn't try to describe what crucifixion was like.

You know, here, from our point of view, it just passes over. It seems so rapidly. When they crucified him, that's all he says. Now, perhaps he didn't feel he had to describe it since his original readers would likely have witnessed crucifixions, would know what that means.

But we, in our more squeamish and sanitized day, need to be reminded of what a crucifixion was like, what it is. The ancient Roman poet Cicero wrote, crucifixion was the cruelest and foulest of punishments.

2 ,000 years later, a medical scholar examined what happens in the crucifixion and described it in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Here's a medical description of crucifixion. Adequate exhalation, otherwise breathing out, required lifting the body by pushing up on the feet and by flexing the elbows.

However, this maneuver would place the entire weight of the body on the tarsals and would produce searing pain. Furthermore, flexion of the elbows would cause rotation of the wrist about the iron nails and cause fiery pain along the damaged median nerves.

Muscle cramps of the outstretched and uplifted arms would add to the discomfort. As a result, each respiratory effort, each breath, would become agonizing and tiring and lead eventually to asphyxia. The major pathophysiologic effect of crucifixion was an interference with normal respirations.

Accordingly, death resulted primarily from hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia. In other words, it was a way of smothering someone to death under the weight of their own exhaustion and pain. And that's the cup the father poured out for the son to drink.

That's the death God predestined and planned for Pilate to inflict on the Lord Jesus, a public, humiliating, and painful death. That's the kind of death Jesus saw coming and stepped right into. That's what he submitted to.

That's his mission. Why? Why would the father send the son to that? Why would Jesus willingly drink that cup to take away sins? Our sins, your sins, my sins deserve that, deserve punishment. Our sins deserve the most torturous death imaginable, and afterward, eternal damnation.

That would have been our just punishment. Indeed, mine, mine was the transgression, but thine, the deadly pain. That's why he was numbered with the transgressors. Notice how clearly, verse 18, wants us to see that he was crucified with sinners.

Not just he's with them, but actually in the middle of them, flanked by two criminals. There in verse 18, one on either side, and then he makes it clear. He was in the middle of them. He is with us, bearing the punishment for our sins.

And it's there, nailed to a post in cross beams, hanging in the air, along with the criminals, in the middle of the criminals, that he is enthroned. This is his coronation. God uses Pilate to announce it in verse 19, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.

Here is the King, the King looked forward to through all the Old Testament. Here he is, enthroned for the world to see, drawing all men to himself. Many of the people who supposedly studied the Scriptures, the Old Testament, couldn't see it.

So it took the pagan Pilate to declare the truth. Even if he was mocking it, he was still declaring it. He was an unwitting prophet for the Lord Jesus. And he declared it in three languages, in Greek, the language of culture and learning, in Latin, the language of the empire of the soldiers who were standing there, in Aramaic, the language of the common people of Israel, of the spectators.

The religious leaders object. They always objected to the Word of God, even when they claim to be teaching it. Do not write, the King of the Jews, don't state that as a fact. But rather, this man said, I am the King of the Jews, as though he's being crucified for blasphemy.

Ah, but Pilate, the unwitting prophet, he will not change his prophecy to fit what these people want. What I have written, I have written. Remember Isaiah 40, verse 8, last time you remember? The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever, even when it comes to a corrupt bureaucrat.

Then in verse 23, the soldiers divided Jesus' clothes among them. Now, surely the indignity of having once your clothing just stripped away and divided is humiliating enough. Imagine, you are in the greatest agony.

You are immobilized, unable to stop flies from landing on your many wounds. You are either naked or nearly naked, and right in front of you, your executioners are dividing your clothes, telling you, you're not going to need them anyway.

You have no more need for clothing since you'll soon be dead. There's one tunic, it's kind of a long undershirt, and they don't want to divide because it's one piece. So they gamble for it. And this shows once again that this is an enthronement.

They don't know it, but they fulfill a scripture from Psalm 22, verse 18, we sang it earlier, about what would happen to God's king. Two things will happen. They divide my garments among them. And second, for my clothing, they cast lots.

And both happened. God made sure it would happen in order to fulfill His Word because God's Word cannot be broken. Now, all these people thought they were just voluntarily doing what they wanted to do, acting of their own, quote, free will, but they did it by God's predestination, God's plan to fulfill God's Word.

Even the stripping and the dividing clothes is turned by God's hand to be a sign showing that this is indeed a coronation, that He is the king. And Jesus submitted. As He's thus being crowned, He makes three statements here in the Gospel of John.

Three statements recorded here in John's Gospel from Jesus on the cross. First, He abides by the fifth commandment. He fulfills the commandment to honor His father and mother. He takes care of His mother.

Even in His bitter anguish, Jesus thought of His mother. There's something infinitely moving that the Lord, wracked by agony on the cross, in the moment when our salvation hung in the balance, thought of His mother.

Don't let anyone ever tell you that Christianity is an ancestor family denying religion. Here's Jesus on the cross, the Lord Himself, taking care of His mother. Because of the extreme difficulty in saying anything while crucified, His words are staccato, are concise.

He uses language that's like that of an official adoption in their day. He introduces His mother to His disciple. Now, surely they already knew each other, but He said to the disciple, He calls the disciple whom He loved, probably John, calls him, look, behold, your son, speaking to his mother.

Introduces John to his mother, calling her your mother. And thus, the Lord Jesus entrusts His mother to John. He does not entrust His mother to His own brothers because we are told in John 7, verse 5, that they are not yet believers.

As Jesus said elsewhere, His mother and brothers and sisters are those who hear the word of God and keep it. The household of faith is thicker than blood. So from that moment, in verse 27, John takes Mary into his home to be provided for by Him.

Now, some people have thought that this statement of Jesus taking care of His own mother just seems too mundane to be something that the Son of God would say from the cross. So they imagine that there must be some deeper meaning to it.

It must be symbolic of something greater, something allegorical. But the truth is that Jesus' concern for His mother is in and of itself important. His perfect obedience to God's law was vital. He kept the law perfectly for us.

And this is all part of His submission to His life as a full human being. He became obedient to all the expectations of a family. The fifth commandment, to honor your father and mother. The right expectation that the son should provide for his mother.

His second word also seems at first to be very mundane. In verse 28, He said, I thirst. In Greek, it's just one word, I thirst. And on one level, He said it for a very mundane reason. Sure, the Scripture says that He said it because that He now knew that all things had been fulfilled.

Because it says here, knowing that His mission was fulfilled, that He had accomplished what He came to do, then He says, I thirst. It's an important announcement to make because His mission is completed.

He wants to announce it. So He calls for a drink that will moisten His parched thirst so He can say it loud and clear. And yet in the light of what this gospel says earlier about thirst, the statement of Jesus does have a deeper meaning.

In John 4, verse 14, the Lord Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well, whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

And yet here, the one who made that promise says, I thirst. So where was the water springing up for eternal life? How could the thirst-quencher be thirsty? The answer to that gets right to the point of what Jesus was doing on the cross, what His mission was, what He was finishing, what He was completing.

People are sinners. Our sins not only turn us away from God, but turn God away from us. Remember Romans? The wrath of God is being revealed. His anger is just and it must be appeased. Satisfying that right anger is the only way to truly know God.

Not just know a few facts about God, have some theological knowledge about Him, but to really know Him, have fellowship with Him. You cannot truly know God as long as He is still angry with you for your sins.

You can't have that fellowship with an angry God. And it is that knowledge of God, that fellowship with Him, that is the definition that is eternal life. As the Lord Jesus Himself in His prayer in John 17, verse 3 said, just before He was betrayed and arrested, now this is eternal life, that they may know you, talking to the Father, the only true God.

That knowledge of God, that fellowship with the living God, who is no longer angry at you, that wrath of God has been revealed, and that you've been revealed, has been taken away against you, and you're justified, you're reconciled with Him.

That is the water that wells up in you, that can satisfy you. If you truly know Him, you know that God no longer counts your sins against you. That's what we remember in the Lord's Supper, that our sins have been taken away by what He did.

And that, that experience, that fellowship, that knowledge, is the water welling up that satisfies you. But that's only possible because Jesus bore the wrath of God toward our sins. The just anger of God at our sins was laid on Him.

The Father, in some mysterious way, and now some... I'm sure we believe in the Trinity. We did this recent Sunday School series on it. The Trinity is never divided, it is one. But in some mysterious way, the Father turned away from the sons.

There was something, because Jesus Himself quotes, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? From Psalm 22. And so, for a time, somehow, in some way, fellowship with the Father was withheld from the Son, and He thirsted for it.

He's given a drink. In verse 29, they use a hyssop stalk to give it up to Him. So it seems like a strange little detail. What's that detail there for? Who cares about kind of stick they used? Hyssop, what is that about?

He didn't realize that hyssop plants were what we used for the blood on the first Passover. This is all done when the Passover lambs were being sacrificed. Here's hyssop bringing the wine to Him. They are used here again on the fulfillment of the Passover.

So there is still that mundane reason, that practical reason, that He wants a drink. And that's to give that third saying. Everything is now fulfilled. So He wants to announce it. He wants people to hear Him loud and clear.

He gets His drink and announces in verse 30, it is finished. One of the greatest announcements in history. It is finished. Not only does the word for this in Greek refer to something being over, completed for all time.

It also refers to the end of a mission, of a goal, reaching that goal, fulfilling the obligations and having accomplished it. It could also be translated, it is accomplished. He has fulfilled the Father's will.

His obedience is accomplished. He has drunk the cup the Father gave Him to drink and He drunk it to its dregs.

It is finished.

The sacrifice is complete. He has offered the one full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of His people. Nothing ever needs again to be added to it. Not our works or religion or the merits of others.

That's why you remember the Lord's Supper. It's a great tragedy. Some people turn the Lord's Supper into something that we do to add to what Jesus did for us. It is meant for us to remember what He has done, which is finished.

We can't add to it by taking the Lord's Supper.

That's the reverse.

That's the opposite of what we ask to remember in the Lord's Supper. We remember what He has accomplished. And once and for all, let's never insult the sufficiency of His sacrifice that He's done here by thinking there's something that we or some saint, somebody needs to do to add a little something to what He's done to make it effective, make it efficient.

He's fulfilled His mission. He has saved His people. And with that, He bows His head in verse 30. The same word is used for people laying their head down to sleep. He voluntarily lays His head down. And then it says, He gave up.

Notice that He gave up, like He's voluntary, as if He's in complete control. He gave up His spirit. He wasn't taken from Him by the violence of these Roman soldiers, by the violence of crucifixion. He voluntarily dismisses His spirit.

He lets go of Himself from the body. He has submitted fully to everything this human body subjected Him to, even death, even death on a cross. No one took His life from Him. He was not just a victim. He chose to lay it down.

The Pierced King and the Fulfillment of Scripture

He chose to submit to death. Starting verse 31, we see once again the hypocrisy of the religious people. They had desecrated the Passover by killing an innocent man, and they worry about ceremonial cleanness.

They're worrying about regulation, about not having a dead body on a public place, like they hung up on the Sabbath. But even this hypocrisy is used by God to glorify the Son, because they want the dead bodies down.

The legs of the two criminals are smashed. It hastens their death. Remember that description of crucifixion? They can no longer lift themselves up, besides being very painful, they can no longer lift themselves up to breathe.

But in verse 33, they find the Lord Jesus is already dead. And with that, they fulfill the scripture, two scriptures about the true King and the true Passover lamb. Not one bone of a Passover lamb is supposed to be broken.

God tells the Israelites in Exodus 12, verse 6, and Numbers 19, verse 12, and God's anointed King will be pierced. In Zechariah 12, verse 10, in verse 34, a soldier jabs Jesus with his spear to test if he's truly dead.

Is he just acting? Is he black? No, he's dead. So, out flow blood, water. He is thoroughly dead. Christians today don't like to think too much about that. They want to pass quickly from triumphal entry, everyone shouting, Hosanna, you know, Palm Sunday, to a resurrection, Easter Sunday, from one triumph to another.

But John doesn't do that. He's dwelt now for two long chapters with plenty of foretelling earlier in the gospel on the betrayal, trial, beatings, and crucifixion of Jesus.

Why?

Is he just kind of macabre? Is he just obsessed with the death?

Why?

What's going on?

Because he tells us in verse 35, so that we will believe. Wait, why here? Why here at the cross that we will believe? It would make sense, you know, and he does it again after the resurrection. It makes sense there that we believe in a resurrected Lord.

Why here?

Notice that he stops here, verse 35, at the death of Jesus to tell us that. Not only after the resurrection, not just after the triumph, the exaltation, but right here with this dead, lacerated, bruised, bleeding body, right here.

And he says in verse 35, he's written this, he's described all this, so that you also might believe. Also, implying like John himself. You know, he's saying, I'm telling you this about his death that you, like me, will believe in him.

John who saw this, standing beside Mary, the only disciple there, heard it is finished, saw the soldiers break the legs of the other two men, and saw that they didn't have to do that to Jesus, and instead pierced it with a spear.

No reaction other than this effusion of blood and water. He saw that Jesus was definitely dead. And oddly enough, seeing all that, he believed. And that's the mission of this gospel, that you too will look on a crucified, pierced, dead man and believe.

We believe that Jesus is king. His lifting up was on a cross. His coronation was his crucifixion. It's the goal he's been working for. And now in verse 38, the king is buried. Normally, the Romans threw condemned, executed criminals into common graves.

But this time, the dead man has important friends. Joseph of Arimathea is a member of the Sanhedrin, kind of like a senate in Israel, the ruling body. And he has a new tomb nearby, Nicodemus, to whom Jesus had earlier told in John chapter 3 that one must be born again.

Nicodemus brings 75 pounds of spices to prepare Jesus' body with. Now, for us, we don't really understand what that means. But for the original readers that would understand, this is a lot. This is 75 pounds.

It's an enormous amount. This is far more than would normally be used. And just if your friend who you liked, who you loved, your family member, or someone like that died, 75 pounds was an amount that would be used for a royal burial, for when a king has died.

Jesus submitted to death, even death on a cross. And so God highly exalted him. He crowned him king. He lifted him up. He proclaimed his coronation. He was treated as only a king would be treated. Sure, the crown was made of thorns, and the lifting up was on a cross, and the proclamation was a mocking placard above his head.

The treatment was pounds of burial spices. But that was the cup the father gave him to drink. That was his mission. That's what he came to submit to. We so naturally want a mission about being lifted up, as the world thinks.

We want a mission about being respected, and prosperous, and exalted, and wealthy, and popular, and successful. That's what we want. And religion, we think, may be one way to do that. It's about heaven.

It's about glory. And that's supposed to give us triumph. It's supposed to make us feel better about ourselves. Something we can be proud of. We can make demands of it, and not have any expectations placed on us.

What a strange story this is, then. This gospel begins with the word, in the beginning, who was made flesh, who was with God from eternity, who was God.

Why?

To take over? Is that why he became flesh? To take over, to be crowned, to be exalted? Well, he already had that. Remember the glory he said in his prayer he had before he came into the world? He had it, and let it go.

We don't have it, and we desperately are trying to grasp it. We think we make enough money, we're good enough, we're popular enough, we have enough accomplishments. We can get that glory. We think religion is a tool to do it.

And then we read this. We read it so that we might believe and let go of our glory and submit to him. Maybe you've been thinking, he's a very unfortunate victim. An example of what cruel people will do to truth-tellers, but he's a victim.

But have you grasped that he was handed over as a sacrifice to pay for what you have done? Have you grasped that he willingly drank this cup handed to him from the father because of what you need? And the heart of what you've done is not just a breaking of a list of rules, even naughty now and then, but desperately trying to get what Jesus let go.

Do you see that? If so, today, let go. Stop grasping for coronation, for a trophy you think you can earn. Instead, simply believe, believe in him. These things are written about a crucified, pierced man so that you may believe.

Do you?