The love of God on full display

Sermon for Good Friday

John 18-19

The words you heard last night from John’s Gospel should be ringing loudly in your ears today: Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. Ponder with me now some of the brilliant acts of love Jesus showed to His own in the events of Good Friday, as recorded in John’s Gospel.

It began in the Garden of Gethsemane. John doesn’t include the dread and agony Jesus felt in the Garden, or the anguish behind His three prayers. Father, take this cup from Me! Yet not My will but Yours be done! No, John doesn’t include Jesus’ requests to take the cup away. Instead, he picks up the story with Jesus’ determination to drink it. When Peter rashly tried to intervene with his sword, Jesus told him to put it away. Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me? His love for His Father was greater than His love for His own comfort, for His own safety, for His own life. And the object of His Father’s love, and therefore His own love, was “His own who were in the world,” and His own who would be in the world—for all who would seek God through the cup that Jesus was about to drink.

His love for His own continued as He spoke to the armed soldiers, If you seek Me, let these men go, that the saying might be fulfilled which He spoke, “Of those whom You gave Me I have lost none.” For His part, Jesus didn’t want the disciples to be arrested or harmed. But for their part, as the other Evangelists tell us, they weren’t willing to be arrested with Him anyway. They all forsook Him and fled, Matthew says, another instance where His love for them continued, even as their love for Him gave way to fear.

Speaking of that, Peter’s threefold denial stands in stark contrast to the Lord’s love. One of the early martyrs, Polycarp, was commanded to deny Christ, as Peter did, on pain of execution. But Polycarp replied, For eighty-six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King and my Savior? If only Peter had had such conviction! But in the moment, he fell, as the Lord told him he would, while he denied that, too! And still, Luke tells us that, at that moment of Peter’s third denial, the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter realized the gravity of what he had done. He went out and wept bitterly. But love keeps no record of wrongs. Peter repented, and trusted that Jesus’ love was strong enough to forgive. And it was. And it still is.

The Lord’s love was on display as He allowed Himself to be viciously attacked, falsely accused, judged by four separate courts, scourged, mocked, brought out for all to see with a crown of thorns on His head, and a royal purple robe on His back, and stick in His hand for a scepter. “Here is your king,” they mocked. Yes, dear Christians, here is your King. This is what love looks like.

The King was then forced to bear His own cross toward the hill called Calvary. He bore His cross, John tells us—literally, dragged it as far as He could. Maybe He wasn’t going fast enough for the guards, because they then forced a bystander named Simon of Cyrene to bear it for Him. Thankfully, the King, in His love, has not commanded or asked anyone in the world to bear His cross for Him, or to drink His cup of suffering. His suffering, His cross-bearing, was unique, because on His cross were nailed the charges from God’s holy Law that stood against all mankind, making it the heaviest cross ever made. He hasn’t told you to bear that weight. You couldn’t if you tried. Instead, He calls upon all who wish to follow Him to the victory of the resurrection to take up and bear our own crosses, daily, because Calvary must come first for all of us. But after seeing the love of the Lord Jesus as He bore the cross weighed down with your sins and guilt, how could you not love Him in return? How could you not gladly take up your own cross and accept whatever suffering you must bear, not for your sins, but purely for Jesus’ sake?

While our King hung on the cross for those six hours or so, He spoke seven times, seven “words.” Matthew and Mark record one word, Luke records three, and John records three of his own. With His mother Mary and His beloved apostle John at the foot of the cross, Jesus’ love was shown once again: Woman, behold, your son! Behold, your mother! The dutiful love of a Son toward His mother, placing her in the care of not just anyone, but of the apostle who would outlive all the rest, and who would provide faithful care, both physical and spiritual, as Jesus’ time on earth was drawing to its close.

I thirst!, He cried, and surely He was thirsty. But it wasn’t to quench His thirst that He said it. It wasn’t to enjoy one last sip of “delicious” vinegar from a filthy sponge. It was, again, for love. It was to fulfill yet another prophecy from Psalm 22, the crucifixion Psalm, so that the world would have all the Scriptural evidence we need, proof upon proof upon proof that Jesus is the promised Christ, the Son of the living God, and that His death on the cross was part of God’s plan all along for the redemption of mankind. But more than that, it was to point us all to the end of that Psalm, because it prophesied not only the death of the Son of David, but also His eventual resurrection.

It is finished!, He cried, again, not for His own benefit, but for ours, so that we may know and be absolutely certain that full atonement for all sins has been made by Jesus, and that no other sacrifice for sins can or should be made. But for all time, the finished sacrifice of Christ on the cross avails and is valid for any and all who will use it, for any and all who seek to be reconciled to God by it, that is, for any and all who believe.

Truly, Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. Did He ever! In Jesus’ love you will find peace. You will find forgiveness. You will find a God who loves you enough to suffer and die for you, because that’s how much He wants to spend eternity with you, with you who have come to know His love, which will forever shine forth from the cross of His beloved Son, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Amen.