An Hour at the Cross

I need to start collecting material for next year's Hour At The Cross service. This is the front runner so far.

This year we had Psalm 22 by the Choir of King's College Cambridge, words from Isaiah from the Messiah and The Agony by George Herbert.

3 Crosses

Roger Carswell suggested that we might think of the 3 crosses of Luke 23:39-43 alongside Romans 6:23:

(1) The cross of rebellion - the unrepentant criminal - "the wages of sin is death"

(2) The cross of repentance - the repentant criminal - "the gift of God is eternal life"

(3) The cross of redemption - the Lord Jesus Christ - "in / through Christ Jesus our Lord"

The Victorious Cross

The Victoria Cross is the highest military decoration which is awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" to members of the armed forces.

Yet, it is even more important that we remember The Victorious Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ who laid down his life not only for his friends, comrades or country but for his enemies (Romans 5:6-11).

(Stolen from the Vicar's sermon for Remembrance Sunday which can be found at our church website.)

He bacame sin

Martin Luther said:

All the prophets did foresee in spirit, that Christ should become the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, rebel, blasphemer, etc. that ever was….for he being made a sacrifice, for the sins of the whole world, is not now an innocent person and without sins….Our most merciful Father…sent his only Son into the world and laid upon him the sins of all men, saying: Be thou Peter that denier; Paul that persecutor, blasphemer and cruel oppressor; David that adulterer; that sinner which did eat the apple in Paradise; that thief which hanged on the cross; and, briefly, be thou [that] person which hath committed the sins of all men; see therefore that thou pay and satisfy for them. Here now cometh the law and saith: I find him a sinner…therefore let him die upon the cross.

(found at Galatians, ed. Philip S. Watson (London: James Clarke, 1953), 269-271; on Gal 3:13)

Meditation on Psalm 22 for Good Frisay

Athanasius called this Psalm the 5th gospel account of the crucifixion.

Here is a remarkable description of the death of the Lord Jesus about written about 1000 years before Jesus’ birth.

Listen out for the turning point in the Psalm:
It begins pitifully but it ends in praise.
God’s king is forsaken then vindicated.
Here is the pattern of cross and resurrection; suffering then glory.

How dreadful sin must be that it could do that:
that it could transform God the Son into a worm:
that the Lord of Glory should become such an object of derision

(With a debt to Revd Dr Steve Jeffrey, who is preached on this Psalm last week)

Meditation on Genesis 22 for Good Friday

This sacrifice takes place on a mountain in the land of Moriah. The only other mention in the Bible of Mount Moriah is as the site where the temple is built, on Mount Jerusalem. The place where one day the sacrifice of God the Son would take place.

Isaac climbs the hill with the wood for the sacrifice on his back, as the Lord Jesus would climb the hill of Calvary carrying his cross.

When Abraham came to sacrifice his only son whom he loved, the Lord stayed his hand. But God the Father would give his one and only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he loved and would not stay his hand.

“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)

What love of God for us that he would give the most precious thing he had for us:

“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:9-10)

Abraham said: “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering” and indeed God does provide Abraham with a ram to sacrifice in the place of his Son. Abraham called that place “The LORD will provide” and it was said, “on the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”

Praise God that he did indeed provide the one full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for sin. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

The water and the blood

Toiling away on 1 John for homegroup notes.

There are various theories about what John means by “the water and the blood” in 1 John 5v6-7.

According to John Stott, Luther and Calvin took the water and the blood as references to baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Augustine saw a reference to the water and the blood that flowed from Jesus pierced side after his death (John 19:34-35).

According to John Stott, the most satisfactory reading (which goes back to Tertullian) is to take “water as referring to the baptism of Jesus, at which He was declared the Son and commissioned and empowered for his work, and blood to His death, in which His work was finished.” (p178). The false teachers John is opposing may have held that Jesus was an ordinary man on whom the “Christ” descended at his baptism and departed before the cross. John is thus insisting on the reality of the incarnation and especially of the death of the Christ.

Interpretative maximalists might like to know that Stott is somewhat sympathetic to some place for the other readings:

Having accepted that the primary reference of this verse is to the historical events of the baptism and crucifixion of Jesus, it is not impossible that it also contains secondary allusions, since the past events remain present witnesses (8). 'Water and blood', which occur together in some of the Levitical rituals, are intelligible symbols of 'purification and redemption' (Plummer). ... To these aspects of salvation [justification and sanctification] Jesus himself had referred in the discourses which John recorded in chapters iii, iv and vii ('water') and vi ('blood') of his Gospel. Perhaps John also saw them set forth once in the issue of blood and water from the side of the Crucified, and even regularly in the two sacraments. (p179)

Epistles of John, Tyndale NT Comm., IVP, 1964, pp177-179

Jesus the Scapegoat?

Jesus’ baptism (Mark 1vv9-11) foreshadows his death on the cross (see 10v39) where, though perfect and spotless, he will identify with sinful humanity and take their place by dying a death he doesn’t deserve: he will be the innocent in place of the guilty.

As Jesus is sent out into the desert after his baptism (Mark 1v12), maybe one of the things Mark would have us recall is the scapegoat (Leviticus 16v21) who would bear all the iniquities of God’s people away into a remote place in the wilderness.

Wright on Chalke & Pierced (updated links)

The Rt Revd Dr N. T. Wright’s The Cross and the Caricatures: a response to Robert Jenson, Jeffrey John, and a new volume entitled Pierced for Our Transgressions (Eastertide, 2007), on the Fulcrum website, seems to me extremely ill-judged in its comments on PfOT.

I sympathise with Revd John Richardson’s reflections.

There seems to be a very charitable reading of Revd Steve Chalke’s position in Wright’s article and a lumping together of Drs Jeffrey, Ovey and Sach with a lot of other bad stuff Wright has come across.

It seems from Wright’s discussion that The Lost Message of Jesus wasn’t as “clear” as Wright’s initial endorsement suggested. However, from Chalke’s subsequent writings and from the Evangelical Alliance symposium at London School of Theology, it seemed clear to me that Chalke was repudiating any doctrine of penal substitution, not just a caricature of it.

If Steve Chalke really believes in (the well-defined, carefully stated, classic, orthodox, biblical doctrine of) Penal Substitution, why doesn’t he just say so in print in clear unambiguous terms?

I have heard Tom Wright complain that people often criticize him for what he is not saying, which is exactly what he does to J, O and S.

Some of Wright’s discussion has the feel of “I wouldn’t have written the book this way and their book should be more like my books (like Chalke’s is).”

Pierced for Our Transgressions is already a long book and criticisms which suggest that it should amount to a commentary on Romans, Galatians and the Gospels, or which treat it as if it claimed to be a comprehensive statement of everything one might want to say about Jesus, the gospel or even the cross are obviously unfair.

It is patronising and, I’m sure just plain wrong, to say that “the authors have scarcely begun to grasp” the foundational fact that “the cross means what it means as the climax of the entire story of Jesus – and that the story of Jesus means what it means as the climax of the entire narrative to which the gospels offer themselves as the climactic and decisive moment, namely, the story of Israel from Abraham to Jesus… , and thus the story of Israel seen as the divine answer to the problem of Adam.” – an account which I’m sure J O and S would endorse.

I’m sad to say I thought that Wright fell into what he laments: “political labelling and dismissal of people on the basis of either flimsy evidence or ‘guilt by association’” in his characterization of “the new right-wing (so-called ‘conservative’) evangelicals.”

Links:

Jeffrey, Ovey and Sach's reponse to Tom Wright seems spot on to me.

See also comments by Revd Dr David Field, Revd Matthew Mason, Ros Clarke, Revd Doug Wilson.

Let’s pray for love and unity in the truth, repentance where it is due and the confounding of error.

Cross in a bag

Mrs Lloyd and I attended a concert at Christ Church, Southgate on Saturday. We were surprised to see that they had put six prominently displayed items, mainly on big sticks, but some fastned to the wall or on tables, in upside-down purple bags, tied up at the bottom.

It later occoured to us that these mysteriously concealed items were probably crosses.

We think this is unlikely to be some multi-faith / secularist move but may refer to the ecclesiastical season of Lent, what we are in. But we are not sure about the purpose of it all? Presumably Lent is an appropriate season to be reminded of the cross? Presumably there will be a great unveiling on Good Friday?

This is one of the things I have not learnt at theological college. I will have no idea what to do if a kindly parishoner presents me with a range of bags on Ash Wednesday. Is this a gospel issue?

We have not covered up the cross in our sitting room, but I think some kind of drape coloured appropriatly to the season might be rather good. No doubt Wipples can offer some wierd and wonderful stuff at sky high prices. Maybe next time the ecclesiastical outfitters visit college I might enquire.

God angrily punished the Son

There's been some discussion over on Revd Michael Jensen's blog (27th Feb, arising from Pierced For Our Transgressions) about whether or not we should say that God was angry with the Son and punished him. Michael denies, but I think we must affirm if we are to have penal substitution, the justice and mercy of God and the gospel.

I would say:

The triune God was angry at the elect in the Son, and hence both at us and at the Son-in-his-union-with-sinners (who are joined to him by faith in the Spirit) and rightly therefore God punished us in the Son and the Son in his union with us.

Obviously God the Father was always well pleased with his Son as Son and one might almost say the Son's obedience to death especially pleased the Father. It would be wrong for God to punish the innocent Son but not for God to punish the Son in his union with sinners, since they really are one.

This is at the heart of the gospel: that I and my sins are punished in the Son so that I do not have to experience the penalty for sin in myself (only in the Son). God's wrath is poured out, I am punished, my sin is paid for but I go free.

I reckon some people might have a difficulty with this which tracks back to a suspicion of rationality and logical inference / distinctions that can't always be read off the surface of a particular biblical text?

A book to look out for (updated)

I'm very much looking forward to seeing Pierced for our transgressions: rediscovering the glory of penal substitution by Drs Jeffery, Ovey and Sach (IVP).

I can't remember seeing any other book lavished with such praise from a comparably diverse and eminent set of evangelical luminaries. Good old Oak Hill.

The book even has a group on Facebook, with 83 members so far. I can almost hear the buzz mounting.

Jesus' Nakedness

Over supper in the Oak Hill dinning hall today, SJ suggested an idea that was new to me: that on the cross Jesus took upon himself Adam's nakedness.