Word of Salvation – Vol.33 No.17 - May 1988

 

The Death of Christ

 

Sermon by Rev. M.P. Geluk on Lord's Day 16

Reading: Isaiah 53:8-12; 2 Samuel 18:31-19:4

Singing:

BoW .H.6:1,2; BoW.H.6:3,4; Ps.H.381; Ps.H.228:1,4,5; Ps.H.402

.

The first half of Isaiah 53 describes the suffering of Christ.  The second half of the chapter speaks of His actual death and the results of His death.  Verse 8, for example, says that the Man of Sorrows was cut off from the land of the living.  That means that He died.  Isaiah also gives the reason for his death: "For the transgression of my people he was stricken.”  Verse 9 goes on to say that Christ entered the grave, that state of perishableness and deterioration.  Yet this was not deserved by Christ for Isaiah acknowledges the sinlessness of the Son of God.  Verse 10 points out that there were also other factors at work in the death of Christ, such as it being the will of God.  God Himself caused His Son to be offered up as a guilt offering.  In all, as Isaiah speaks of it, the death of the Messiah was no ordinary death.  There is even a reference to life after death, for Isaiah said that the suffering servant will see the result of His suffering.  He will witness the benefits of His death for others.

Scripture passages like Isaiah 53 have caused the Christian Church to confess that the death of Christ is certainly the most important part of His work as Mediator between holy God and sinful man.  And today we want to take a closer look at this special death of Christ.  As we consider: The Death of Christ, we see:

1.  Its Essence

2.  Its Cause, and...

3.  Its Results

1.  In the first place we look at the essence of the death of Christ.

What really is death?  As we all know there is no way to escape it; we will be all going to die sometime.  The only exception will be the Christians who are alive at Christ's coming.  How and when we will die is not known to us now and maybe that is just as well.  There is a blessing in not knowing in advance whether or not we will suffer much, whether or not death will come early or late.  If we knew more, we would sleep less for we would lie awake worrying about it.  But one fact is clear, everyone will die sometime.

There has been a curious fascination about death in recent years.  People are willing to speak much more openly about it.  Some even see death as not necessarily being a bad thing.  We hear that the suicide rate is increasing, especially among young people.  Those who opt for death are not necessarily mentally ill.  It's just that for some death seems a better alternative than facing the difficulties of life.  They evidently think of death as a state of nothingness.  So why be afraid of death?

You may remember that some years ago a psychiatrist by the name of Kubler-Ross became well-known because of her lectures on death and dying.  She travelled the world, was interviewed on television and some Christians even thought for a while that Kubler-Ross' philosophy of death was quite biblical.

After many years of playing down the reality of death and not wanting to face up to it, with people even avoiding the word "death”  but preferring to speak of "passed on", it was a relief to hear Kubler-Ross say that death should not be the unmentionable subject which it had become for many.  Death, she said, should be faced up to and accepted, and those who were approaching death should be told of this and be allowed to die with dignity.  People, she said, usually sense when death is coming and if it is inescapable, then others should just let the dying make their peace with death.  It's no use pretending to people that they are not dying when in fact they are.

But even though Kubler-Ross did a good thing by removing some of the foolishness around death, her whole philosophy on death was really humanistic.  Her view had no biblical aspect to it.  The Bible does not want us to accept death as something that is peaceful, for death it says, is the outcome of man rebelling against God.  The curse of sin rests on man and its result is death.  Death is a terrible thing for it comes as a final separation from God.

Perhaps there is no more poignant expression of what death is than the one we find in 2Samuel.  Here we find King David awash with grief at the death of his son Absalom.  We know from the Bible that Absalom was not a good son.  At one time he got his brother drunk and then had him killed for he stood in the way of his ambitious plans.  Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel away from his father David who was chosen by God to be King.  When he felt he could bring it off, Absalom led a rebellion against his father and proclaimed himself as king.  A battle followed between those loyal to David and those who were with Absalom.  David's forces were victorious and what David hoped would not happen, did; Absalom was killed.  When David was informed of his son's death, he broke down terribly.  Here is how his father grieved:

"O my son Absalom, my son, may son Absalom!  Would I have died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!".

Believers in God, like David, know the ravages of grief.  Especially when there is no certainty about the person who died being in heaven or hell.

We feel sharp slashes of agony when loved ones depart from us through death, yes, even when we know they are with God in heaven.  It's not their going to be with God that makes us weep, but our being left behind without, them.  But now what the death of Christ does to the Christian is not to spare him from grief but to give him comfort.  Of course loved ones will die and we will die.  The ones left behind will be faced with sorrow.  But believers in Christ will also be comforted when they realize what the death of Christ has done for those who have turned to Him for their salvation.

What the death of Christ has done for those who believe in Him can be put in one simple but profound statement.  It has caused death itself to die!  Christ's death means that death has died.  By dying Christ has killed death itself.

In trying to grasp the significance of this, we have to face the reality of death.  Death is the opposite of living and when we try to understand the essence of life then we may also understand the essence of death.  Life is really a bond; something that binds and ties things together.  In life there are ties and bonds with other things and other people.  For example, we have ties with the creation.  We enjoy the sun, the sea, the bush and, at times, the rain, the wind and the clouds that come rolling in.  And if you know God as the Creator then you have ties with Him too.  Especially with God, for He made all things in such a beautiful way.  This tie with God is having communion with Him, being in fellowship with Him.  Life flows from God.  He is the origin of all life.  Life, therefore, owes its very existence and being to God.  It's a little bit like children not being able to ever forget their parents, not even when they are not on a good footing with them.  Even those who never knew their parents are often driven by a desire to know who brought them into the world.

Many people, of course, do everything they can to deny God.  They speak of origins other than God.  Theories, myths and legends take the place of the creation account as you find it in the Bible.  But where God is believed in, there you have an awareness of a relationship between the Creator and creature.  You could describe this tie, this bond, as the spiritual dimension of life.

But life also consists of a bond between soul and body.  We are not just souls; we are both soul and body.  As such we are meant for this earth.  Here is where God put us as people who are alive in body and soul.  Here on earth is where we do our living, our existing.  You could describe this aspect of life as the physical dimension.

Now when God made man, His design was that people should always have that spiritual and physical dimension to life.  It's these that give meaning and purpose to life.  It's that bond that ties us to God and to other people like your wife, husband, children friends, and to the creation.  Life was to go on like that always.  You can sum it all up by saying that life has a spiritual aspect, a physical one, and an eternal one.

But now death, caused by sin, has torn apart those three dimensions of life in a terrible way.  Death broke the bond between God and man.  The spiritual dimension died.  Then death also broke the bond between body and soul.  Hence we have be physical death.  And when the spiritual and physical dimensions are fully gone then you have of course eternal death.  Then the dimension of eternity has also changed.  Everything has gone from life to death.

All this is not just some theory.  No, you can see thousands of people in the world who have no living relationship with God their Creator.  People whose spiritual dimension has gone either into a wrong direction or it has gone out altogether for they live like robots.  But as to God they are spiritually dead.  In fact, all people are born spiritually dead in so much that God's Spirit is not at work in them.  They are not alive to God but dead to Him.  And when the time comes that they die physically as well, then those two dimensions together, spiritual and physical, result in eternal death.  Yes, one experiences eternal death.  In that state one is always aware of being separated from God.  It's the awful reality of hell.  Complete, total death; therefore it is a devastating experience and no one can ever hope to be at peace with it.

Kubler-Ross, therefore, made a terrible mistake in trying to have people who had rejected God come to terms with their death.  Death is an enemy.  As Paul reminded the Corinthian church, death has a sting in it.  This sting is sin and if this sting is not removed then there remains a pain in death.

But this is where the death of Christ has something to say to us.  Christ succumbed to death in its deepest sense when He died.  It's true that time-wise Christ was not dead for very long.  But time ceases to have meaning when you are separated from God.  Obviously eternal death is a long time, but each fraction of it is an eternity in itself.  It doesn't get worse as time goes on.  From the very beginning it will be as bad as it will ever get.  The duration of Christ's death, therefore, has no bearing /really on how deeply He suffered.  The fact that He experienced death in its fullest sense, in all three dimensions, is what counts.  We know the spiritual dimension of life was broken because He cried out: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!”  The darkness that came over Golgotha was indicative that He was cut off from God who is Light.  On Him was the full justice and wrath of God against sin.  And we know that He was also physically dead for the life had gone out of Him and they buried Him in a tomb.  And the tomb or the grave are places where the living dispose of dead bodies.  That which once was alive is then given over to deterioration and perishableness.  In time the body returns to dust.  The glory of life has departed; the humiliation of death has come in its place.

2.  But now we must not only speak of the essence of Christ's death we must also see the cause of his death – our second point.

It's when we try to see why Christ died that we discover how He saves those who believe in Him.  When we spoke earlier of the essence of death in humans then you realize that death is not a mere process of nature as Kubler-Ross would have it.  The death of man is altogether different from the death of an animal or a flower.  A flower simply withers, the petals fall off and it's no more.  Animals and flowers simply cease to exist.  But it's different with man.

In man's death we are looking at God's curse upon sin and now Christ has died in order to free us from that divine curse.  It is the only way for us to be saved from God's wrath.  God has to punish sin with death because God is light pure, holy and righteous.  Sin plunges man into darkness, impurity, unholiness, and unrighteousness.  Sin which is disobedience to God's ways, therefore separates from God.  Light and darkness, purity and impurity, holiness and unholiness, righteousness and unrighteousness cannot exist alongside in God.  Something has to give.  God does not change; He remains perfect.  Man who did the sinning had to leave the presence of God.  And that caused his death.

But God so loved man that He devised a plan in which he would bring man back into His perfection.  But how could God save man from the state of death where his sin put him?  God did it by giving His Son over to death.  God has always existed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and now the Son would become man and He would take from man the guilt and curse of sin and put it on Himself.

Christ declared Himself willing to stand where sinful man is.  Christ became the accused.  He was ready to face the consequences of man's sinful disobedience.  He said to the Father, as it were: “You punish me!  The sentence of death can be pronounced over me and I will die in the place of man.  In this way we, Father and Son, will save man from death and make him perfect again so that He can always dwell with us".  And we'll make this glorious plan of salvation known to man.  We'll speak to Him, give man our word of truth and we'll send our Holy Spirit into man's heart and mind and help him to believe us, accept us and trust us.

In this way Christ became a substitute for us.  The Father thought of it and initiated this saving plan and the Son willingly helped to execute it.  It's completely wrong, therefore, to see Christ's death as something He did not want but couldn't get away from.  He was not in the least a victim of circumstances.  Yes, the Jews screamed for His death and the Pharisees persuaded Pontius Pilate to pronounce the sentence of death over Him.  But God simply made use of these people to work out His salvation plan.

If Christ's death had been caused by a mob lynching Him, then believers in Christ would never be sure if God meant His Son to die for them.  The official sentence of death by Pilate as judge means that Christ was declared guilty, by both man's law and God's law.  The Pharisees got the Romans to crucify Christ because they only saw Him as a man who blasphemed God which was punishable by death according to the law of the Old Testament.  But God Himself, as Father and Son, brought about the crucifixion because in this way the penalty of death could be met.  In Christ's dying the full consequences of death worked themselves out.  And he who hears of it and believes in Christ as Saviour will never have to die for his own sins.  Christ died for everyone who believes.  He died their death.  And in so doing real death has ceased to exist for believers.

If death is like a big mouth, wide open, able to devour people and destroy them, then imagine Christ willingly going into those gaping jaws and being devoured Himself.  But now in Christ's case, death could not hold Him.  He burst back into life, breaking death's ability to hold people.  Those who believe what Christ did can now look at death and say, as far as they are concerned those jaws have no power to keep them.  It's not even death to them anymore for Christ has conquered it.  The believer says: "I am no longer afraid of it.  Christ by His death, by His going into it, has killed it as far as I am concerned.  I say that by faith for I believe what Christ tells me in His Word".

3.  Having thus spoken about the essence and cause of Christ's death, let us now conclude our speaking about Christ's death by briefly seeing its results.

His death gives us life because of the fatal blow He gave to death.  Believers in Christ have passed from death to life.  How understandable, therefore, when the New Testament speaks of believers who die in the body as falling asleep.  For them there is no more spiritual and eternal death.  The life Christ won for us means full communion with God always.  It is, as the Bible so frequently speaks of it, eternal life.  In this life given by Christ the spiritual dimension is completely restored.  As people of this earth we have been returned to our true being wherein we are tied again to God.  The bonds have been restored.

Our physical death will be a mere changeover from life with God on this earth to life with God in heaven.  And then at Christ's return when He will bring in the new earth, we will be resurrected in the body and we will experience complete, full life with God in body and soul.

So rich is the life that Christ won for us by His death, that the New Testament speaks of us as having a new self here already.  Our old self has died with Christ.  Therefore, sin, evil and every form of disobedience that were part of the old self, must no longer rule us.  Christ wants to rule over us.  In the new self He gave us, He wants to be Lord.  And He wants us to worship and obey Him as Lord.

The Christian is therefore not a mixture of both the old self and the new self.  No, the old self was crucified and buried with Christ.  It's only the new self that is alive.  We cannot be dead and alive at the same time.  Christians can only be alive.

But with the new life given to us by Christ, the Christian is not free from the temptations of sin.  But if he follows Christ as Lord then he can be victorious.  To help him in his striving to serve Christ, the Christian has been given the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit will enable the Christian to live with the Word of God at the centre of his life.  He will be given at his disposal spiritual weapons with which the Christian can fight and conduct this holy warfare.

Because Christ died for us, He wants us very much to be free from the powers of death.  He killed them so as to have us alive in Him and He in us.  But the thing to do in this fight against sin is to put our faith in Christ.  We must keep on believing what His death has achieved.  If we don't do this, then we will crack up and despair every time we fail.  In faith we must focus on Christ again and again.  Remember that He died to give us life.  The foundation of a new life with God has been laid by Christ.  Our task is to build our lives on that new foundation.

AMEN