Word of Salvation – Vol. 39 No.28 – July 1994

 

On The Cross Jesus Denies His Own Righteousness

 

Sermon by Rev. J. Rogers

Readings: Isaiah 45:20-25, Matthew 27:1-50

Text: 2Corinthians 5:21

 

Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,

In Matthew 26: 45 we read that “the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.”  Was there ever in the world anything more inappropriate, more unseemly, more outrageous than that the Son of Man should be betrayed into the hands of sinners?

Mind you, it wasn’t that this thing just happened to Jesus or that He had no control over it or could do nothing about it.  The whole business was His own doing.  When Jesus was betrayed, it was as much the work of God, indeed, even of Jesus Christ Himself , as it was of Judas.

We also read in Matthew 26 that the “Chief priests and elders…. plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill Him.  ‘But not during the feast,’ they said, ‘or there may be a riot among the people.”  But then Judas came up with his deal and it was an opportunity they simply could not pass up.  And then finally, at the Last Supper, Jesus forced Judas’ hand.  Jesus sent Judas out to do his dirty business.  Jesus was in control all the way and therefore He said to Pilate, “You have no authority over Me except it be given from above.”

We have seen in this series that in His life here on earth, Jesus made Himself a eunuch, a pauper and a servant.  But never for a moment did He stop being the Lord of history.  All the time in His trial and His crucifixion, God was in full control.  What was done in Jerusalem that week was done by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God.

We have also seen that Jesus, who became a eunuch, a pauper and a servant, is the One whom we are to follow.  In just the same way, we too are to deny ourselves the flesh, bodily pleasures, if we are called to do so.  And we are certainly called to deny ourselves the fulfilment of them in any sinful way.  We too are called to deny ourselves the world – the chasing after possessions and the appearance of success.  And as we do that, we shall have riches in heaven.  In the same way we are called to resist the temptation of the devil, when he tempts us to take the quick and easy road to power and influence.  But, as we do that, we shall wield real power against the powers of darkness and the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places.

And of course, as Jesus won out against all three kinds of temptation to sin, so He was fully and actively righteous.  And the Father was pleased with Him.  You may well ask, will God be pleased with us when we resist temptation?  Will God look down on us in the same way as He did on Jesus and say, “These are my beloved children with whom I am well pleased?”  In other words, do we make ourselves right before God in the same way Jesus did?  Remember, we must be righteous if God is to be pleased with us at all and receive us as His children.

Congregation, when we seek to imitate the Lord Jesus Christ, and win out against all those temptations, it is simply a matter of seeking to show Him how thankful we are for all He has done for us.  And what has He done for us?

It is true: we must be righteous in order to be God’s children.  But as we read in Isaiah 45, “In the Lord alone are righteousness and strength.”  If we are ever to be righteous in God’s eyes, He must make us righteous.  And that is exactly what Christ has done for us on the cross of Calvary.  His whole life here on earth was a preparation for that.

He was holy right from Mary’s womb.  But also throughout His life on earth.  The devil never succeeded in tripping Him into any sin whatsoever.  He accumulated a whole litany of righteousness.  And what did He do with that?  Well, after having produced a record of righteousness as long as your arm, He denied it all!  He spent His whole life here on earth denying sin and the devil.  But His final act was to deny the very righteousness He had gained by all that!

Our text says. “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”  The amazing thing about all this is, firstly, that:

1.  MAN DECLARED JESUS CHRIST TO BE RIGHTEOUS

The writer of Hebrews tells us that “He was holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners.”  John tells us that “In Him was no sin.”  Peter tells us that “He committed no sin and no deceit was found in His mouth.”  But of course, you’re absolutely right; these people were sympathisers.  What else would you expect them to say?

But in our reading from Matthew this morning, we find that Jesus’ enemies declare Him to be righteous.  Judas has regrets and bursts into the temple and tosses his money on the floor and blurts out, “I have sinned, for I have betrayed innocent blood.”  Well, he should have known.  He had lived with that band of disciples for three years.  He knew Jesus’ character well.  He had seen it first hand in all sorts of circumstances – difficult and happy; in public and in private when He could drop His guard.  And with three years of close observation, he concluded, “I have betrayed innocent blood.”

When Jesus stood before Pilate in the judgement hall, Pilate’s wife sent him a message: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of Him.”  And when the Jews demanded he crucify Him, Pilate could do nothing else but respond with, “Why, what evil has He done?”

If we had read the story in Luke’s gospel, we would have seen Pilate send Jesus to Herod, the king of the Jews, and Pilate could add Herod’s verdict to his own: “I have found no guilt in this man regarding the charges which you make against Him.  No, nor has Herod, for he sent Him back to us, and behold nothing deserving of death has been done by Him.”

Maybe five times, Pilate had to say, “I find no fault in Him.”  And then, in sheer hypocrisy, he washed his hands and crucified Him nevertheless.

But Jesus’ Jewish friends also spoke mockingly of His righteousness.  Near the end, Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  In Aramaic that is “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”  Now, why would anyone think that Jesus was calling for Elijah?  Any Jew would recognise that as the cry of David from Psalm 22.

Some say it was the Roman soldiers who said, “He’s calling for Elijah.”  But the chances of them understanding Aramaic are pretty slim.  Furthermore, what would they know about the OT prophet Elijah?  Even more than that, how would they know to interpret a cry of forsakenness as a supposed cry to Elijah for help?

No congregation, it was the Jews who said Christ was calling for Elijah.  The Jews had a belief that Elijah would introduce the Messiah into the world and would work alongside Him for a while.  They also believed that Elijah, who did not die, would come to help the righteous in great distress.

You see, there was fun to be had today.  So they said, “Let’s see if Elijah will come and save this ‘tsadiq’, this righteous one.  After all He trusts in God.  Let God rescue Him now, if he wants Him, For He said, “I am the Son of God.”  A good few words were said in terrible jest that day.

All Jesus’ enemies declared Him to be righteous, but they still crucified Him.  The real insult was not so much that men declared Him to be righteous and still crucified Him.  What really cut to the bone was the fact that

2.  GOD DECLARED HIM TO BE SIN

When Jesus was baptised, and again on the mountain of transfiguration, God had said, “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.”  But now that the Jews have conspired against God’s holy servant and have nailed Him to a cross, where is He?  Where is the Father who is supposedly well pleased with His Son?  Where is this Father whose Son trusted in Him?  Jesus wants an answer to that question too.  “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me”, He cried.  And the only answer He was given in the last three hours was darkness and stony silence.

Of course, like us, Jesus very often knew the answer.  But in His human soul He struggled to accept it.  And having accepted it, He struggled under its burden.  The fact was that at that moment God rejected the Lord Jesus Christ.

On the cross Jesus fulfilled the OT sacrifices of the Great Day of Atonement.  On that day, Yom Kippur, two goats were sacrificed.  One was the scapegoat.  We all know what a scapegoat is.  It is some person you manage to force into the position of taking the blame so the rest of you can get off, scot-free.  Well, on the Jewish Yom Kippur, the High Priest would confess the sins of the nation over the scapegoat and then it would be led out into the wilderness away from the presence of God’s holy place in the temple.

On the cross of Calvary Jesus had voluntarily stepped into our place as a sinner.  “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.”  On the cross He represented sinful mankind like a scapegoat and “in Him God condemned sin in sinful man,” Romans 8 tells us.  So, you see, as Jesus hung on the cross as sinful man.  God had rejected Him.  God had forsaken Him for He was the scapegoat bearing away our sin.

But on the great Day of Atonement, there was another goat that was sacrificed.  And the smoke of that sacrifice went up to heaven and God accepted that and forgave His people.  And the time would soon come when God would accept Christ as “He offered Himself through the eternal Spirit unblemished to God” (Heb.9:14).  But at the moment He was the sin-bearing goat.  And as such, God had to cut Him off from the land of the living.  Christ now, for a time, was “without God in the world “.

Ironic, isn’t it?  His enemies declared Him to be righteous, while God declared Him to be sin.

Brothers and sisters, what will we declare Jesus to be?  Our answer to that question must be:

3.  HIS PEOPLE DECLARE HIM TO BE THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS

I mentioned in the introduction that we must be righteous if God is ever to be pleased with us and receive us as His children.  And I asked how we are going to become righteous in order to be accepted.  Will we seek to imitate Christ and thus win out against all those temptations as He did?  Will we, in that way, make ourselves righteous?

As we saw in Isaiah 45: “In the Lord alone are righteousness and strength.”  If we are ever to be righteous in God’s eyes, He must make us righteous.  And He does that by having placed all our sins on the Lord Jesus Christ who is our scapegoat.  But then He goes a step further.  Our text says “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.”  Why?  To cleanse us, yes.  But not just to cleanse us and leave it at that.  He made Christ sin for us so that “we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

See, the righteousness that we need is the righteousness that God Himself must give us.  And we get that righteousness from God as a free gift and only as we simply believe in Jesus Christ .  Another OT prophet speaks about this in a similar way to Isaiah.  Jeremiah says, “In those days and at that time I will make a righteous branch sprout from David’s line; He will do what is just and right in the land.  This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord our Righteousness.” (Jer.33:15f.)

That is Jesus Christ, isn’t it?  He did what is just and right in the land.  We have seen that as He denied the world, the flesh and the devil.  He rejected pleasure, possessions and power for the sake of the kingdom of God.  Truly, He was completely righteous.  In His whole life on earth, and at the end, He was without sin.

And what did He do with that perfect righteousness?  To say that He denied it is not quite correct.  But He certainly denied a personal interest in it.  He did not lay His arms around it to keep it to Himself and say to the world, “This is mine!  Hands off.” No, He gave it all away and became sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

So what do His people say about Him?  Oh, we gladly, and adoringly, and with hearts bursting with thankfulness, declare, “Jesus of Nazareth is, indeed, the Lord our Righteousness!”

AMEN