The glory of the cross
Readings: John 12. 20-33 & Hebrews 5. 5-10
Our Gospel reading today begins with the request of two Gentiles to see Jesus. And whilst they immediately drop out of the picture, they’re never mentioned again, their request prompts this revelation from Jesus that his hour has now come, the time is here, and what does that mean? Glory for him, and glory for his Father.
You may remember back in Epiphany when we were talking about the wedding in Cana and the water become wine, how Jesus states to his mother that his hour has not yet come. Well now that hour has come, it is finally at hand. Our Gospel readings this week and next are a little out of order, this passage comes after Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, which we’ll hear next week. But we focus on this passage now to look closer at what Jesus is saying here about his impending death, about the cross. And as I say the core of what he is saying is about glory. Glory for Jesus and glory for the Father.
When we hear the word glory we often think of things like power, majesty, beauty. If we say something is glorious that’s the sort of thing we have in mind. I looked up the definition of glory in the Oxford dictionary and it’s defined as ‘high renown or honour won by notable achievements’ or ‘magnificence or great beauty’ or ‘praise, worship, and thanksgiving offered to a deity’ if you want it as a verb it’s defined as ‘to take great pride or pleasure in’. And to our minds things that are impressive fall into this category. Notable achievements, beautiful things.
But what Jesus has in mind when he talks of his coming glory is his death. ‘Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies’, ‘when I am lifted up from the earth…he said this to show the kind of death he was to die’. Dying is not a notable achievement, in fact it’s the one thing all humans will achieve whether we want to or not. The cross is not a beautiful thing in and of itself, it’s bloody, gory and awful. So how is there glory in this? How are Jesus and the Father glorified in Jesus’ death? Because here we see the character of God most clearly.
The Father is glorified in Jesus’ death in that it is here his perfect qualities are most perfectly on display. For here at the cross both perfect love and perfect judgement meet. Perfect justice and perfect mercy. Often we think of these things as opposites, love is the absence of judgement, mercy is to somehow lessen justice. And yet at the cross both are happening simultaneously and perfectly.
For here we see perfect love as God lays down that which is dearest to him, his eternal Son, so that he can bring many children to himself. As the seed of the Son goes down into the earth a bountiful harvest of children springs forth, many seeds are brought to bear. For here we see the lengths God will go to bring us home, to bridge the gap, to cross the divide made by our sin and rejection of him. Perfect love.
Yet here too is perfect justice, for here the Son, who alone is perfect and has never sinned, bears upon himself all our sin, all our wrongdoing and thinking and saying. He takes what was due to us, takes our place, and plunges all our sin down into death, down into the hell it deserves. Jesus bears our sentence, takes our punishment, pays the price for our freedom.
Now you may ask how that is just? He was innocent, how is him taking what was due to the guilty just. Well one of the images the Bible uses for the cross is debt, a debt we have all run up. And when a debt is due it doesn’t matter quite so much how the debt is paid, so much as that it is paid. Christ upon the cross paid our debt, covered over our poverty with his riches.
Now this isn’t opposed to perfect love, for perfect love demands perfect justice. For how can I say I love you as I ignore the things done against you, all of the pain and hurt inflicted on you by others and by this world? If I just overlook them or say it doesn’t matter. How can I say I love you if I withhold from you the consequences of what you’re doing, that isn’t love it’s collusion, enabling you to continue down a path which is harmful. Perfect love and perfect justice go hand in hand. Because at the cross God is saying I love you this much. And he’s also saying what has been done to you matters, matters this much, and what you have done to others also matters, this much. And so out of love for you I’m not ignoring those things, not burying them, I am meeting the cost myself.
As Christ goes up to the cross this world is judged, the prince of this world is driven out, that is the devil. Perfect judgement and justice poured out, and yet should we fix our eyes on Christ upon the cross that judgement will pass over us, those waters will become for us those which cleanse and heal. For if we put our whole hope and faith and trust in Jesus God forgives us, our punishment is borne by Jesus so that we can have true and complete forgiveness. And that forgiveness means our record is clean. Our debt is paid. Which means we need not fear punishment for what we have done wrong, for it would be unjust for God to call us to pay again for the debts, bear the punishment for sins which have already been paid, already carried out. Perfect justice enables perfect love.
This is how the Father is glorified in the cross, for here his character is revealed for all to see, a God who is both perfectly loving, and perfectly just.
And how is Jesus glorified in his death? For he is, as Spurgeon once said ‘Christ was never more glorious than when he was nailed to the cross of Calvary’. So why? As Spurgeon goes on ‘he was glorified by enduring bravely, patiently, and to the end, what no-one else has ever borne’. Christ goes to the cross willingly, he endures it’s shame, endures it’s pain and suffering, endures it’s humiliation, right to the end. His glory is that he endures the spiritual suffering it entails as he bears upon himself the weight of our sin and shame, those griefs are so deep we could never plumb the depths of them, the one who is perfect and without sin suddenly bearing upon himself the sins of the whole world as though they were his own. And he does it all out of love for you. This is the glory of Christ, that he endures for your sake, right to the very end.
And Christ is also glorified in that he is perfect in his obedience to the Father, even perfectly obedient in his suffering. Now that isn’t to say that God commands his Son and the Son shuffles out to suffer because his Father told him to, we may get the wrong end of the stick here and think that the Father is full of rage and inflicting it upon the Son. That’s not what is going on here. The Trinity always acts in perfect unity, this plan for our salvation was formed long ago by God; Father, Son & Holy Spirit. And yet in his humanity Jesus is subject to the same fears, same temptations as us. How many of us are perfectly obedient to God when things are good? Keep his will perfectly for it is always for our good? None of us. And if we are incapable of keeping his will when all is well for us, how much less do we do it when it might entail pain or suffering. And yet Christ, suffering as we do, suffering more than we do, remains perfectly obedient, see’s our rescue through to its end. He does what we could never do, to pay the debt we have run up by always failing to do it.
Sir we would see Jesus. Perhaps the response of Jesus to this request seems strange and yet nowhere do we see Jesus more clearly that when he is hanging upon the cross. Nowhere do we see his glory and majesty more perfectly than when he is nailed to that beam.
For God is glorious in so many ways, immeasurably beautiful, perfect in all his qualities. And yet nowhere do we see his glory more clearly than as the Son in perfect obedience pays the price for our disobedience, when the Father is vindicated in being both perfect love and perfect justice. As Christ is lifted up from the earth upon the cross he does so to draw all people to himself. People from every tribe and nation, language and tongue. If a seed buried goes on to produce fruit and more seed, how much more the perfect Son of God, as he is laid in the tomb, will produce fruit, bring many more seeds to bear.
My brothers and sisters in all of creation, in all of the world there is no story so great as this, the perfect Son of God come to ransom and redeem, to plumb our depths and deeper, to ransom us with his own blood. Never was there a God so glorious, turning even the ugliness, humiliation and pain of a cross, and making it the source of our beauty, worthiness and peace.
Amen.