http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15347715/did-jesus-disregard-the-sacrificial-system
Audio Transcript
Well, if you’ve read and studied the Gospels, you notice that in the life of Christ there’s not a lot of detail about temple practices — in particular, animal sacrifices. We know that Jesus, as a small child, was presented at the temple with an offering of turtledoves or pigeons (that’s told to us in Luke 2:24). This was the offering of a poor mother, in lieu of a lamb sacrifice (as permitted in Leviticus 12:8). But this is a pretty rare connection between Christ’s life and temple sacrifices. In fact, later in his ministry, Jesus will forgive sin all by himself, bypassing the whole Jewish sacrificial system altogether. And that leads to a question from Karen, a listener to the podcast who wants to know why.
Here’s her email: “Hello, Pastor John, my name is Karen, and I live in Germany. Thank you for this podcast. My question concerns the act of forgiveness mentioned in the Bible. I have learned that without blood there is no forgiveness. Hence the sacrifices in the Old Testament and the dying of Jesus in the New Testament. I understand that. But what I don’t understand is the period between the two. When Jesus walked on earth, he often addressed people by simply telling them that their sins were forgiven. He didn’t prescribe an offering in the temple. And he had not shed his own blood yet. So how was that possible, under the assumption that blood is still needed for forgiveness?”
This may sound like a question with limited application or a question of interest to only a tiny number of Christians. But I want to show that it touches on the issue that is at the heart of Christianity. Every Christian needs to be aware of it for our own stability and courage and joy. So, hang on.
Forgiveness Requires Blood
The question starts with a biblical assumption from Hebrews 9:22, which says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” That’s what it says. So God instituted in the Old Testament the way, the plan, that there would be animal sacrifices, and that sinners who looked to God and, by faith, identified with this killed animal would be forgiven for their sins. The death of the animal would be counted, so to speak, as the punishment for their sin.
For example, in Leviticus 4:15, if the people as a whole have sinned, it says, “The elders of the congregation shall lay their hands on the head of the bull before the Lord, and the bull shall be killed before the Lord.” Then verse 20 says, “The priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven.” So that’s where Karen’s question starts. God regards sin as so evil and so destructive that in order to set things right there must be a death, a blood-shedding, in order for sins not to be counted — that is, to be forgiven.
“God regards sin as so evil and so destructive that in order to set things right there must be a death.”
Then the second premise of Karen’s question is that Christ has in fact shed his own blood for sinners so that, if we are united to Christ by faith, our sins are forgiven for his sake. His blood-shedding counts for us.
He became “a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). He bore our condemnation in his flesh (Romans 8:3). This is the center and the glory of the gospel. So Paul says in Romans 5:9, “We have now been justified by his blood,” or in Ephesians 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood,” or in Ephesians 2:13, “You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
So Karen’s question is, When Jesus walked the earth, he often addressed people by telling them that their sins are forgiven, but (she says) there was no offering in the temple, and Jesus had not yet died — how’s that possible under the assumption that blood is needed in order to have the forgiveness of God from all the sins that we do or that take place?
Animal Blood Was Not Enough
Now let’s clarify the question, first of all. Whether or not there were sacrifices being offered in the temple, Jesus pronounced forgiveness on his own authority, without any reference to those sacrifices. For example, in Mark 2:5–7, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” And the scribes say, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
So Karen wonders about this relationship of forgiveness that Jesus pronounced to the God-appointed shedding of blood, when Jesus hasn’t yet shed his blood and he isn’t pointing people to the blood-shedding of the animals. And here’s one of the keys that unlocks this puzzle for Karen. In Hebrews 10:4 and 11, the writer says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. . . . Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.”
So now we get the startling revelation that all those animal sacrifices actually in themselves accomplished nothing. Oh, we’re not between two really effective seasons here — Old Testament, New Testament. The forgiveness that God pronounced on faithful worshipers in the Old Testament was not ultimately owing to animal sacrifices.
The true saints in the Old Testament, they grasped this — they did, at some level. For example, David said in Psalm 51:16–17, “You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrary heart, O God, you will not despise.” And God said in Hosea 6:6, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” And Jesus quoted that verse, Hosea 6:6, twice to show how badly some of the Jewish leaders were misreading the Old Testament (in Matthew 9:13 and 12:7).
Every Sacrifice a Pointer
So now we can see that Karen’s question about forgiveness during Jesus’s lifetime really does apply to the entire history of Israel. The animal sacrifices were not achieving the forgiveness of sins — not ever. So what were they doing?
The answer is, they were pointing to Jesus — God’s final, once-for-all, decisive sacrifice for sins. They were foreshadowing the blood-shedding of Christ. So it says in Hebrews 9:12, “[Christ] entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” So the reason all blood-shedding has ceased — animal blood-shedding has ceased; Christ’s blood-shedding has ceased once for all — is that Christ’s sacrifice was so complete, so glorious, so full, so decisive that it secured an eternal redemption.
“Christ’s sacrifice was so complete, so glorious, so full, so decisive that it secured an eternal redemption.”
If you have Christ, you have eternal forgiveness for all sins. Now I think Karen knows this, but what she may have overlooked (I don’t know) is that not only does the sacrifice of Christ extend forward as an eternal redemption but also backward in history as a redemption for all those saints who put their faith in God for his forgiveness — through the foreshadowing of the cross in the animal sacrifices. The cross worked effectively backward and forward.
And that’s what Paul makes clear in Romans 3:25. He says, “God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” In other words, the reason God was righteous to pass over — that is, forgive — the sins of all Old Testament saints, and the sins that Jesus forgave during his lifetime, was that God was looking to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. So just as our sins two thousand years after Christ are covered by the blood of Christ, so Abraham’s sins were covered by the cross of Christ two thousand years before Christ existed. And so it was with all the saints in between.
Glorious Divine Achievement
So, Karen’s question is not of limited significance. It takes us to the very center of the gospel — indeed, the center of reality. It shows us that all forgiveness, and all the benefits that flow from forgiveness through all time — as far back as you can go, as far forward as you can go, all of it — all of that forgiveness is based on those few hours when the Son of God suffered and bled and died for sinners.
If we grasp how central, how profound, how glorious was that divine moment, that divine achievement, our lives will be more stable, more courageous and more joyful.
You Might also like
-
He Is, He Was, He Will Be: Adoring the Alpha and Omega
“Who is this Son of Man?” From the moment he first appeared in the world, on a desperate night in a crowded town, Jesus has provoked this question.
The shepherds must have asked it in awe when gazing upon this swaddled newborn “lying in a manger,” whom the holy herald angel said was “Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:8–20).
The magi must have asked it in wonder when the star led them to the Child who was “born king of the Jews,” living in the humble dwelling of a peasant family (Matthew 2:1–12).
The disciples asked it in fear when they witnessed a storm obey Jesus’s command (Luke 8:22–25).
The Jewish leaders asked it in outrage when Jesus claimed authority belonging only to God (John 8:53).
The crowd asked it in confusion when Jesus and his teaching did not match their messianic expectations (John 12:34).“Who is this Son of Man?” It has become the great question of history regarding the One whose birth became the dividing point of all history.
But this question hasn’t gone unanswered. And of all the Bible’s answers to that question, one of the most glorious and mind-bending comes in the book of Revelation. Here the Father and the Son answer together, in Revelation’s first chapter and last:
First, the Father’s answer: “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty’” (Revelation 1:8).
Then the Son’s answer: “Behold, I am coming soon. . . . I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:12–13).Taken together, the Lord God and the Lord Christ provide an awesome single, twofold answer:
Like eternal Father, like eternal Son;Spanning endless ages, two divinely one.Alpha and Omega, both the first and last;Eternally existing, present, future, past.
He Who Is
Like God the Father, God the Son is also one “who is and who was and who is to come.” This is to us a strange chronology — first present, then past, then future. We might wish to correct the divine self-description to say he “who was and who is and who is to come.” But this would be a mistake.
“The greatest, most fundamental reality in existence is that God is.”
The greatest, most fundamental reality in existence is that God is. In fact, the most sacred name God revealed to his first-covenant people, his most holy self-disclosure, is the one he spoke to Moses: “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14; also 33:19; 34:6). That’s why in the divine chronology, the fact that God is comes first.
Time is a mystery to us, so it is no surprise that how God interacts with time is a mystery to us. But we can safely assume that when God speaks of time in ways we at least partly comprehend, he is graciously condescending. So, when he tells us that he “was” and he “is to come,” it is to help us time-bound creatures understand that “from everlasting to everlasting” he is God (Psalm 90:2). And it is to help us understand that Jesus, like his Father, “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He always is.
And yet, mystery of mysteries, the eternal Word of the Father entered the world in space and time, the world he himself had made (John 1:10) “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). In appearing among us, God the Son revealed marvelously who he is:
“I am the light of the world” (John 8:12).
“I am from above” (John 8:23).
“I am gentle and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29).
“I am in the Father” (John 10:38).
“I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).An even more wonderful and simultaneously damning self-revelation occurred during Jesus’s trial. When asked, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus’s glorious, lethal answer was, simply, “I am” (Mark 14:61–62).
Who is this Son of Man? Like eternal Father, like eternal Son. He is the “I am.” He is the Son of the Blessed Father. He is the Lord Christ, who, like the Lord God, always is.
He Who Was
That the Son always is implies the Son always was. For some, this is the most difficult concept of God’s existence to comprehend.
“God is not wholly understandable to us because he is holy.”
The difficulty is wholly understandable. We are created beings trying to comprehend an uncreated Being, not to mention a triune uncreated Being. God is not wholly understandable to us because he is holy — nothing else in existence shares his uncreated existence.
But Jesus takes our struggle to a whole new level, when in the incarnation, the Creator becomes creature:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. . . . And the Word became flesh. (John 1:1–3, 14)
Mercifully, much like the way God revealed himself in the Old Testament, Jesus revealed this aspect of his glory progressively.
One of the first to see Jesus’s preexistent glory was John the Baptist, Jesus’s older cousin who nevertheless said, “He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me” (John 1:15).
But as the time drew near for Jesus to fulfill the redemptive purpose for which he came, he revealed more of his preexistent, always-existent nature, as he did in this famous discussion with the Jewish leaders:
“Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:56–58)
So unique, so holy is God the Son, that his nature breaks the conventions of human grammar. He uses a present-tense verb in a past-tense context to communicate his Christological point. Later, the apostle Paul would do the same thing when he declared that Jesus “is before all things” (Colossians 1:17).
Who is this Son of Man? Like eternal Father, like eternal Son. He is the Alpha. He is the beginning. He is the one who always was.
He Who Is to Come
That Jesus always is also implies that Jesus always will be — he is the one who is to come. This he revealed with unmistakable and glorious clarity.
In describing the end of this age to his disciples, he said,
Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. (Matthew 24:30–31)
He declared this same coming to the Jewish leaders during his trial, after proclaiming himself the “I am”: “You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62).
These Jewish listeners knew exactly what Jesus meant. He was identifying himself as the “son of man” prophesied by the prophet Daniel, whom “all peoples, nations, and languages [would] serve,” and who would receive from Almighty God “an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and [a] kingdom . . . that shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13–14).
But Jesus wasn’t merely issuing a warning. He was expressing his great longing, the purpose of his incarnation, the culmination of history, and the reward of his suffering.
The kingdom! The time when, at last, God himself will dwell with man; the time when our waiting will be over, and God will “wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore”; the time when “the former things [will] have passed away”; the time when God will make “all things new” (Revelation 21:3–5).
The kingdom! The “blessed hope” of all who have loved “the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13; 2 Timothy 4:8). And of the fulfillment of this blessed hope, our great God and Savior, the prophesied Son of Man, has promised, “Behold, I am coming soon” (Revelation 22:12).
Who is this Son of Man?
Like eternal Father, like eternal Son;Spanning endless ages, two divinely one.
Alpha and Omega, both the source and sum;
He who is, he who was, and he who is to come.And so shall the great question of history receive its climactic answer when the Lord God sends the Lord Christ to bring to a close history as we’ve known it and inaugurates his everlasting kingdom. All we who wait for this blessed hope say, “Amen. Even so come, Lord Jesus.”
-
Christmas Was and Christmas Is: The Whole Story of Advent
I was watching the Super Bowl this past February, expecting to see the newest commercials from Doritos and Budweiser and Coca-Cola, when this unusual music began to play. On the screen were still shots of kids doing adorable things — helping each other, hugging each other, wrapping arms around the family dog. At the end, the words came up,
Jesus didn’t want us to act like adults. . . . He gets us.
It was a heartwarming riff on Jesus’s teaching about being childlike. I liked it. This is the Super Bowl, with hundreds of millions of people watching, and a 30-second spot comes up commending Jesus. I love Jesus. I worship Jesus. Yeah, let’s commend Jesus.
Then another spot came up in the second half. Harsher music. Pictures of adults demonstrating manifest outrage and hatred, in each other’s faces. Sometimes it’s a physical altercation. All of it from the last three years. Then the message:
Jesus loved the people we hate. . . . He gets us.
And my response was, Ouch and yes.
The ads are from a non-profit looking to “put Jesus in the middle of culture.” They paid $20 million for the Super Bowl ads and plan to spend $3 billion in the coming years.
So, I’ve seen more of these “He gets us” ads in recent months. Sometimes, I like them. Other times, I cringe a little, concerned it will give a skewed impression of Jesus.
Jesus was judged wrongly.Jesus had strained relationships.Jesus welcomes the weird.Jesus was fed up with politics.Jesus invited everyone to sit at his table.Jesus chose forgiveness.
Then last week I took my twin sons to their first Minnesota Wild hockey game at the X, and now there’s a hockey “He gets us” on the thin digital screens around the side of the arena: “Jesus had great lettuce, too.” “Lettuce” means hockey hair. (I had to ask my boys for help on that.) I don’t want to be too picky, but I wonder if “great lettuce” might represent some mission drift for the “He gets us” campaign. Admittedly, it doesn’t speak to me personally like it would if it said, “Jesus was losing his hair, too.”
Hebrews 2 is a “he gets us” passage. But it’s also clear that he not only gets us, but he helps us. He rescues us. Saves us. Getting us is good; as we’ll see, that can lead to real, genuine help for us in our need. But getting us, on its own, doesn’t do a whole lot for us. Yes, he gets us. He really does. And this is a slice of what we celebrate in Advent. But there’s no real joy in Advent if he only gets us and doesn’t also help us, save us, change us, lift us up. In Advent, we celebrate that he became man, fully human like us, not just to be one of us, but to save us.
Our Pioneer and Champion
Hebrews 2:10 has a name for Jesus that I’ve come to love, and it’s hard to find an equivalent word for it in English. The ESV has founder: God “make[s] the founder of [our] salvation perfect through suffering.” Founder is a good translation, but I want to fill out the meaning for us a little bit.
The Greek word is archegos, and it’s built on the word archē, which means “beginning.” So archegos, we might say, is “the originator” or “the beginner.” The problem is we mean something else by “beginner” in English: “a person just starting to learn a skill or take part in an activity.” Jesus is not a “beginner” in that sense. Rather, he’s a “beginner” in the sense that he’s the leader who goes first and others follow him. Like a pioneer. This archegos, however, doesn’t just go first into uncharted territory, but into battle. So “champion” or “hero” could be a good translation of archegos as well.
Again, we don’t just stand back and watch this champion fight from afar. We’re connected to him and come with him. He doesn’t just fight for us; he leads the charge, and we follow in his wake. So, Jesus as our archegos, is both our hero and example. He is “the beginner” in that he births the people, and he leads us into the battle, and he rescues us through faith in him, and then he also inspires us as our model to follow. We benefit from what he does for us (and couldn’t do for ourselves), and yet in his work for us, he opens up a path that we might follow in his steps.
And Advent is where our “beginner” begins, so to speak. That is, Advent is the beginning of his humanity, and his getting us, saving us, and helping us. But Advent is not the beginning of his person. So, let’s walk with Hebrews chapter 2 through the Advent drama of our “beginner,” our “champion,” from the very beginning until now. There are four distinct stages here in the drama of Hebrews 2 — four movements in the story of Advent.
1. Jesus Did Not Start Like Us
Our champion, our “beginner,” did not begin like we did. His person was not created like ours. He is a divine person, the second person of the eternal Threeness. His humanity was created, conceived in Mary’s womb and born in Bethlehem, but not his person.
The book of Hebrews begins with glimpses of his godhood. Before any world existed, he existed and was “appointed the heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:2). Then through him God (the Father) made the world. “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” — he is distinct from the Father in his person and same as his Father in divine nature. “And,” verse 3 adds, “he upholds the universe by the word of his power” — as only God can do.
So, the story of Advent begins before time, before creation, before “the beginning.” Jesus himself is God, and if you have eyes to see his divinity, it’s all over the New Testament.
Greg Lanier, in his recent book Is Jesus Truly God?, shows how the deity of Christ shines on just about every page in the New Testament:
He is preexistent before Advent, and before creation.
He is the unique “Son” of the heavenly Father, eternally begotten.
He is called “Lord,” which refers to God’s Old Testament covenant name (Yahweh).
He receives worship.
He relates to the Father and Spirit in ways that reveal his person as one of the divine Threeness.So, let’s get this clear before we talk about his humanity and how he gets us. In Jesus, a man did not become God. Rather, God became man. We say that Jesus is fully God and fully man in one person, but we do not mean that he became God and man at the same time. There is a profound asymmetry in the story of the God-man: he has been God for all eternity, and he became man at the first Christmas.
2. Jesus Was Made Like Us
Now we come to his first Advent and the first Christmas, when God made God in the image of God. Without ceasing to be God, God the Son took on humanity. He added humanity to his divine person.
Humanity, as a created nature, is “compatible” with the uncreated divine nature. Deity and humanity are not a zero-sum game. The divine Son did not have to jettison any eternal deity (as if that’s even possible) to take on humanity. Uncreated deity and created humanity operate at different levels of reality, so to speak. Without ceasing, in any way, to be fully God, the Son took on our full created nature and became fully human. As Hebrews 2:17 says, he was “made like his brothers in every respect.” Look at verses 11–14:
“For he who sanctifies” (Jesus) “and those who are sanctified” (us) “all have one source” (that is, one nature). “That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, ‘I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.’ And again, ‘I will put my trust in him.’ And again, ‘Behold, I and the children God has given me.’ Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things . . .
We’ll come back to finish verse 14, but let me just say about these Old Testament quotations in verses 13–14 that Pastor Jonathan explained them so well in a previous sermon as pointing to Jesus’s solidarity with us in our suffering.
“Flesh and blood” in verse 14 refers to our humanity. We are flesh and blood, and so Jesus became one of us — to which Hebrews 4:15 adds, “without sin.” Sin is not an essential part of what it means to be human. Jesus was fully human, made like us in every respect, and “without sin.” So, then, what’s included in this “every respect” of our humanity? What does it mean for Jesus to be fully human, like us?
One of the biggest moments in the collective formation of early Christians in saying what the Scriptures teach about the humanity of Christ is a church council called Chalcedon in 451 AD. The Chalcedonian Creed says Jesus is “perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body.”
Jesus has a fully human body. He “became flesh,” which means at least a human body. He was born and grew and grew tired. He became thirsty and hungry. He suffered, and he died. And his human body was raised and glorified, and he sits right now, on heaven’s throne, in a risen, glorified human body.
But becoming fully human also involved taking “a rational soul,” or “the inner man,” including human emotions. He marveled. He expressed sorrow. “He was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” and he wept (John 11:33–35). And he rejoiced and was happy. John Calvin memorably summed it up, “Christ has put on our feelings along with our flesh.”
A “rational soul” also includes a human mind (in addition to his divine mind). So, Jesus “increased in wisdom” as well as in stature (Luke 2:52), and most strikingly, he says about the timing of his second coming, “Concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). With respect to his humanity, and his human mind, there are things he does not know. His human knowledge is limited, like all human minds. Yet, at the same time, for this unique two-natured person of Christ, he also knows all things with respect to his divine mind. As one-natured humans, this is beyond our experience and ability to understand, but divine and human minds are compatible. And this is no contradiction for the unique person of Christ, but one of his unique glories.
So too with his human will, in addition to the divine will. Jesus says, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38). Jesus, speaking with respect to his human will, says that he came “not of [his] own will” but his Father’s. And that divine will, while not proper to his humanity, is proper to his person as God. When he prays in Gethsemane, “Not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39), he aligns his human will with the divine will, which also is his as God.
So, Jesus has a fully human body and emotions and mind and will. And verse 11 says, “That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.” He is not ashamed to call you brother (or sister). Jesus could have been a brother in our nature, and yet ashamed to call us his brothers. But mark this, he is not that kind of brother. He’s not ashamed of his siblings. He’s not worried that our weaknesses and immaturities, or even our follies, will mar his reputation. He’s not stuck with us and embarrassed by them.
That’s not how Jesus is with me, and with us. I want to be like Jesus is with me. I want to be like this as a dad, and be like this as a friend, and be like this as a pastor: not mainly concerned about how others’ behavior reflects on me, but mainly concerned about my brother or sister in Christ, so that I can be loving, rather than self-focused — especially in the moments when love is needed most.
3. Jesus Suffered Like Us
Being fully human, he suffered both with us and for us.
Suffering is an important aspect of his being fully human, and saving us in his full humanity. If he was only God, he could not suffer. God is “impassible,” unable to be afflicted or be moved from outside. But not humanity. So, Jesus becoming fully human involved not only a human body and reasoning human soul, emotions, mind, and will, but he also entered as man into our fallen world, which is under the curse of sin. And even though he himself was not a sinner, he was, as a creature, susceptible to the afflictions, assaults, sufferings, and pains of our world. He entered into our suffering, and did so in two senses.
One, he suffered with us. He knows what it’s like to suffer in created flesh and blood. And verse 10 says that he was made “perfect through suffering.” This language of “perfect” or “complete” is important in Hebrews. Verse 10 doesn’t mean that Jesus was imperfect, or sinful, but that he was made ready, or made complete, for his calling, as our champion and High Priest, through his suffering. Having become man, he was not yet complete, not yet ready, but needed to be made ready, complete, “perfect” through suffering. Hebrews 5:8–9 says,
Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.
Which leads, then, to a second sense in which he suffered: for us. Not only does he, as man, suffer with us, but he, as the God-man, suffers for us — in our place, in our stead. This leads us to the connection between suffering and death. Verse 9 introduces “the suffering of death” (of Jesus suffering and dying for us): “by the grace of God he [tasted] death for everyone.” Jesus not only experienced suffering with us but for us. He not only gets us, but saves us, and that “through death.”
Now look at the rest of verse 14 and verse 15, and two achievements of Jesus for us through this human suffering of death at the cross. Pick it up in the middle of verse 14: Jesus shared in our humanity “that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” The first achievement through his human death is that he defeated Satan. His suffering unto death conquers the one who had the power of death.
We should not forget this as a Christmas theme: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). How? “He appeared in order to take away sins” (1 John 3:5). They go together. Jesus destroys the devil by taking away sins. The weapon Satan had against us was unforgiven sin, “the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.” But through the suffering of death, Jesus “set [this] aside, nailing it to the cross” and in so doing, God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in [Jesus]” (Colossians 2:14–15).
So, the first achievement is destroying Satan, and second in Hebrews 2:15 is delivering us. How? We might expect what follows in verse 17, but not expect the next verse. Verse 17 gives us one reason that he had to be made like us in every respect:
so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
We had sinned and needed covering before the holy God. We had a “record of debt that stood against us” because we were humans with sin. So, to rescue us, God needed not only to become fully man, and suffer with us, but suffer for us, unto death, that his death might be for us, his brothers, the death we deserved for our sins. That’s what it means when the high priest “[makes] propitiation for the sins of the people.” The people’s sin against the holy and infinitely worthy God deserves his righteous, omnipotent wrath. And in becoming human, and suffering with us, and unto death, for us, Jesus absorbs the just penalty due us that we might be delivered from hell and the justice due our sin.
And verse 18 gives us one more reason, embedded in the first, for why Jesus was made like us, in every respect, including suffering and then dying in our place.
4. Jesus Helps Us Right Now
Verse 17 is amazing in that he deals with our sin, and gets us right with God, and verse 18 is amazing in that he’s ready and eager to help us right now. He both makes atonement for us in his death, and he rises again, and sends his Spirit, that he might help us in our struggles right now. Look at verse 18:
For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Because Jesus suffered, he can help us in our suffering. That is, because he suffered unto death to atone for our sins, he is able to indwell us by his Spirit, draw near to us in our time of need, and help us in whatever tests and challenges and trials and temptations we face in the ongoing struggle of the Christian life. Jesus not only saves us out of sin’s curse, but also through sin’s temptations. He atones for our sins, and stands ready to come to our aid in temptation and in our own suffering. Having saved us from sin’s guilt, he is poised to save us from sin’s power.
So, as Hebrews 12:2 says, Jesus is not only the founder, the archegos, the beginner, the champion of our faith, but also the finisher. He’s not only the beginner but finisher. Our champion not only leads the way and goes ahead of us to face the foe, but he also doubles back to check on us, to help us, to keep us.
What Child Is This?
Let’s close, then, with this question: What help do you need this Advent? How are you suffering? What’s your present trial (or trials)? What’s testing your faith most right now? What’s tempting you to sin or give up? What’s your biggest need this Advent?
In Advent, we don’t just remember what he did in the past; we remember who he is in the present. Christmas is not only a was; it’s an is. Get his help. He not only gets us; he helps us. So, as we come to the Table, let’s ask for his help afresh. What need do you bring to the Table this morning? How do you need his help to persevere?
The one who meets us here is fully divine, the second person of the eternal Godhead, who in his happy, expansive, overflowing, gracious nature, took our full humanity to come rescue us. And he suffered with us — and for us unto death. He destroyed Satan, and he delivers us from our sins. And he rose from the dead, and ascended, and is now enthroned in heaven, where he stands ready, by his Spirit, to help us in the fight of faith.
-
The Purposes of God in the Pain of the World
Because today is the 21st anniversary of 9/11, I would like to speak to you about the purposes of God in the pain of the world. We will turn to the Scriptures in a few minutes, but first, let’s put the world’s pain before us in some felt measure.
The first plane that hit the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, Flight 11, immediately killed the 92 people on board that flight. Flight 175, which hit the second tower a few minutes later, killed the 65 people on board. In the towers themselves, it appears now that 2,595 people perished when the towers fell, including those who worked there, visited there, and those who entered to save them.
Within an hour after the first attack, Flight 77 carried 59 people (plus five hijackers) into the side of the Pentagon. Inside the Pentagon, 125 people died, in addition to those 59. A couple of weeks ago, Noël and I drove over to the Pentagon Memorial. It is laid out with 184 benches, one for each of those who lost their lives — from the youngest, who was three years old, to the oldest, who was 71.
Flight 93, with 45 people aboard, turned around over Pennsylvania and was headed — where? The White House? Congress? Todd Beamer and others wrestled control from the hijackers, it seems, and the plane crashed with no survivors near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The total fatalities in these terrorist events were 2,986. But the numbers sound too calculating, too sterile, compared to the personal and national trauma of those days. More than three thousand children lost a parent that day. Around sixteen hundred people lost spouses.
And, of course, the calamities go on.
World of Sorrow
A million Americans have died of COVID-19 complications since March of 2020. As I speak, one-third of Pakistan is under water — thirty million people displaced, one thousand dead, ten billion dollars in damages. Sections of Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan all face famine-related starvation, affecting millions.
We could keep describing the unending calamities of the world as if they were extraordinary, but behind my message today lies the fact that 9/11 happens every thirty minutes, and it continues to happen every thirty minutes every day, every year, every decade, every century, without any letup.
Conservatively, six thousand people die every hour in the world, though it’s probably closer to seven thousand. That’s sixty-one million people a year. Of those, five million are under five years old. Cancer kills seven million people every year in the world, six hundred thousand of those in America. Cancer’s death toll is right behind heart disease, which kills seven hundred thousand a year in our country.
Breathe in, breathe out — and four people have died. That’s twelve thousand during this service. And hundreds of them are not “drifting off to sleep” in peace but writhing in pain. Calamities are not exceptional; they’re the more visible breaking of the surface of the ocean of sorrow. The question that I hope to answer from the Bible is, Why do we have a world like the one we have, which is so permeated by pain?
Is the Pain on Purpose?
The word why is ambiguous in English. It doesn’t distinguish between “why” — from what cause — and “why” — for what purpose. German has warum and wozu, but we don’t.
So what I mean with my question is this: Mainly I want to know what the Bible teaches about the purpose for such a world of pain. Causes are important, but they leave you hanging. What we want to know is not mainly, “How did we get here?” But mainly, “Is there a point?” A design? A purpose? A meaning?
Which, of course, you’d never ask if you didn’t believe in God — indeed, in a certain kind of God.
In 1995, I was fifteen years into my pastorate at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. We passed through the biggest crisis I’d ever faced in the ministry. Two staff were let go. Two hundred and thirty people left the church. We didn’t recover for over three years. To move forward we formed a group of twenty-three people, including three or four staff members, who met for a year and a half to pray and study: What happened? Is there a future? What will it be? What will it look like? Who are we?
During that time, they sent me away to a little monastery over in St. Paul’s, saying, “Go away, pray, listen to God, and bring us a vision statement for the church. We know you’re not God, and you’re not infallible, but you’re our leader. Go hear from God as best you can, and that will give us something to interact with.”
What I believe the Lord gave me was a vision statement for what was left of my own life, and I hoped it would become the vision statement of the church. It did: We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things, for the joy of all peoples, through Jesus Christ.
When we embraced that, we did not mean that we exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things except terrorist attacks, all things except pandemics, all things except famines, child mortality, cancer, heart disease, babies born with profound disabilities. We didn’t mean that. We meant all things — no exceptions. I come to you with that banner, flying over my life to this day. And because he is supreme, I want to know, from him, in his word: What’s going on? What’s the point of such a world with so much misery?
Answers in Complexity
Christians are complex people, people with complex emotional lives. Conforming to the whole counsel of God in Scripture makes people complex. It teaches that the world is a horrible place and a beautiful place — which, if we open our eyes, we would see. Fall is a beautiful season. If you walk outside right now, you would smile in the cool fall air amid natural glory. And in Pakistan, someone is weeping beside a tent in mud. This is a horrible world and a beautiful place.
It is naive to think that there are good times and bad times sequentially. No, there are good times always, and there are bad times always. They happen simultaneously, all the time. If you walk through the world with a heart ready to weep with those who weep, ready to rejoice with those who rejoice, you will be a complex and wonderful person.
So as we focus on our original question — Why is there a world like this, a conveyor belt of corpses? — we are aware that there is real beauty in this world. Real goodness. But if we could know — if God would show us — why there is so much evil and misery, then we would be able more fully to know him and thank him and trust him and love him and join him in his purposes for the world.
So our question is, Why a world of so much pain? In turning to the Scriptures, I want to start by giving two answers that the Bible says are wrong and then four answers that I think the Bible says are right. We are biting off just about the biggest problem in the world, so I don’t claim to weave every loose end together into a fabric of perfect understanding. What I hope to do is offer you true answers (even if they may raise other questions), answers that are really there in God’s word. Answers you can live by.
Wrong Answer #1: “God is not in control.”
Here’s my first wrong answer: “We live in a world of pain and misery because God is not in control.” The reason this world exists, with its calamities and conflicts and suffering and death, is because God is not in control. God has surrendered control to mindless natural forces, or demonic powers, or ultimate human self-determination, or some combination of them all.
In other words, God is looking down, and the world that he made is reeling out of his control, and there’s nothing he can do about it. (At least, not in the short run.) But that’s not a true answer. Millions of people opt for that answer. Biblically, it won’t hold.
All Atoms Obey Him
In Matthew 10:29 Jesus says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” That’s a first-century way of looking at the most random and insignificant event in the world and claiming God governs it. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of those sparrows in the darkest forest of Papua New Guinea falls dead from the tree branch without God deciding that it happen.
Or consider Matthew 8:27, when the disciples confess with profound truthfulness: “Even winds and sea obey him.” Every time you hear of a hurricane, or a monsoon, or a tornado, or a tsunami the day after Christmas in 2004, when two hundred and forty thousand people die in one night (including whole churches), you have a choice. Either the winds and the waves obey him, or they don’t. If the wind and the waves of the sea do not obey Jesus in 2022, then Capitol Hill Baptist Church should shut its doors and stop playing religious games.
God saw that tsunami moving across the Indian Ocean, and he could have said, “Stop,” and right there, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, it would have stopped — just like Jesus did it on the Sea of Galilee. It is not a biblical answer to why two hundred and forty thousand people died that night, to say: “God can’t stop tsunamis.” He can. He does if he wills. And he didn’t. Why?
Or consider Proverbs 16:33: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” Here’s my paraphrase: “In Las Vegas, all the dice are thrown, but the numbers on the top are always decided by God.” It is not a biblical answer to the question why people win or lose in the folly of gambling, to say: “It’s random.” It’s not random. It’s God. As R. C. Sproul used to say, “There are no maverick molecules.”
He Decrees by Design
Or consider Lamentations 3:37, which refers to the sack of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, with all its horrors: “Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it?” In other words, the Bible teaches that God governs the world with all-embracing, all-pervading, meticulous providence. Nothing lies outside the rule of God. He is not whimsical or reckless or aimless. Whatever he permits or causes, he permits and causes by design — according to plan. As he says in Isaiah 46:9–10:
I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me,declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done,saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.”
“God governs the world with meticulous providence. He is not whimsical or reckless or aimless.”
He does all he does to establish his purposes. When you are an infinitely wise, all-knowing God and an infinitely powerful God, to use the word permit is to say “permit by plan” or “permit by design,” because you know everything that leads up to what you permit and flows from what you permit.
And at any time, if you see something coming from what you permit that you regret, you can stop it or change it. The permission of an all-knowing, all-wise, all-governing God is always a permission that is owing to a purpose. So the answer that says, “God is not in control,” is a false answer. It is not what the Bible teaches.
Wrong Answer #2: “God is evil.”
The second false answer to the question of why there is a world with such pain, is: “God is evil.” There is a malevolent deity over the universe. That is not true. The Bible teaches, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Psalm 92 tells me as an old man what I should say to a young Capitol Hill Baptist congregation:
The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God.They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green,to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. (Psalm 92:12–15)
That’s God’s response and my response to this suggestion that God’s injustice explains the world. No: “The Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” He never has the slightest dark inclination in his mind whatsoever. “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,” to paraphrase the hymn. The answer to why the world is the way it is, is not because God is evil.
So we turn now to four answers from the Bible, true answers. The answers go together, building into a biblical vision of why God does what he does, so I ask you to consider them as a whole. They’re weighty. Some of you may have never heard anything like this before in your life. Others have. So listen carefully, be like the Bereans in Acts 17:11, and test all things by Scripture, holding fast to what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
True Answer #1: “God planned redemption.”
First, the reason this kind of world exists is because God planned a history of redemption before the world existed — a history of redemption. And then according to that plan, he permitted (by plan) that sin enter the world through our first parents Adam and Eve. The permission of sin was according to plan, and that plan was so that there could be a history of merciful redemption from sin.
Here is 2 Timothy 1:9: “[God] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.” God gave us grace “in Christ Jesus.” In other words, this is blood-bought grace — undeserved, ill-deserved, planned before the foundation of the world, through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
In order to have a world in which that comes true, God planned to permit sin. So God ordained that there be sin. It is not sin to will that sin be. That’s a heavy statement. It is not sin for God to will that sin happen.
Here we are in the twenty-first century receiving, by faith, grace through Jesus Christ and his work on the cross because in eternity past — not just billions of years ago, but even before time existed, even before there was a universe — God gave grace to us in Christ. He willed that we have it in Christ. That’s the first reason why this world exists as it exists. God intended for lost sinners to taste the glory of his blood-bought grace in Christ.
True Answer #2: “God subjected creation to futility.”
Second, the reason this world of pain and misery exists is because God subjected the natural world to futility in hope. God put the natural world under a curse, so that the physical horrors of that curse would become a vivid picture — a parable, a drama — of the horrors of moral evil, or sin. In other words, natural evil — physical suffering — exists in the world as a signpost, a parable of the horrors of moral evil. Physical suffering exists to show how outrageous sin against God is.
It is worth asking, Why does God make physical suffering the consequence of moral evil? The essence of sin is not physical; it’s not the movement of muscles or the touching of flesh. The essence of sin is when Adam and Eve said to God in their hearts, “I don’t trust you anymore to provide the best life for us. I think I know the best life. I reject your kind of limiting love. I reject your wisdom. I reject you, and I vote for me. I will decide right and wrong.” That was the beginning, crude essence of sin, and it was not physical.
Rather, it was a moral blow to the face of God, and as such it merited thousands of years of horrible, physical misery in the world. Romans 8:18–21 says, “The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope . . . ” So it wasn’t Adam or Satan who subjected the world to futility “in hope.” God is the one who designed hope in the sufferings of the world.
Then the passage continues by saying that God “subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” That’s what’s coming, and we say, “Hasten the day, O God.”
When Adam and Eve sinned morally, the world was touched physically. (See Genesis 3.) Why would that be? One reason is this: Sin by its very nature blinds us to the seriousness of sin. Sin does not see the infinite outrage of slapping infinite holiness in the face. Sin can’t feel that outrage. What can sin feel? It can feel hunger, cancer, lacerations, broken bones, disability, death. People don’t lie awake at night wrestling with the outrage of their indifference to God. But they do lie awake at night when their bodies are touched with pain — which is the siren, the trumpet, of the outrage of the evil of sin.
And don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that every pain in a person corresponds to a specific sin in that person. That’s not true. Remember how they asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” And Jesus said, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:2–3). Physical suffering is a global trumpet blast of the outrage of sin against God.
Some of those who suffer most are the most godly people you know. Last Monday night at the Sing! Conference in Nashville, Joni Erickson Tada — who has been a paraplegic for fifty-five years and lives with almost unremitting pain — said, “I’m not going to cash in my IRA and retire and move to Florida to play pickleball. And you better not either! I’m going to squeeze every ounce out of this body for kingdom work.” Her suffering is not a punishment for her sin. Her sins are forgiven because of Jesus. Her suffering, and yours, is a God-appointed reminder of the seriousness of the moral outrage of sin.
True Answer #3: “Christ is more precious than anything we lose.”
Third, the reason this world of calamity and misery exists is so that today’s followers of Jesus would be able to experience and display the profound, God-honoring reality that Christ is more precious than everything we can lose in this world.
A world of suffering and loss exists so that you and I — by not murmuring or complaining or getting angry at God, but rather resting in him and trusting in him and treasuring him — can show the world that God is more precious than anything we could lose: “Your steadfast love is better than life” (Psalm 63:3). Or as Paul says it in Philippians 3:8, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”
The point of all loss in the lives of Christians is to show by our response that Christ is more precious than what is lost. You have two options every time you experience pain and loss: you can hate God, or you can hate sin. All pain and loss came into the world through sin, all intended to portray the horrors of sin, and few things glorify God more amazingly than when his people endure suffering and loss on the path of love without losing their joy in him.
My wife and I were married in December 1968. Already we were seeing the world through the eyes of God’s infinite worth and greatness and beauty in the midst of a world of carnage, as 58,000 of our contemporaries died in Vietnam. We chose for our wedding text Habakkuk 3:17–18:
Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines,the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food,the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls,yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
“Living through loss without grumbling sings out the greatness and beauty and worth of God.”
It has served us well. In the face of famine (of every kind), God is better. God is enough. Not that we have lived up to this standard as we ought. But oh, what a vision to keep before your eyes: “When all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay.” Living through loss without grumbling sings out the greatness and beauty and worth of God. That is another reason why loss and misery exist.
True Answer #4: “Christ was appointed to suffer and die.”
Finally, this world of pain and misery exists so that the greatest act of love in the history of the world could happen — that is, so that Christ could suffer and die. This is a reason for suffering and death that the world knows nothing about, that this world exists — with its pain, with its sorrow, with its death — to make it possible for Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to suffer and die. If a world like this didn’t exist, Jesus would have no place to suffer and die. If there were no suffering, Jesus couldn’t suffer. If there were no death, Jesus couldn’t die.
To put it another way, the reason there’s terror is so that Christ could be terrorized. The reason there is trouble is so that Christ could be troubled in Gethsemane. The reason there is pain is so that Christ could feel pain. The reason there is death is so that Christ could die.
“This world exists with its pain, sorrow, and death to make it possible for Jesus Christ to suffer and die.”
According to Revelation 13:8, there was a book before the creation of the world with the names of the redeemed, and that book was called “the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.” In the mind of God Christ was slain before the foundation of the world. This was the plan: the slaughter of the incarnate Son of God.
And what did it reveal? Romans 5:8: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God showed his love through the suffering and death of his Son. Do you believe that the love of God for you could have been shown more fully another way? God has not wasted the sufferings of this world. He planned it to fall on his Son.
Listen to this prayer in Acts 4:27–28: “Truly in this city [Jerusalem] there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan predestined to take place.” Herod, who mocked him; Pilate, who saved his political skin and sentenced him; the Gentile soldiers, who drove the nails; the Jewish mob, who shouted, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Those four sinful acts, this text says, God had predestined to take place.
Christ did not die by accident. This is not just a fluke of history, just a turning of Roman affairs, just mob violence. This had been planned since before the foundation of the world. This is central to the reason for all existence. The Son of God bore the suffering of the world in order to lift sin from all who would trust him and bring them into everlasting joy — exquisite joy in the new heavens and a new earth, glorifying God for his power and wisdom and grace and love. That’s the reason this kind of world exists.
Embrace the Suffering Savior
I’m inviting you to believe this, to be made strong in this. You know that tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, by the flick of God’s finger, half the buildings in this city could go down, and a hundred thousand people would be dead. And God would have done nobody any wrong.
Do you have a vision of God and sin and suffering and redemption that will be able to handle that calamity when it comes? That’s my question. But of course, that might be easier to handle than if one of your children died or if you had a child with a profound disability.
I am inviting you to embrace Jesus Christ as the one from whom, through whom, and to whom all things exist (1 Corinthians 8:6). He came to share this suffering. He came to bear this pain. He came to taste every test and every temptation that we have known. He came to take it to the cross and die in our place, so that by faith in him, we could have all our sins forgiven, have eternal life, and have an everlasting destiny on a new heavens and a new earth, where that curse will finally be lifted.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. (Revelation 21:4)