In our epistle reading Paul says, “we preach Christ
crucified.” Just a little later in the epistle he says this again. He says
that when he came to the Corinthians he didn’t put on a big show. He didn’t
speak super eloquently. He was determined to know nothing among them except
Jesus Christ and him crucified. According to Paul’s own words, therefore, talking
about Christ being crucified is important. In fact, he says that it is
everything. He didn’t want to know anything among the Corinthians except Jesus
Christ and him crucified.
So what does this mean? This is what I’d like to try to get
at today. What is Paul talking about with the message of the cross or the
preaching of Christ crucified?
Before we get into the particulars of the message itself, we
should first note what Paul is pointing out about this message in our reading
so that we are properly prepared. Paul says that no one likes this message.
Jews don’t like it. Gentiles don’t like it. No one can like it by their own
reason or strength. The only ones who like this message are those who have been
called by the Holy Spirit. So you should not expect the preaching of Christ
crucified to tickle the fancy of the crowd. Your flesh won’t like it either.
How come?
Because here we are dealing with death. That’s what it means
to preach Christ crucified. That is the preaching of a dead Jesus, a dead
Christ, a dead King. That’s depressing enough on its own, but this was not just
any death. He didn’t pass away with the help of morphine in a comfortable bed
somewhere. Jesus was painfully executed after being convicted of a crime by the
governing authorities. He was convicted for having said that he was God’s only
begotten Son. He had said that he would destroy the temple and rebuild it in
three days. The Jewish authorities said that this was blasphemy. He was given
the death penalty as punishment. Jesus died shamefully as a criminal.
And this was not just a matter of appearances either, as we
might suppose. To be sure, Pontius Pilate and the Jewish leaders were wrong
with their charges of wrong-doing. However, Jesus truly dies with guilt and as
a criminal. Paul says elsewhere, “He who knew no sin became sin for us that
we might become the righteousness of God in him.” Jesus did not know sin,
that is, he himself did not commit sin. But he became sin.
This is a shocking statement, but truthful and revealing at
the same time. We are accustomed to talking about people in a more polite way
than Paul does here. We carefully separate the person from the evil works that he
or she might do. We say that the person himself is good. He just happened to get
mixed up in some bad things now and then. We say this about ourselves too. When
we think of ourselves we forget the bad things we have done. If we should
happen to actually recall something then we brush it aside. That’s not the real
me. The real me is good. From henceforth I will never ever do that bad thing
again.
This is delusional. If that’s not you, then who is it? Why did
you do it? If you really are good, then why don’t you act like it? You’re no
different than the criminal who always says that he didn’t do it. And
supposing, for the sake of argument, that he did do it, then he didn’t mean to
do it. He’s really a good person. You can see right through his delusion. You
should see through your own as well. You should see through your own because
this is the truth. This is how it is. Everyone is judged rightly according to
his or her works. The label gets affixed whether the person likes it or not
according to the works. Thus Christ is not only known as a sinner, but
according to Paul’s word he is “sin,” having taken upon himself our sin.
The label sticks because it is true. Hence Jesus’s death is not a miscarriage
of justice. He is sin. He is supposed to die.
Here we see another unpleasant truth about death that is
carefully avoided by the funeral industry. Death is not benign. It is not
beautiful. It is not natural. Death is God’s punishment for breaking his Law,
that is, for sinning. Death has morality wrapped up in it. It is God’s death
penalty. Whoever dies, dies as a criminal. If we weren’t criminals, then we
wouldn’t die. God’s Law wouldn’t allow it. The Law would justify us and say
that we can live because we deserve to live. But as it is, whenever you see
somebody die—including even Jesus himself—you can know that here God’s justice
is being carried out. Death is not a fuzzy rainbow, nor is it a crown of
laurels. We weren’t created to die. We were created to live, to thrive, to
multiply over the face of the earth. The reason why this doesn’t happen is
because justice requires that we die.
With the preaching of Christ crucified this fundamental
truth of God’s Law about sin and death is established as true and binding. This
life is such that we are and will be judged by our Creator. Jesus says that he
did not come to abolish the Law. Every jot and tittle, every last shred of
God’s Law stands. He did not come to abolish the Law, Jesus says, but to
fulfill it. This is indeed what he does too. There is no sin that is not
punished in him. There is no sin that is not atoned for by his holy precious
blood and his innocent suffering and death. On the cross he who knew no sin
became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
Jesus was punished for the sin of the world in our place.
This is a tremendous thought that we cannot even begin to
wrap our minds around. Beyond the physical aspects of what Jesus suffered, there
was tremendous spiritual anguish. What we can see is but the tip of the
iceberg. His anguish is the anguish of the sinner before a righteous and
almighty God. His anguish is the anguish of sinners on Judgment Day when they
know that they’ve been caught. This, and much more, is what is involved in
Christ being crucified.
We can see the depths of Jesus’s suffering even before they
fully happened. On the night when Jesus was betrayed he knew what lay before
him. At the Garden of Gethsemane he prayed to our Father in heaven that this
cup should pass from him three times, but not his will, but God’s will be done.
His sweat splashed on the ground like great drops of blood. He had to be
ministered to by angels to give him a little strength to go on. It was not a
little price that Jesus paid. It was the costliest sacrifice that ever can be
made. It was the sacrifice of God himself, incarnate in the man Jesus.
So what did all this accomplish? It brought about the end of
the Law’s claims against you for how you have lived. The Law says that you will
be punished. The Law says that you will die. Jesus, God’s own Son, said,
“punish me instead.” The Father loves his Son. The Father says several times in
the Gospels, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” The
Son of God’s desire to save you from death and hell was pleasing also to the
Father even though it broke God’s heart to carry out the awful sacrifice.
Abraham’s hand was stayed when he was to execute his son Isaac. God did not
allow this mercy for himself when it came time for Jesus to die. And why not?
Because he was and is determined to reconcile you to himself and restore your
true life of holiness and blessedness under him in his kingdom.
You, therefore, are not justified by the Law. You are justified
by faith in Jesus. He is your justification. This is all the result of Jesus
being crucified for you. This is all a result of God’s action for you. The
apostle preaches Christ and him crucified so that you may know your God,
believe in him, and through faith have a good conscience. According to what you
have done and left undone you can never have a good conscience no matter how
hard you try. By the gift God gives to you, you are loved by God and well
pleasing to him. Jesus has made it so.
This is an astounding thing. God himself sacrifices
everything for you. So why is this message of the cross distasteful to both
Jews and Gentiles, which is to say to everyone? There are a lot of things we
could talk about in this regard. First of all, people find the fundamental
truth of God’s Law to be distasteful. People don’t want to believe that death
is God’s punishment. They don’t want to believe that there is such a place as
hell. They want to be able to continue to safely ignore God. They want the
skeletons stuffed into the closet and moss to grow over the sins they’ve buried
in the land of forgetfulness. They want to believe that we are all more or less
good people. Sure, we slip up every now and then, but who’s counting?
This is the great pseudo-gospel that holds almost the whole
world in its thrall. “Everything will be fine,” pretty much sums up its
message. This is the lie that brought our human race into slavery to the devil
in the first place. The serpent said to Eve, “Everything will be fine. You
won’t sure die.” That devil is a liar and a murderer. Strangely enough, though,
our flesh wants to be deceived. Probably because it enables us to continue to
live in sin.
Another reason why the preaching of Christ and him crucified
is distasteful to everyone is what Paul specifically addresses in our reading.
The cross of Christ is offensive to Jews and foolish to Greeks. It is offensive
to Jews because they were expecting an earthly Christ who would lead their
nation into greatness. They were expecting a second King David. They thought
that the Christ would solve all their earthly problems. The actual Christ who
came didn’t meet these expectations. The Jews weren’t entirely wrong with their
expectations of Christ being gracious and helpful, but they weren’t looking
deeply enough.
Christ does not just bring about good government, good laws,
fine arts, and so on. He addresses and fixes our most deeply seated problem—our
slavery to the devil and to death. This is a tremendous blessing that we can’t
begin to grasp, but it is also something that is not yet fully manifested. The
Jews wanted something they could see. They were looking for signs. The fullness
of God’s kingdom has not yet come though. This will not happen until the last
day when Jesus will come again on the clouds with power and great glory.
The Greeks seek after wisdom, Paul says. As I think you will
see, our own people have drunk deeply from this Grecian spring. The Greeks want
to solve problems. They want good democratic government. They want to fix the
problems we have so as to make life better and better. The Greeks believed that
if we only try hard enough and believe in ourselves that nothing can stand in
our way.
Notice the similarity between the Jews and the Greeks here.
The Jews were looking for an earthly christ who would fix all their problems.
The Greeks believe that humanity itself is the christ who can fix our problems
given enough time and effort. Both the Jews and the Greeks hate it when they
are told that their christs are false christs. They hate to hear that the
things of this world, in which they put their trust, are passing away. Only those
who are safe and secure in the holy ark of baptism will be able to ride out the
destruction. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” Jesus says, “but my
Word will never pass away.”
As Christians we do not believe in making the world a better
place by instituting this reform or that reform. First of all, instituting this
reform or that reform is very difficult, because hardly anybody agrees on what
we are supposed to do. Just consider the state our country is in right now.
Everybody is at each other’s throat about how we are supposed to think about
this or that. One reform conflicts with another. But suppose that all the
reforms could be made. Suppose that we made tons and tons of progress. All of
this would be superficial and cosmetic. The old evil heart would still be there
in the people. New forms of oppression and violence would inevitably be
invented, as has always been the case.
The only true “fix” that exists is our Creator’s own fix in
the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This alone gets to the root of the problem of
our evil heart. That is why the apostle Paul is determined to preach Christ and
him crucified regardless of the consequences. And there are consequences. Paul
was hated by his own people, the Jews. He had betrayed his church and disobeyed
the church’s leadership. The Greeks and the Romans thought that he was a danger
to the empire. He would corrupt the youth with his other-worldly notions. They
thought the kids should be kept in school so that they could learn a useful
trade that actually addressed the real world’s problems instead of looking to
the life of the world to come. These and more are the reasons why Paul was
kicked out of cities, beaten, mocked, whipped, and so on, until he was finally
beheaded by the Roman government. But do not worry. He has lost nothing and
gained everything by remaining faithful until the end.
Paul says in another place that he is not ashamed of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is the power of salvation to all who believe,
both Jews and Greeks. There are plenty of opportunities for us to be ashamed of
the Gospel today too. Other ways of living, other forms of wisdom, other false
hopes of blessing are all around us. All these are vastly more popular than the
salvation God has revealed to us in the death of his Son.
But all these other things are passing away. The death and
resurrection of Christ puts no one to shame who puts his or her trust in it. It
is the very thing our Creator would have us believe in, so how can we go wrong
even if the whole world should oppose us? The preaching of Christ and him
crucified will prevail, because our God, who is behind this preaching, will
prevail.
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