The Meaning of the Cross
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2021 · 1 August 2021
John 12:27–34, “Now my soul is deeply troubled. Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But this is the very reason I came! 28 Father, bring glory to your name. Then a voice spoke from heaven, saying, “I have already brought glory to my name, and I will do so again.” 29 When the crowd heard the voice, some thought it was thunder, while others declared an angel had spoken to Him. 30 Then Jesus told them, “The voice was for your benefit, not mine.”
“31 The time for judging this world has come, when Satan, the ruler of this world, will be cast out. 32 And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” 33 He said this to indicate how he was going to die. 34 The crowd responded, “We understood from Scripture that the Messiah would live forever. How can you say the Son of Man will die? Just who is this Son of Man, anyway?”
Jesus is speaking of His crucifixion. They understood that because in verse 34 they say, “What kind of Son of Man must be lifted up,” to die? Isn’t the Messiah to live forever? Being lifted up had become synonymous with crucifixion because the Romans had done this to tens of thousands of people. This passage looks at the cross and its impact, its effect and its power.
The cross hasn’t happened, but this is the theology of the cross from the lips of Jesus before He’s crucified. He was going to be glorified through dying. He said that through an analogy, an illustration in a more obscure way, but now He describes it without an analogy in words that everybody understood. He will literally be lifted up, which is a euphemism for being crucified.
The death of the Lord Jesus Christ reigns over all other issues in Scripture. When you go to the Old Testament, you see the reality of sacrifice. It happens early in Genesis 3. Sacrifices go on through the whole Old Testament. And it goes on into the New Testament until 70 A.D. None of those millions of animals could ever take away sin, but they all pictured one who would: the Lamb of God.
Old Testament prophecies specifically speak about His death. Daniel 9 says, “He will be cut off,” a term to describe death. Zechariah 12:10 says, “He will die being pierced.” Isaiah 53 describes in detail His substitutionary death. Psalm 22 describes His experience on the cross. So, His death is the theme of the Old Testament and the fulfillment of ancient Old Testament predictions.
When you come into the New Testament, His death is the dominant theme of the gospels. As Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John record our Lord’s life from His birth on, He talks about His death from time to time, but the volume of their work that focuses on His death is greater than any other category of interest. One-fifth of all four gospels is directed at His crucifixion, His death and resurrection.
Everything in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John moves toward the greatest of all events, which occupies them most and that is His death. His death then fulfills ancient Old Testament predictions and patterns. His death is the theme of the New Testament gospels. And we could say that His death is the reason for the incarnation. Jesus came to save His followers, His people.
When you finish the four gospels, and you come into the book of Acts, the apostles begin immediately to preach that the Messiah had to suffer and die, that Jesus was crucified, died and rose again. That is apostolic preaching. Paul said on behalf of all of them, “I’m determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We preach Christ crucified.”
That was the apostles calling. As you come to the epistles of the New Testament, starting after the book of Acts, the New Testament is filled with epistles all the way to the book of Revelation. The death of our Lord Jesus Christ and His subsequent resurrection is the theme of those epistles. Sometimes it is explicit. Sometimes the epistles talk particularly about His death and about His cross.
So the writers of the epistles look at the cross explicitly and describe its meaning and its significance. In fact, all the implications of obedience, behavior, life in the church, godliness, virtue, spiritual living are all implications of the cross. If He died for us, how can we not live for Him? So you will find yourself confronted with the cross and the implications of the death of Christ.
His death is also the theme of worship in the church. Two ordinances the Lord gave to the church. One is baptism. The other is Communion. In Baptism, we identify with the death of Christ and His resurrection in a symbolic way. In the Lord’s Table, we gather to eat the bread and the cup, which are representative of His body and blood given for us. These two ordinances both point at His death and His resurrection.
That’s why in churches there are crosses because from that cross radiates the essence of all biblical emphasis. If you go to heaven, you would find that the death of Jesus Christ is also the theme of heaven. We see a glimpse of that in Revelation 5:6 which takes us to heaven, “The Lamb of God, Christ, comes out of the throne and He is a Lamb standing who had been slain.”
Verse 8-9, “Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 And they sang a new song, “You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe, tongue, people and nation.”
The cross is the theme of redemptive history. It is the theme in heavenly worship. Now, all of that leads us to our text starting in verse 27 - 34. The year is 30 A.D. The Lord has entered the city of Jerusalem. The people have heard about His raising Lazarus, a man who had been dead for four days. They knew what He had done, healings all over the land, casting out demons and incredible miracles.
They give Him all the Messianic attribution, and they expected that He would assault the occupying Romans who dishonored God with their idolatry. But He came back in on Tuesday and instead of attacking the Romans, Jesus attacked the Jewish temple, the pinnacle of their religion. His attack was so fierce and so forceful that the people fled out of the entire temple.
Here is Jesus’ theology of His own death before it happened. He opens up mystery to us. Number one, as our Lord looks at the cross, there is the enigma of the Son’s anguish. Verse 27-28, “Now my soul is deeply troubled. Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But this is the very reason I came! 28 Father, bring glory to your name.” How can His soul be troubled? He is God.
What does the word “troubled” mean? It’s a Greek word tarassō, which means “to shake or to stir up.” In a figurative sense, it could be translated as anguish. He was anguished. This is not the anguish of anticipated physical suffering, but anticipating divine wrath, spiritual suffering. That He would be condemned for sins He did not commit, the sins of all who would ever believe.
The Son of God should be troubled by the prospect of divine wrath and alienation from His eternal Father. Yes, He’s troubled, but it’s not the physical part that troubles Him. Listen to Him in Luke 22, He says in verse 42, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me.” And later on Thursday night, “If You are willing, remove this cup from Me.” What’s this cup?
That’s a concept that comes from the Old Testament. The cup of God’s wrath. He is saying, “Father, what terrifies Me is the cup of wrath. Yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Listen to how fierce the battle is. “An angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him.” Luke 22:44 says, “And His sweat became like drops of blood falling down on the ground.”
Verse 28 continued, “Father, glorify Your name.” Jesus said He came to glorify the Father. How? First, the cross puts on display all God’s attributes. You see God’s love in action, His grace in action, His mercy in action, His justice, His wrath and His judgment. You see His wisdom. You see prophecy being fulfilled. His Word is affirmed. You see righteousness declared. You see power declared.
God is glorified in the event of making Christ the substitute for sinners who bears our justice, our wrath, God’s vengeance on us in our place. But the glory of God is further displayed at Calvary by the death of Christ, that God is able to redeem humans from all human history, bring them to heaven to forever glorify Him. It was the death of Jesus Christ that formed the hallelujah choir in heaven.
Then we see the enigma of the Father’s answer. Verse 28 -30, “Then a voice spoke from heaven, saying, “I have already brought glory to my name, and I will do so again.” 29 When the crowd heard the voice, some thought it was thunder, while others declared an angel had spoken to him. 30 Then Jesus told them, “The voice was for your benefit, not mine.” Jesus explains the mystery of the Father’s answer.
So when the Father says in verse 28, “I have both glorified it,” He means throughout your whole ministry I have put My power and glory on display through You. “And will glorify it again,” meaning I will glorify My name through your death. Now, verse 30 says, “Jesus said, ‘This voice has come for your sakes.’” He is talking to the disciples. This is divine heavenly affirmation of the death of Christ.
This voice was for the sake of those who had ‘ears to hear’. On the other hand, there was the crowd, verse 29. “The crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying that it had thundered.” Some others thought it was a supernatural event, and they were saying, “An angel has spoken to Him.” Maybe they were Jewish leaders, but they weren’t about to acknowledge the voice of God.
So we see the Son’s anguish, the Father’s answer, and then the enigma of the cross as accomplishment. His Father’s voice has reminded Him that glory is coming to the Father and to Him because they share glory equally. He focuses on the salvation through that suffering. He turns to words that are triumphant in verse 31, “The time for judging this world has come, when Satan, the ruler of this world, will be cast out.”
Verse 32-33, “And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself. 33 He said this to indicate how he was going to die.” Three anticipated accomplishments in the cross. Number one, the world was judged. Sin’s empire was judged. Sin’s system was judged. The doom was sealed by the rejection and murder of the Son of God. This reverses the whole event of the cross.
The Jewish people thought they had judged Him. In reality, He had not only judged them, but He had judged the entire world. They thought that they had brought Him into their court and rendered their verdict on Him. In reality, He had brought them into His court and rendered His verdict on them. The cross would condemn and judge the world, mainly the Jewish people who rejected Him.
This also includes their leaders who condemned Him, Judas who betrayed Him, the Roman soldiers who mocked and executed Him, Pilate who sentenced Him and the whole society of evil men alienated from God who crucified Him. And extending beyond that, all the unbelieving people in the whole world who are caught up as children of Satan in an anti-God and anti-Christ attitude.
What looked like the judgment of Christ was, in fact, the judgment of the world because at the cross, He won the victory and ascended to the right hand of the Father, and He became the Lord and Judge of all. Every time a person dies, that sentence is executed, but for the whole world, that sentence will be fully executed on the day that Jesus appears a second time to judge all people.
Second thing, the ruler of this world will be cast out. Who’s that? Satan, the prince of the power of the air, the ruler of this world. Satan was dethroned at Calvary. Again, this is a reversal of what you might think. It looked like Satan triumphed. Satan had conquered Christ at Calvary, but in reality, Christ had crushed his head, dealt him the deathblow. Now, Satan is a conquered, defeated foe.
Jesus destroyed the one who had the power of death. Death, for us, has no fear because in Christ we go right through death into everlasting life. This doesn’t mean Satan is not around gasping like an animal with its head cut off. He is a defeated enemy, who was defeated at the point at which it looked like he had won. The world thought they won over Christ. They lost. Satan thought he won. He lost.
“And when I am lifted up from the earth,” when I am crucified. He is saying, “When I am crucified, I will draw all men to myself.” All men, meaning all Jews, Gentiles, people from every tongue, tribe, and nation of the planet. Jesus, at the cross, provides the work by which all can be saved. Children of God from all over the world. It is in death that He gives life. The truth is He is triumphant at the cross.
So what was the reaction of the people? Verse 34, “We understood from Scripture that the Messiah would live forever. How can you say the Son of Man will die? Just who is this Son of Man, anyway?” Because they don’t understand Isaiah 53, they don’t believe Isaiah 52. They don’t understand Daniel 9 that He would be cut off, Zechariah 12:10, that He would be pierced. So the cross is to the Jews a stumbling block. Let us pray.