What the Cross Meant

RIVERSIDE INDONESIAN FELLOWSHIP
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What the Cross Meant

Riverside Indonesian Fellowship
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2021 · 24 October 2021
Let’s open the Word of God at John 14:28-31; and it’s the last little paragraph. But chapter numbers are irrelevant, because this is one evening, one monologue by Jesus with His disciples on Thursday night of Passion Week, the night before His crucifixion. He’s in the upper room and then He’s still with them as they head toward the garden. So we come to a geographical transition.

Verse 28-30, “You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe. 30 I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, but he has nothing on Me.”

Verse 31, But so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commands Me. Get up, let us go from here.” On our side of the cross, we all know what Jesus’ death meant to Him. We know the fullness of salvation truth related to the cross and the resurrection. We have the four gospels to give us the narrative about the cross and all our Lord’s words.

Then we have the book of Acts which chronicles the preaching of the apostles and their associates in the early church; as they were preaching the cross, and the resurrection, and the theology of the resurrection. Then we have all the epistles of the New Testament. From the writings of Paul, Peter, John and Jude, we get more theology of the cross and the resurrection.

And in Revelation, the apocalyptic vision of John on the Isle of Patmos, we have even more of the theology of the cross. We understand what it meant to Christ, and what it meant to God, and what it meant to the Holy Spirit, and what it meant to the purpose of redemption, and what it means to us. We’re full of praise all the time for the work of the Lord through His death and resurrection.

We understand that Christ was crucified for us in our place. We understand redemption. We understand reconciliation. We understand justification and the imputation of sin to Him and righteousness to us by His death and resurrection. He liberated us from bondage to sin. He liberated us from the fear of death. He liberated us from eternal hell. He set us on a course to heaven.

Now that’s our view on this side of the cross, and this is what fuels our worship, our service, and our gratitude. But put yourself in the place of the 11 disciples, on the other side of the cross with no New Testament, no theology, and no preaching by the apostles. They’re on the other side of the cross. Theirs was a prophetic faith. They had to understand something that had not yet happened.

And the idea that Jesus was going to die was just crazy to them. “How could the victor, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Servant of the Lord who would come, as we read in Isaiah 42, and bring justice to the world and establish His kingdom of righteousness, how could He be a victim of a sinful, wretched world? So we want to give them credit for they were looking only on the prophetic side.

And in John 12:33 He told them how He was going to die by being lifted up. Well when the Jews executed somebody, they stoned them to death. This was a Roman form of crucifixion. He told them that He would be arrested, He would be scourged, He would be spit on, He would be abused, and He would be killed. This scared them because it was just outside their understanding.

It’s time to stop being scared and to rejoice. That’s the key in verse 28, “If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced.” At this point, all they can see is that, “This thing is about to be over and we’ve put everything in it – our lives, our hopes, our ambitions, our dreams, our love, our resources, everything. And now He’s leaving, He’s going to the Father and He’s going to die.”

But Jesus has made amazing promises to them. He promised them heaven. He promised them that He would come and take them there. He promised them that they would have all the resources of heaven at their disposal. He promised them that He would send the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth who would lead them into all truth. He promised that He would come to them, that the Father would dwell in them.

This is our Savior’s legacy to His beloved as He leaves, but they’re having a very difficult time with this. It is for one simple reason, they are selfish. All they can think about is what Jesus leaving means to them, how it’s going to affect them. They want Jesus to stay and keep doing exactly what He had been doing in their lives. For the disciples it’s a selfish sorrow.

And that is why Jesus says this to them: “If you loved Me.” Well, didn’t they love Him? Yes, to a degree. But let’s just take it to the fullest definition, “If you loved Me in the way that Christ understands love, if you really loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, if you really loved Me.” Did they love Him? Sure, but not fully, not rightly and not completely.

The purest and truest love is completely selfless. That’s how Jesus loved. He loved His own who were in the world in a completely selfless way so that He was willing to give up His life for them. True love always seeks the joy of the one it loves. “If you loved Me unselfishly, you would be rejoicing because you would see what My going means to Me. I go to the Father.”

Let’s go back then to verse 28, for further introduction: “You heard that I said to you, yes, I go away and I will come.” And He said, “You’ve also heard that I will come again. John 14:3 says, “I will come again after I prepare a place for you and receive you to Myself.” Verse 23: “We will come to the believer and make Our abode with the believer.” That is the Trinity.

‘I will come to you.’ What does He mean?” First, “I will come to you in three days because there will be a resurrection, and I’ll come out of the grave and I’ll meet you, some of you on the Road to Emmaus, and all of you in the upper room with the exception of Thomas. And He came back the third day, rose from the dead, and He was with them for 40 days. So He had His resurrection in view.

And secondly in John 14:18, “I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you,” Number two, He is talking about the coming of the Holy Spirit, “So that I will come to you in the form of the Holy Spirit,” and that happened on the Day of Pentecost. He came back after three days; and then after 40 days, He ascended into heaven; and soon after that, the Holy Spirit came on the Day of Pentecost.

And then thirdly, John 14:3, “I will come again and receive you to Myself.” There, He’s talking about the ultimate glorification of the believer at His second coming: “I will meet you in glory and take you to glory.” That happens when an individual believer dies, and that will happen one day at the rapture of the church. So when He says, “I go away and will come to you,” it has three meanings.

In this simple passage, there are four great realities that tell us what Jesus’ death meant to Him. The Son of God had come down to earth, been born in manger to Mary. He had suffered for 33 years, and not from sin. He is holy, undefiled, and separate from sinners. He had suffered from sinners. He came from the holy presence of heaven down to suffer from sinners in this world His whole life.

So let me give you the four things He said. Number one: it meant that His person would be exalted. Verse 28, “I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” This is a reference to His exaltation, “I go to the Father.” And we know that happened in Acts 1:8 when He ascended into heaven. He was leaving the world. He had finished the work the Father had given Him to do.

Then in John 17:4-5, “I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” His humiliation had been hard, it had been bitter. He suffered the hatred of people whom He loved. But He endured till the end of God’s wrath and now He is going back.

He’s going back to the Father. And He makes this statement, “For the Father is greater than I.” What is that? Well, we know it’s not in essence. We know it’s not in nature, because in His being, He is the same as the Father. He is equal to the Father; He is one with the Father in nature. Christ is equal to God as to His Godhead, but inferior to God as to His manhood.

Philippians 2 is the explanation of this. It says He existed as God, but He didn’t regard equality with God, something to be held onto. He was willing to give up that face-to-face, full, glorious equality with God, and He emptied Himself, He divested Himself of that and took the form of a slave and was made in the likeness of men. Therefor as to His manhood, He’s inferior, He submits.

They should have rejoiced that He was going to the Father from whom He had come. The garb of lowliness is about to fall from His shoulders, and to love Him would be to rejoice for Him. So first of all, they should rejoice because His person will be exalted. Secondly, His truth will be validated. What’s going to happen is going to validate what He has been saying.

When He told them He was going to die and rise, his disciples did not believe it. But when it happened, they did believe it. That validated Him as the One who had told them the truth before it ever happened; and only God can do that. And then in John 16:4, “These things I have spoken to you so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them,” and He’s talking about persecution.

Look, if He had never told them He was going to die, never told them all the details, and it came to pass; they would have been scattered, never to be recovered. But all of a sudden, as these things began to unfold, the death, the resurrection, they began to remember that He had said these things specifically, and they were regathered and reconstituted, even before the Holy Spirit came in Acts 2.

And that’s what empowered them to give their lives to preach the gospel. That’s why they turned the world upside-down because they knew who He was. He said He would die; He did. He said He would be lifted up in death; he was. He said He would rise; He did. He said He would ascend to the Father; He did. He said He would send the Holy Spirit; He did.

He said He would give supernatural life; He did. Everything He said He would do He did. He said they would be persecuted; they were. Every prophecy, every promise, every pledge, fulfilled in exact precision, documenting His word. Christ knows that the message of the gospel has to be preached. There has to be a book of Acts to record and chronicle what happened.

There’s a third reality: His enemy will be defeated. Verse 30, “For the ruler of this world is coming and the power of the air.” Satan was coming at Him with everything. Satan had tried to kill Him when He was a baby through Herod’s decree that all two-year-old male children would be executed. He had continuously confronted Jesus. He was confronted with demons everywhere He went.

Now Satan was going to reach the apex of his assault. This was the hour of the power of darkness. This is when Satan would bruise His heel, Genesis 3:15. Jesus had been fighting Satan all His life. Now He was about to put an end to that. While Satan was bruising His heel at the cross, He would crush Satan’s head. Why does it say, “He has nothing on Me”? Because there is no weak point; no vulnerability with Jesus.

First John 3:8 says, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” So Satan, at the cross, is crushed and defeated, and is a defeated enemy already, only waiting for his sentence. Everything He had said would be documented, and He would be viewed as the Son of God who knows the future in detail, and that would empower them for ministry.

Then the fourth feature of what the cross meant to Christ: His love will be demonstrated. And He says this in verse 31, “But so that the world may know that I love the Father.” This is the only place in the New Testament where the Lord explicitly says, “I love the Father.” The Father commanded the Son to come into the world and be the sacrifice for sin. He is obedient, and that demonstrates love.

So here’s the model. “I am demonstrating to the entire world that I love the Father by doing exactly as the Father has commanded Me.” If you really love Me – ” He said “ – you would be overwhelmed with joy because I’m going to be glorified, My truth is going to be validated, Satan is going to be defeated, and I’m going to put My love for the Father on display for the entire world.”

Well, I’ll close with Jesus’ words: “Get up; let’s go from here.” And, apparently, they got up from the table where they had been eating the Passover meal and they began to move through Jerusalem, our Lord and the 11 disciples, on the way to the garden of Gethsemane, and He was still teaching the truths in John 15 and 16, which we’ll see later. Let’s bow in prayer.



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