Good Friday

John 18-19 - Good Friday - April 6, 2012
(Adapted from a sermon prepared by Christian A. Preus)

What is Truth?

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us pray:

O Son of God, eternal Word,
Divine Redeemer, dearest Lord,
We marvel at Thy suff’ring;
For Thy disgrace, and pain, and shame,
We'll ever magnify Thy name,
And praise Thy glorious off’ring. Amen. 

Amen.  Jesus teaches us to say Amen.  Jesus taught us the Lord’s Prayer, which we have been considering during our evening services this Lent, and so we say Amen to it.  Jesus teaches us to say Amen not simply by telling us to say Amen when we end our prayers.  But He Himself also sets the example. 

Jesus says Amen when He wants to affirm that something is true. How many times throughout His ministry here on earth did He say this word!  Amen is the word of one who is confident of the truth.  And Jesus was very confident of the truth.  In fact, He was the very truth of which He spoke.  Jesus declared to His disciples shortly before He went to the cross: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; nobody comes to the Father, except through Me” (John 14:6).  Jesus is truth, and His words are truth.

In our day of postmodernism and moral relativism, Jesus’ claim to have the truth is very offensive.  Not only does this claim exclude everyone’s own lofty ideas of what is true and good, but Jesus’ claim to truth also includes the uncompromising condemnation of sinners.  If we are to say Amen to Jesus’ Amen, we must confess that we and all other people in the world were born in sin, born enemies of God, and opposed to everything good and righteous.  Now, this isn’t very nice to say.  But that is what Jesus says: “Amen, Amen, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin” (John 8:34).  If we say Amen to Jesus’ Amen, we are confessing that without Jesus we are slaves to unrighteousness and enemies of God.

And it’s not only our modern world that finds this Amen so offensive.  When Jesus told the Jews that they needed him because they were all lost in their sins, they became so angry—they were so offended—that they tried to kill Him.  When we say Amen to Jesus’ Amen, we are confessing with Jesus and Isaiah that all our righteousness is as filthy rags.  Think of it!  We are confirming with conviction that outside of Christ all the nice things we do, all the nice thoughts we have, all the nice words we speak – everything – is sin and earns us death and eternal condemnation.  When we say Amen to Jesus’ Amen, we are confessing that we need Jesus absolutely, that we need a new birth from Him, a new heart, new emotions, and a new life.  Saying Amen to Jesus’ Amen is difficult.  In fact, it is impossible for sinners to do it by any skill or will of their own.  Those words that Martin Luther taught us in the Small Catechism, he himself learned from Jesus, when he writes: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to Him.”  So Jesus says: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44).  Saying Amen to Jesus’ Amen means to confess that we are so broken, so pathetic, that we don’t even have the power to recognize the depth of our misery outside of the inspiration of God. 

To say Amen is to confess that what we have said is the truth.  This is why Jesus says Amen so often.  As He said to Pilate: “For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.  Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice” (John 18:37).  Jesus came into the world to bear witness to the truth.  Up to the time when He was handed over to Pontius Pilate, Jesus had borne witness to the truth.  That’s what He was sent to do; that’s what He enjoyed doing.  He was faithful to this task not only out of obedient love to His Father in heaven, but also in humble love toward sinners who needed the truth to set them free.  Jesus preached for three years to the lost children of Israel and to the Gentiles too.  He had taught them that they were sinners and that they needed Him.  And for bearing witness to this truth, for preaching this message, Jesus had been led to Pilate to be crucified.  And then Pilate responds: “What is truth?” 

It is as if Pilate had said: “Why do you say Amen so often?  How are you so certain of this truth?”  Jesus spoke the truth – how it would set people free, liberate them from their bondage, ease their pain, save them from death, hell, and the devil.  And now finally someone asks the simple question: “What is truth?  Why do you keep saying that?”  Here’s His chance! – to explain how undeniable – how irrevocable – how incorruptible everything He has said truly is, and yet, what does He do?  Jesus says nothing.  But by saying nothing, He says it all.  He says nothing, but He does answer Pilate’s question.  He chooses to answer Pilate by suffering instead of speaking.  And so He silently affirms the truth of Isaiah’s prophecy: “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet he opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth.”  And by so doing He shows Pilate and the whole world the truth.

The truth that Jesus preached, the truth that we believe and confess, the truth that sets us free, the truth in which we rejoice and of which we speak without ceasing, this truth is Christ crucified for sinners.  Dear Christians, this day is called good because on it Jesus recorded His last Amen.  In His humble and miserable death on the cross, Christ showed the entire world the truth of all His preaching.  He revealed the depth of our sin, for which the holy Son of God must die.  And He revealed the depth of God’s love, who would hand His Son over to sinners to be shamed, insulted, and executed to take away the sins of the world.

All time and eternity meets its summit on Good Friday, when the incarnate Son of God sheds His blood for sinners.  From eternity, God planned humanity’s redemption, and for the sake of Jesus’ bloody passion and death, He stayed His anger for countless generations.  Finally, stripped of His clothes, beaten bloody by mockers and scoffers, crowned with thorns amid blasphemous curses and derision, Jesus humbly climbs Mount Calvary.  Though sinners nail His hands and feet to the cross, this pain pales in comparison to the distress the Holy One of Israel must now face.  The Father curses His Son.  God names Jesus the guilty one of Israel, the substitute for all the sins of all humanity.  God pours out His wrath on His beloved Son, the Son whom He had loved for all eternity.  And Jesus, in His agony and abandonment, consents to it all.  Without uttering a word, His Amen resounds clearly. 

Pilate asked: “What is truth?  Why do you say Amen?”  And Jesus showed him.  And He shows us what the truth is and why we can be so certain of it.  The truth, as Jesus and His Apostles preached, is that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.   The truth is that we are sinners.  And the truth is that Jesus has saved us from our sins.  The truth is that Christ has freed us from sin to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.  And we can be sure and certain of this truth because Jesus said Amen.  He said, “It is finished,” and therefore it is finished.

With this Amen, as Isaiah foretold, He sprinkled many nations with His atoning blood.  By His silent Amen, kings shut their mouths at Him.  What more could Pilate do or say but wash His hands of this?  For what had not been told him, he saw, as Isaiah said he would.  And what he had not heard he was forced to consider (Isaiah 53:15).

Jesus has defined truth for us and confirmed it with the Amen of His suffering and death on the cross. And so we rejoice in the truth, and we boldly confess it and attach our Amen to it.  We pray the Lord’s Prayer with confidence, knowing that the God who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up to suffer and die for us, will surely in Him give us all things.  We call God our Father because through Christ’s death we have become God’s children.  We pray that God’s name be kept holy among us, because at the name of Jesus all death and sin and evil must flee and we can abide with Him in love and holiness.  We pray that God’s kingdom come because through Jesus’ death we no longer fear the coming of our Judge, but look forward to it with joy and hope.  We pray that God’s will be done, because we know that it is good and gracious in our Lord Jesus Christ.  We pray that God will provide us with all that we need to support this body and life, because we know that God forsook His Son’s needs to care for ours.  We pray that God would forgive us our sins, knowing that it pleased God that His Son be crucified for our iniquities.  We pray that God would lead us away from temptation to doubt, despair and other great shame and vice by leading us to where the Lamb of God went uncomplaining forth.  We pray that God would deliver us from evil, because we who lost in the mire of our own evil have been brought back to a love for goodness and righteousness through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.  And finally we say Amen, because Jesus is our unfailing security, and in Him, in His blood and merit, we have the confidence to boldly confess our sin and our Savior, Jesus Christ the righteous. 

Let us pray:

Your soul in griefs unbounded,
Your head with thorns surrounded,
You died to ransom me.
The cross for me enduring,
The crown for me securing,
You healed my wounds and set me free.

Your cords of love, my Savior,
Bind me to You forever,
I am no longer mine.
To you I gladly tender
All that my life can render
And all I have to You resign.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.