Good Friday

This morning, I'd like us to keep in tune with his conversation, and we're going to be looking specifically at how Jesus himself, not Paul, not Peter, or the disciples, apostles that came after him, understood the cross, but Jesus himself, how he saw his task, his mission. So we're going to be looking at John 15. And so we were in John 16 last time. We're just going to rewind it a little bit and look at how Jesus summarised his motivation for this infamous moment in history. What's the definition of a best friend?

I once received a little message given to me by a friend that read like this. Some say that a good friend is someone that will come and bail you out of jail at 03:00 in the morning, while a best friend will be sitting next to you in jail saying, that was flipping awesome. That's probably not a very good message for our kids. Stay out of jail, please. But when I was little, I used to enjoy getting up to all sorts of what Afrikaners call it, sorts of nuisance, naughty things.

But the problem came when my mum found out about these pranks. The fun quickly stopped. I can assure you. And every time I tried to be cheeky and talk my way out of this situation, one thing my mum would always say to me was, you can't talk to me like that. I am not your friend.

Now obviously I was pushing the boundaries, testing my mum to see how far I could, you know, push her and get away with things. However, what I did learn was that I had to respect my parents. They were right. They were not my friends. They were my parents, and we weren't on the same level.

I was their son and they were my parents. With that in mind, we come to a statement that Jesus made. His last words before he went to the cross. He said, Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

What did Jesus mean by this? Surely he was the Son of God. Surely he was the Son of God. And we just read that again. Jason read that the centurion who saw him crucified said this was the Son of God.

And while he is the Son of God, I'm a sinful man. I'm broken. I'm imperfect. How can he call me his friend? The Bible tells us that we have to fear God, which means we have to respect him.

We have to revere him. But surely he can't be a friend. Surely we aren't on the same level. Are you telling me that Jesus, the one who created the entire universe, the one that placed the stars in the sky, the one who made the Milky Way, who determined the size of the planets in this universe, considers me a friend? Aristotle, a great Greek philosopher, was once asked, what is a friend?

And he replied, a single soul dwelling in two bodies. That's a nice way of putting it. Is that how Jesus views our relationship this morning? There are a few instances that I just want to remind us of where God actually had referred to particular individuals as his friend. For instance, in the Old Testament, God spoke to Moses as a man would speak to his friend.

Abraham is officially called God's friend. Abram's children, who were the faithful people of Israel, are also called the friends of God in Isaiah 41:8. Later on in the New Testament, the man Lazarus is also said to be a friend of Jesus himself. The interesting thing is these are specific people. These are extraordinary individuals.

They were faithful people. They were people who clung to God. They were reliable. They were holy. But is that really me?

Does my life reflect that? The amazing thing, however, is that one of the charges that Jesus' enemies made against him was that he was a friend of sinners and tax collectors. Jesus, it seemed, loved even those who were unlovable, the not so perfect, the not so perfect.

The ones that didn't have straight teeth, perfect skin. In fact, Matthew 26, which we also read, saw that Judas led a troop of soldiers to arrest Jesus, and Jesus said to him, friend, do what you came to do. This Good Friday, as we reflect on the death of Jesus Christ, let's talk about Jesus. Let's talk about Jesus and who he called his friends.

More importantly, from our text this morning, we'll see just what Jesus' friendship to us really meant. Just what Jesus understood our relationship to be. Jesus said greater love has no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friends. We're going to focus on this summary statement because it's a beautiful one. It is one that we should all memorise and keep in the back of our minds for those really tough times.

We're going to just zoom in on this for a moment, and we're going to look at what Jesus' friendship to us really meant, what it was. The first thing we see here in verse 13 is that Jesus' friendship was voluntary. The statement laid down his life that Jesus makes here indicates that his going to the cross was a voluntary act. It doesn't say his life is taken for his friends. It doesn't say that he even dies for his friends. It says that he lays down his life for his friends.

No man murdered Jesus. No power, no authority took him to the cross to die that day. He laid down his life. In fact, God the Father, the Bible doesn't say forced Jesus to go to the cross. Some cynics of Christianity have said that if the death of Jesus was really died in our place, if the atonement, if substitution really took place, then what happened on the cross was some astronomical child abuse.

That God the Father would let his Son, would send his Son to die. But here we see that Jesus declared his mission to be his own. He would give up his life on the cross voluntarily. In fact, let's have a look at John 10 verses 14 to 18, and we see exactly how Jesus saw his duty to go to the cross. He says in verse 14 of chapter 10, I am the good shepherd.

I know my sheep and my sheep know me. Just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this pen. I must bring them also, for they too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. And notice this, the reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life only to take it up again.

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father. No one takes my life. The second thing we see, other than that Jesus' friendship was voluntary, was that Jesus' friendship was vicarious.

Now all these things I've listed with verses, so just bear with me. It's easy to remember. It was vicarious. The word vicarious means that it was something performed or suffered for the benefit of someone else. Jesus tells us in this verse that his life was given up for his friends.

It was given up for his friends. In other words, his death was not to save himself. His death was not to be a punishment for his own sin, nor was it that he was found guilty of any misconduct or crimes against Rome. The tragedy was that he died as an innocent man with no charges that could be laid against him officially. He had not done any crimes against Rome.

That's why Pilate couldn't, in all good faith, crucify him. He tried to wash his hands of this despicable thing that would happen. But Jesus' death, he says, was for his friends. Now the word here for "for" in Greek is "huper", which means on behalf of. When Jesus went to the cross, he was going to the cross on behalf of others.

It was for the people who he called his friends that he would die. Now there have been more sceptics that have said that Jesus' death was just as an example. It was done to show us just how much dedication he had to God. As a prophet, he pointed to the perfect image of how we should live our lives in complete dedication and commitment to God, even to the point of death. So Jesus' death, for them, was nothing more than unfair martyrdom for a very good man who loved God.

The Christian gospel claims that Jesus' death was a substitution. It was a death he died, a price he paid for us. The blood was on our hands, so to speak, and we needed to pay the penalty. Otherwise, no true forgiveness could be found.

Isaiah 53 verses 4 to 6. Just have a look at this. Isaiah 53, this famous passage, verses 4 to 6, just shows exactly how the Jews understood this. Isaiah, yeah, verse 4.

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. Yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. There's nothing here of example.

There's nothing here of a death of a martyr. Christianity offers the only true forgiveness, and Jesus understood that. It offers the only true forgiveness compared to any of the other philosophies or religions that are out there. People ask, why did Jesus have to die? Why couldn't God just forgive and forget and move on?

But forgiveness can never be forgiveness if no cost is involved. Say, for example, someone breaks something in your house, someone breaks a lamp of yours, a valuable antique lamp. And you go up to them and they admit their mistake, and you say to them, I forgive you. I forgive you. In that instance, you forego having them either replace that lamp or in some way pay you for the value of that lamp.

You actually, if you say I forgive you, you lose the lamp itself. You lose the value of that lamp. You actually forego justice for the balancing out of the scales again. They break your lamp, they pay for it, and justice is restored. In forgiveness, however, they break the lamp, you forgive them, and you pay to replace the lamp, or you incur the cost of having lost the lamp.

Forgiveness costs the forgiver. Most other religions, most philosophies have some sort of forgiveness, but in the sense that what we celebrate today is that Jesus took it upon himself to incur the cost. Other religions say we can work off this debt by being good, balancing out the scales. Or we can simply ask God to ignore our offence, to forgive and to forget. Christianity says, no, we need to deal with this.

True justice needs to be made. Jesus' friendship was vicarious. He died for us. The third thing we see in Jesus' friendship was that it was vicious. The phrase laid down his life is sanitary, is clean on the surface, but it still means that he had to lose his life.

Although Jesus here doesn't convey the depths and the agony of the suffering that he would be experiencing just hours after he made this statement, Jesus is actually pointing to the cost involved in his friendship. This wasn't some sort of fair weather friendship. This wasn't something that is good and nice and loving when everything is perfect, but when the hard times come along that love disappears and goes running. Jesus knew what it was going to cost, what it was going to cost to uphold this relationship with us. We need only to look at a few instances and remind us in the Bible of just the picture of what it did cost Jesus.

The first thing was that he was betrayed by Judas and deserted by his disciples. He was beaten by the temple guards. He was rejected by the very people he came to save. He was flogged. He was mocked by the soldiers, and he was crowned with thorns.

His beard was plucked from his face, the Bible says. He was stripped naked, nailed to a cross and hung up to die. Isaiah 52 says that he was left completely disfigured beyond recognition. Jesus sums that up by saying, I laid down my life. His friendship to us, what it cost, was vicious.

The great thing in this bittersweet day that we remember today was that Jesus' friendship was victorious. It was victorious. There are those who look at the death of Jesus, and people who come to church sometimes and say, what a tragedy. I'm sure many have seen and heard the story of the passion of Christ, and they would have seen Jesus preach and would have thought, What a tragic end to this man's life. Yet his death was not tragic.

His death ranks as the most glorious day in the history of all humanity. A victory was won on that day, on that little hill outside Jerusalem. When he was nearing the end of his time on the cross, Jesus uttered a cry that proclaimed his death was a great victory. It is finished. It is finished.

He knew that in his death, he had satisfied the righteous demands of God concerning the washing away of sin. The fact that God was forever satisfied. The fact that God was forever satisfied was proven three days later when he rose again from the dead. Now sin could not only be forgiven, but sinners would live forever. The message of Jesus' death is a message of victory despite its apparent tragedy.

The pattern of the cross means that the world's glorification of power, the world that we live in that exalts status and might, the pattern of the cross exposes that and defeats it. On the cross, Christ wins through losing. Christ wins through losing. Christ triumphs through defeat. He achieves power through weakness.

Jesus Christ turns the values of this world absolutely upside down. N. T. Wright, a scholar and an author, writes, The real enemy on the day of Good Friday was not Rome, but the powers of evil that stood behind human arrogance and evil. On the cross, the kingdom of God triumphs over the kingdoms of this world by refusing to join into the spiral of violence.

On the cross, Jesus would just show what it looks like to love one's enemies, to turn the other cheek, and to go the extra mile. This upside down pattern so contradicts the thinking or the practice of this world that it creates an alternative kingdom, a counter culture. In this peaceful kingdom, this new culture, there is a reversal of the values of the world with regard to power, with regard to recognition, status, and wealth. In this new counterculture, in this new kingdom, Christians look at money as something to give away. Christians look at power as something to be used strictly for service.

Racial and class superiority, accrual of money and power at the expense of others, yearning for popularity and recognition. These normal marks of human life are the opposite of the mindset of those who have come to understand the message of the cross. Jesus' death on the cross is a victory in that it creates a whole new order of life. On the cross, neither justice nor mercy lose out. God's justice is met completely, is satisfied completely on the cross.

But the God of mercy also doesn't lose out, and he doesn't compromise on his character of mercy because through the cross, many sons, many daughters come to glory. Jesus' death was necessary if God was going to take justice seriously and still love us. This same concern for both love and justice should in turn mark all our relationships. Why then did Jesus have to die? In the Garden of Gethsemane, he asked that very question.

Isn't there some other way? Isn't there some other way? But there wasn't. There isn't. On the cross in agony, Jesus cried out, Why?

Why have you forsaken me? Why was all this necessary? The message of the Bible is for us. For us. Greater love has no one than this than he lay down his life for his friends.