THE WAY TO SACRIFICE
It was more than the desire to share that took Jesus to the cross. It was the desire that He should fulfil His Fathers Will in bringing the plan of salvation to sinful man. Those around Him were not only deprived, but were under guilt before God and held in the bondage of sin and evil. An act of expiation and redemption was needed in order to save them from both aspects of their plight. Jesus was concerned about their guilt and bondage. We see a clear demonstration of this in the healing of the paralytic man when Jesus made it clear that in His ministry forgiveness was more important than the healing of the body i.e. "Your sins are forgiven" (Luke 12:15) and His earnestness to demonstrate that He had the power to forgive sins while He was here on earth was striking, also there is no doubt that the Disciples were all the more drawn to Him because they experienced the forgiving love and power for themselves. As the cross-approached He saw Himself as soon to be involved in the consequences of human sin. He knew that was to offer Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of others. Revealing His thoughts on this He said "The Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Luke 22:42). The word 'many' refers to the servant of the Lord in Isaiah who was to bear the sins of 'many' by His submission to suffering and His intercession. The idea of His "giving of His life as a ransom" probably refers to the expiatory gift by which the price was paid as a substitute to save a guilty mans life.
The proposition used in the phrase "for many" could be read in place of many - again stressing the idea of His offering Himself in place of others as a sacrifice. (Mk. 10; 45, Isa. 53:12). It should be clearly seen that in most of the sayings of Jesus when He refers to His death He uses the title 'the Son of Man', The 'Son of Man' is the glorious figure in human form in (Dan. 7:13) whom at the end of all the ages comes embodying in Himself the people of God, and to rule in place of the one who has been present on the earth and brought sin and destruction to countless, the devil himself. In using the term 'the Son of Man' so frequently when speaking of what He had to accomplish in His death, Jesus was also saying:
This is indeed the way I enter into and reveal my glory! Jesus' words at the Last Supper about the cup are very revealing. Matthew gives the fullest account "This is my Blood of the New Covenant which is poured out for many for the remission of sins" (Matt.26:28) These words take us back to Jeremiah's description of the new covenant (Jer.31:31) which the Messiah inaugurates, when sin is to be forgiven by a miracle of grace and the law written on the hearts of God's people. This also links up to the ratification of the covenant at Sinai with the sacrificial blood of an animal was shed on the altar and sprinkled the blood over the people as he read the book of the covenant (Ex.24:7 :8) enabling them to be cleansed. There is also a reference in this to the blood that was sprinkled on the lintels and door-posts of the children of Israel in Egypt before the angel of death passed over them, and only those who were covered by the blood would be saved (Ex.12). Jesus with all this in mind was saying that His own life, by being poured out in His death was going to affect all the promises of forgiveness and new life in Jeremiah's vision. He was also declaring that just as Moses, with the blood of the old covenant, led the old exodus from the bondage of Egypt, so lie the mediator of the new covenant by His own blood was going to lead His people in a new exodus out of the bondage of sin and guilt, into the new age of freedom before God. We have already seen that many aspects of the meaning of the Old Testaments sacrificial rituals and ceremonies were hidden from the participants. In linking His death so precisely with the old rites regarding the shedding of blood, Jesus was indicating that the true hidden meaning of these rites was now to be sought in what He was going to-do in His own death, and was to be understood from this view. What Moses and the prophets could only grope after, Jesus' Disciples were now to begin to understand, and yet how little they were to understand, for they and all others are finally excluded from the holy of holies into which He the great high priest enters alone.
The accounts of the last supper indicate that Jesus deliberately abstains from taking of the cup Himself. Indeed He uttered what is sometimes described as a 'vow of abstinence'. Referring to the feast He said "I shall not eat it until it is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God" and referring to the cup He said "Take this and divide it amongst yourselves, for I tell you that from now on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes" (Luke 22:15-18). It is quite clear that they drink the cup of joy (wine) because He abstains, and drinks the cup of wrath and judgment.
They will never experience that judgment. No one could have borne it except Him and He will bear it all, not only for them but for all. They can now feast because He sorrows. They can live because He dies. The accounts insist that He agonized alone. Inevitably the Disciples stayed at a distance, sleeping when He took them into Gethsemane, unaware of what He was unfolding before them. He went alone to the cross and we hear the cry "My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me" (Matt. 27:46). When we try to get to grips with His cry from the cross we become convinced of the superficiality of our deepest thoughts that we have to admit that we too are standing a great way off. We find ourselves led to the realization that at this point the sufferings of Jesus, which we have tried to understand as far as we can through the human analogies available to us, take on intensity beyond our imagination, and also a quality we are incapable of defining. The analogies we have used so far take us only to the threshold. What happened beyond this the crucial element in His cross, gives the atoning act its glory, and its redeeming power. As we look at e forgiveness of our sins, but to atone for our sins. This according to Romish theology tells us that all past sins are blotted out in respect to eternal and temporal punishment by baptism. For the temporal punishment of post-baptismal sins the faithful must make satisfaction either in this life or purgatory. This is blasphemy and we need to oppose it at every turn because it negates the cross.
THE WAY OF CONFLICT
Jesus during the three years of ministry consecrates Himself to make His life a living sacrifice and at the same time engaged Himself in a relentless, continual and ultimately decisive conflict with evil powers which He knew to dominate this world's life and to bring human misery, corruption, decay and death. The gospel writers emphasize that under the power of The Spirit, He immediately plunged Himself into this conflict. "Then was Jesus led up by The Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil" (Luke 4:1). It is significant that according to Luke for example, shortly after His decisive victory over the devil, the people were amazed at the intentness and effectiveness of His attacks on the evil spirits which he saw distorting and hampering the health and freedom of men and women around Him. "For with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits and they come out" Casting out demons was linked in His mind with curing all other varieties of sickness as destroying the works of the devil'. Jesus by His extraordinary miracles which were a sign that the new Messianic age in which all these things were foretold had begun to happen "But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of Cod, then the Kingdom of God is come unto you' (Matt. 12:28). However what would be the use of simply cancelling out here and there the evil works of Satan without destroying the devil himself? How can one enter a strong mans house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man (Matt. 12:26).
After Jesus had beaten the devil in the wilderness, Luke records that the devil departed from Him for a season (Luke 4:13). The Jerusalem Bible translates to return at the appointed time. The appointed time was of course the day of the final conflict which to enter. All His life Jesus deliberately moved towards such a decisive battle, clearing the ground of petty hinderances put in His way by the establishment of the day behind which the evil power was covering a retreat. In Jesus' mind Satan was doomed from the start. Jesus had all power He was the strong Redeemer. Yet right from the start this war and his victories cost Him a protracted and great sacrifice of Himself. Agonising toil and prayer with the powers of evil also cost Jesus the hatred of the ruling authorities of His nation, their continual persecution, and ultimately His death.
We have to be careful on our interpretation of Jesus' conflict with the authorities and with the 'law' in His day. He had no desire to attack the 'establishment' as such. He was not a revolutionary and He always had respect for lawful authority (Matt. 23:2, 17:27, 22:21). The powers of evil which He was attacking entrenched themselves in the authorities who faced Jesus, and those rulers were to blame for leaving themselves open to such evil influences. Under it they distorted His teaching, persecuted those who He healed, put obstacles in His way at every step, and finally killed Him. In the Gospel of John the time of His final conflict with Satan, and the conflict itself, are referred to as Jesus 'hour'. It is mentioned three times, early in His ministry as having not yet come. To Jesus it was the hour when 'the ruler of the world' was to be 'cast out' and when He Himself was to be glorified. But far from being an hour of triumph it was to be the hour of intense shame, disgust and horror. He summed up His dread of the coming conflict when He spoke of 'the power of darkness' for in some strange way, to rescue us from our evil He had to submit Himself to the worst tortures of close encounter with evil. This is why at Gethsemane He prayed to be spared from some of the vicissitudes of the battle He was entering. He shrank then from the 'hour' as from the 'cup' (Luke 22:42) and yet He would even in the midst of all this horror cry "Let your will be done". No doubt He called His final conflict the 'hour' to emphasise the special viciousness of the attack by the powers of evil, the conflict had attained a particular intensity that marked it off from all the previous events of His life. The fact too, that He entered this last battle already wearied with toil, and physically broken, called for a more desperate effort of all His already exhausted strength, and added to His agony. As Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to set the stage for His final conflict, we know that He had in mind a passage from Zechariah 9:9 from which the text comes "Behold your King is coming, he is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on an ass". The context of this passage reveals a clue to the thoughts that went through Jesus' mind as He approached His death "As for you also because of the blood of the covenant with you, I will set your captives free from the waterless pit. Return to your stronghold all prisoners of hope". (Zech. 9:11-12).