Understanding the Bible
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1. PROPOSITION 2: JESUS CHRIST'S DEATH WAS SACRIFICIAL AND PAID THE PENALTY FOR OUR SINS SO THAT WE CAN BE FORGIVEN AND BE RECONCILED TO GOD
Many people have died sacrificial deaths on the behalf of others so what it so special about the death of Jesus Christ? Let us resume our examination of Mark's Gospel to see what it has to say. We will also look at other evidence from elsewhere in the Bible.
We left the account of Jesus' life in Mark's account at chapter 8 where his disciples have revealed that they understand him to be divine, the Son of God. Almost immediately after this Jesus told his disciples for the first time that he was going to die at the hands of the authorities and after three days rise again. Not surprisingly they found that difficult to swallow.
'He then began to teach that the Son of Man [remember? this is his name for himself] must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.' Mark 8:31. He subsequently repeats this on two other occasions - in 9:31 and 10:33. Each of these statements results in an important conversation with his disciples and after the third time he says (v.45) ..
'For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to give his life a ransom for many.' Now, even at this early stage in our study we cannot escape the conclusion that this statement is of special importance.
The opposition to Jesus from all the politico-religious parties of the day grew steadily and rapidly so by chapter 14:53 he has been betrayed, arrested and taken before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council.
The question that arises is why they were so against him.
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True Christian faith is not commitment to a system of rules and observances, but a personal relationship of each individual with God through Jesus Christ |
The answer is that Jesus was hated because he opposed their dead religiosity. They were deep into religious observance with regulations and rules, but there was no spiritual 'life' in it. If you are trying to come to grips with the Christian faith, it is very important to grasp that it is not fundamentally or essentially a 'religion'. In other words it is not conformity to a 'system' of rules or religious actions. True Christian belief is a 'relationship'. It is a relationship between the individual believer and God through Jesus Christ. As a result of this relationship, Christians do things together simply because they all share this relationship with God. These may 'look' religious but at heart it is a corporate movement based on the individual relationship of every Christian believer with God. We will speak more of this later. To return to the story ...
Brought before the Sanhedrin and interrogated, Jesus was faced with the ultimate question (14:61,62)
'Again the High Priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?" '
' "I am" said Jesus "and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." '
The Council declared him worthy of death for this blasphemy. (It doesn't seem to have occurred to the Council that the true Messiah must answer this question by saying 'Yes' or 'I am'.) He was led before Pilate the Roman Governor who upheld the charge and he was taken to be crucified. Mark's account proceeds ....
(15:22) ' They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha' .... v.24 'And they crucified him' .... v.27 'They crucified two robbers with him' .... v.29 'Those who passed by hurled insults at him' ... v.33 ' At the sixth hour [3 pm] darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. ' ... v.37 'With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.'... v.38 'The curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom' ... v.39 'And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died , he said "Surely this man was the Son of God." '
Crucifixions were not uncommon, but this one clearly has some unusual features. First, the darkness (v.33). This cannot have been an eclipse because Jesus died at the Jewish Passover celebrations which were always held at a full moon. There cannot be an eclipse at a full moon. So what was it? Matthew, Mark and Luke all record it. Perhaps it was the darkness that helped convince the hard-bitten and tough Roman centurion that this was something very special. Matthew tells us that everyone, including the centurion, was terrified. We have to include among the explanations the possibility that the darkness happened because something cosmically spiritual was happening. Three other features tend to confirm this:
(a) reading the accounts of the events that led up to the crucifixion, leaves one with the distinct impression that while the authorities thought they were in charge of what was going on, it was in fact Jesus who was in charge. John's account of the interrogation of Jesus by Pilate the Roman Governor is a case in point. Perhaps you would like to read it in John 18:28-40. Pilate was clearly very disturbed by Jesus.
(b) it is also very noteworthy that Jesus clearly voluntarily gave his life by crucifixion. He could have avoided it in numerous ways but consistently worked towards it. In Mark 10:45, already quoted, he says 'For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to give his life a ransom for many.' John records in 12:23 Jesus saying about what was going to happen to him 'The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified.' Astonishing and totally inappropriate words unless the crucifixion was much more that a human death.
(c) Jesus appears to have died much more quickly than was usual, drawing our attention to the way Matthew records it (27:50) 'And when Jesus had cried out again with a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.' Moreover although the Roman soldiers always broke the victims legs to hasten their deaths, they found they didn't need to 'when they came to Jesus and found he was already dead they did not break his legs' John 19:33. Even Pilate was surprised. In Mark 15:44 we read 'Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead' and sent for the centurion, who confirmed it.
We cannot escape the impression from all this that something different and special was happening.
Second, the tearing of the Temple curtain (v.38).
This curtain was a huge seamless fabric curtain some 10m wide and 20m high. It covered
the entrance to most Holy part of the Jewish temple. 
The Old Testament, where
the pattern for the temple was first laid down, makes it clear that the curtain
represents the separation between God and man on the grounds of man's rebellion
against God. In the Temple, only one man, the High Priest, was allowed to go
behind the curtain into the Holy of Holies and that, only once a year on a
special day, to offer a sacrifice for the sins of the people. That day was know
as the Day of Atonement. In the light of this, the tearing of the curtain
at the time of Jesus' death is of enormous significance.
A modern dictionary tells us that 'atonement' means (1) something done to make amends for wrongdoing (2) theol. the reconciliation of humankind with God through the sacrificial death of Christ.
The tearing of the curtain in the temple indicates that the way into God's presence is now open. Since the curtain represented separation due to sin, then the fact that the curtain is now open conveys the idea that somehow the sin that caused that separation has been dealt with. Hence the idea of reconciliation. This brings to mind what Jesus himself said (and already quoted) in Mark 10:45
'For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to give his life a ransom for many.'
A 'ransom' is the price paid for the release of someone, typically someone kidnapped or enslaved. Jesus was saying that his death would be the ransom for our release.
The Old Testament looked forward to the life and death of the 'Anointed One' or ' the One who is to come' or the 'righteous servant' of the Book of Isaiah, and contains many prophesies which are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In regard to his death the most striking is Isaiah 53 (written 600 years before) which contains verses like this:-
v.3 'He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. '
v.4 'Surely he took 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.'
v.11b 'my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.'
and v.12c 'For he bore the sin of many,...'
Notice the inescapable theme that the death of the person it refers to is on the behalf of others
The full meaning of the death of Christ is explored and declared, and its implications for moral living are taught throughout the New Testament. Again it is emphasised that Christ's death was for or on the behalf of, those who would believe in it. Typically ...
2 Corinthians 5:21 'God made him who knew no sin to be sin FOR US, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.' (my capitals)
John 3 :16 'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.'
Peter the Apostle declares in 1 Peter 2:24 'He himself bore our sins on the tree [the cross], so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.'
Again Peter in 1 Peter 3:18 'For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.'
Hebrews 9:18 'so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; ..'
1 John 4:10 ' This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.'
1 Timothy 2:5,6 'For their is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men ..' ......notice the word 'ransom', which is how Jesus described his death.
So the New testament is full of it: Christ's death was a sacrifice on behalf of, or in the place of, others.
The Bible tells us that the fundamental problem about the relationship between God and man is that mankind has individually (and therefore also corporately) rejected the rule of the God who created the universe; that God, being God, holds everyone of us accountable (and has the right to do so); that being himself morally totally pure and holy, he cannot abide tolerate or overlook our rebellion; that we are therefore guilty before him and worthy of his condemnation.
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Mankind's biggest problem is God's wrath on Judgement Day. '.. just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgement' Hebrews 9:28 'For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ' 2 Cor.5:9 |
The fundamental sin of rebellion results in the sins that we all commit daily (the most fundamental and all-pervasive being selfishness). While all this may be challenging and make us feel uncomfortable, or even provoke objection in us, it cannot be denied that the world in which we live displays all the symptoms of this spiritually deadly disease.
Romans 6:23 says 'For the wages if sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.' This makes it clear that by 'death' is meant not the end of physical life, but the forfeiture of all 'life' in the spiritual realm, which can be ours both now and eternally if we turn to God.
The Bible presents the death of Christ to be the answer for each and every individual who wants to escape the consequences of his/her rebellion against the rule of God. The Christian faith asserts that by belief in Christ as Saviour for our sin problem, anyone may obtain forgiveness and enter into a new relationship with God. Please remember that we asserted right at the beginning of this page that Christianity is essentially a relationship not a religion.
John 3:17 says this 'For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.'
but goes on to say...
'Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.'
Paul the Apostle says in Romans 8:1 ' Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.'
Everywhere you read in the New Testament these basic truths are either explicit or under-gird everything that is said.
2. PROPOSITION 3 : Jesus Christ rose bodily from the grave to be Lord of All, and so that we can have Eternal Life through him.
Although we have explored the meaning of the death of Christ in some detail, all is not complete until we have considered the resurrection of Christ. In the previous section we gave enough convincing evidence that Christ really did die. There is no doubt about that. In which case we have now to examine the evidence that he was seen again alive and well afterwards. The account of the resurrection in Mark's gospel is short and incomplete so we will turn to the other gospels, specifically Matthew 28, Luke 24 and John 20.
The accounts tell us that on the Sunday morning early (Jesus died on the
Friday)
some women went to the tomb to put spices on Jesus' body only to find it
had gone, leaving the cloths and grave clothes in position as if the body and
floated out of them. Later some of the male disciples went to the tomb themselves
and confirmed it. He subsequently appeared to over 500 people; here is a list of
his appearances ...
1. To Mary Magdalene alone - Mark 16:9 and John 20:10-18
2. To the women returning from the tomb - Matt. 28:8-10
3. To Peter alone - Luke 24:34, 1 Cor.15:15
4. To the two disciples going to Emmaus - Luke 24:13-35
5. To the apostles at Jerusalem, excl. Thomas - John 20:19-23
6. To the apostles including Thomas - John 20:24-29
7. At the sea of Tiberias - John 21:1-14
8. To over 500 people at once - 1 Cor.15:6
9. To James alone - 1 Cor.15:7
10. To all the apostles at the Ascension -Acts1:1-9
Of course, the authorities tried to spread a rumour that the disciples had stolen the body, but that proposal doesn't stand up to scrutiny. There is an article (no.13) on the Doctrine for Everyone page entitled 'Notes on the Evidence for the Resurrection of Christ' briefly examining the various objections to believing the resurrection happened. Please turn to that if you want to pursue this matter. We shall turn to its significance.
First we note that in his predictions of his death, Jesus always included the statement that after 3 days he would rise again. (Jesus died on the afternoon of the Friday and rose again on the Sunday morning, which is not 'after 3 days' by western-time reckoning. But according to the Hebrew reckoning of those days that phrase meant on the 3rd day including both the start and finish days.) Although the disciples had been with Jesus more or less continually and had heard him say he would rise again, they were clearly stunned by it. They had not been able to appreciate the significance of the event. But Luke's gospel tells us that Jesus met them on at least two occasions and taught them from the Old Testament how he would have to suffer and then be raised again.
Before the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples were a saddened, forlorn and dispirited group. They thought their Lord was dead and gone. But their subsequent enthusiasm in spreading the news about their crucified and risen Lord, as recorded in the Book of Acts, and the way they persisted despite fierce opposition and even persecution, bears testimony not only to the fact that the resurrection was a fact, but also to its life-changing affect upon them. Preaching about the resurrection, in particular got them into all sorts of trouble, but they persisted. Note Peter preaching in Jerusalem
'..and you with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.' (Acts 2:23,24)
Also the affect of Paul preaching in Athens (Acts 17:18)
' ... they said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.'
The resurrection was central to their message.
The disciples, now called the Apostles, had all seen the risen Christ. Even Paul who was not one of the original disciples had experienced a special revelation of Christ on the road to Damascus. For all of them, the significance of the resurrection was two-fold:
First that it authenticated the crucifixion as a sacrificial death: without the resurrection it could have been concluded that Christ's death was just another sad end for a good but deluded preacher. But Christ's rising-again confirmed that this was no ordinary death. Paul said
'He was delivered over to death for our sins and raised for our justification [putting us right with God]' Romans 4:25.
The resurrection 'completed' Christ's work for those who believe.
Second that it won for all believers a new form of spiritual life which could be entered into through faith in Christ. Peter says
'In his great mercy he [God] has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.' 1 Peter 1:3
The ideas of 'new birth' and 'eternal life' had both been spoken about by Jesus. In John 3:3 he said:
'I tell you the truth, no-one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.'
By this he meant that we all need a new spiritual start; equivalent to our original physical birth. That's what Peter meant (above) when he said '[God] has given us new birth.'
James (Jesus' brother) says 'He chose to give us birth through the word of truth,.. James 1:18
The phrase 'born-again Christian' has become a term of ridicule or disparagement because it has been associated with extreme fundamentalist Christians. But in fact everyone who comes to faith in Christ is 'born again' in spirit, ie 'spiritually'. Paul says ..
'But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions - it is by grace you are saved.' Ephesians 2:4 (my underline)
The teaching of the New Testament is that we are dead spiritually until through God's grace (unmerited favour) and by our faith in Christ, we are made newly spiritually alive (or born -again). This new life we are given is the 'eternal' or 'everlasting' life of which Jesus spoke, when he said
'For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.' John 6:40
'I tell you the truth, he who believes had everlasting life' John 6:47
This eternal life, brought to us by Jesus' resurrection to new life, is not just eternal in the sense of going on for ever (despite and beyond physical death) but also that it puts us in vital touch with the eternity where God's Spirit dwells. It somehow incorporates our spirit into God's Spirit. In Romans 8:16
'The Spirit himself testifies to our spirit that we are God's children.' - born into God's family by our new birth!.
Hence, the resurrection is absolutely essential to the Christian message. If the resurrection did not happen then the Christian faith is just a fairy story.
BUT IF IT DID HAPPEN (as we claim it certainly did, because all the evidence points to it) then it opens up to all who will believe,
the truth about God and man,
the way for man to relate to God,
the way for everyone who believes to begin a new life in which God is real every day,
life lived on a new dimension,
life lived with new God-centred goals and purposes,
life that will go on after our physical death,
life that will take us in to the very presence of God.
Now, what about you? You have read here in these three pages about the essential teachings of the Christian faith. There is much more that could be said, but we hope you can see that at the heart of it there is a body of teaching that holds together in a logical coherent way. It rests on the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is the crux of it all. Our prayer is that you will seek him, because he said that whoever seeks will find. Let us finish with some words from Paul:
Christ Jesus...
'Who, though He was God, did not demand and cling to His rights as God,
But laid aside His mighty power and glory, taking the disguise of a slave and becoming like men.
And He humbled Himself even further, going so far as actually to die a criminal's death on a cross.
Yet it was because of this that God raised Him up to the heights of heaven and gave Him a name
that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
And every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.'
Philippians 2:6-11 Living Bible translation
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