The Most Spectacular Sin: Good Friday and The Cross

The most spectacular sin ever committed was the murder of Jesus. God foreknew it would happen. In Genesis 3:15, “The Lord God said to the serpent [that is to Satan], ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; you shall bruise his heel but he shall crush your head.’”

This is the earliest glimpse of the cross—a  foreshadowing of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. The offspring of the woman, meaning Jesus, will crush Satan’s head but not before Satan bruises Jesus’ heel. While it appeared that Satan defeated Jesus on the cross, Jesus rose victorious—only his heel was bruised, so to speak. His head was not crushed. Jesus, however, crushed and defeated Satan on the cross. But let’s back up 33 years.

Satan attempted to kill Jesus in his mother’s womb. He tried to get pregnant Mary into trouble—probably to have her stoned to death—but an angel visited Joseph, who was considering divorcing Mary, and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Satan failed in killing Jesus from his conception.

A year or so later, Satan tried to work through the immensely insecure Herod the Great, who used the wise men to discern secretly the location of Jesus, so he could put the child to death. But when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, who returned home via another route, he became furious and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under. Satan strikes again. But Joseph and Mary and Jesus escaped to Egypt.

When Jesus began his ministry after his baptism, Satan tried to turn him away from the path of suffering and sacrifice. In the wilderness, Satan tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread, to jump off the temple, and to obtain the rulership of the world by worshiping him. Satan failed again.

Remember the time Jesus told his disciples he would suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and be killed? Peter rebuked Jesus and said, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” Jesus responded, “Get behind me Satan! You are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” Keeping Jesus from going to the cross was the work of Satan. Satan did not want Jesus crucified for the sins of the world. He knew it would be his own undoing, his own defeat!

Yet Jesus’ face was set upon Jerusalem and the cross. Nothing would keep him from his destiny.  As he entered the city, the people shouted, “Blessed be the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Unable to stop Jesus, Satan did an about face.

In Luke 22 we read, “Then Satan entered into Judas Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray Jesus to them. And they were glad, and agreed to give him money. So he consented and sought an opportunity to betray Jesus to them in the absence of a crowd.” (vv.22:3-6)

The most spectacular sin that has ever been committed in history is the murder of Jesus. And the most despicable act in the passion of Jesus was this betrayal by one of his closest friends. Jesus chose Judas to be among the twelve and entrusted him with the moneybag. At the Last Supper, Judas sat so close to Jesus that Jesus could easily give him the piece of bread he dipped in wine. And, amazingly, Jesus even washed Judas’ feet.

Satan, however, does not take innocent people captive. When it comes to people, there are no innocents. Where sinful passions hold sway, Satan has power, and Judas gave him what he needed.

Judas loved to use Jesus’ and the disciples’ spending money for himself. He had a self-aggrandizing relationship with Jesus. He used his privileged position with Jesus to make money! Now there’s an example of the earliest form of the prosperity gospel!

Why did Satan use Judas to betray Jesus? Resolved he could not keep Jesus from the cross, Satan would make Jesus’ death as ugly and painful and cruel and heartbreaking as possible, even having Mary there to witness the agonizing death of her oldest son. A death that was not just death, but death by betrayal. Death by abandonment as all the disciples except for John ran away. Death by denial as Peter disowned him. Death by torture with nails brutally driven through Jesus’ wrists and ankles.

If Satan could not stop the cross, he would drag others into it and do as much collateral damage as he could. This spectacular sequence of sins brought Jesus to the cross.

We might ask, “Where was God when all of this was happening? Did God play some role in the murder of his son?” While we could speculate, let’s look at what God said in his Word written hundreds of years before the crucifixion of Jesus.

Psalm 118, which is the Psalm we did not read this Sunday says, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” God’s word foretold that evil men, the builders, would reject Jesus, the cornerstone.

Zechariah 13:7 says, “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me,” declares the Lord of hosts. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.” God says that he will strike Jesus, the Good Shepherd, and that his disciples would abandon him.

Jesus was not surprised by the betrayal of Judas for 30 pieces of silver because the prophet Jeremiah had written, “They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel.” And Psalm 41:9 says, “He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.”

While I can keep quoting Scripture, Isaiah 53 is the clearest:

Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,    

smitten by God, and afflicted.

He was pierced for our transgressions;    

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,    

and with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;    

we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him [that is Jesus] the iniquity of us all.

The truth is too big and too weighty and too shocking to be glib about. The invisible hand and plan of God are behind the most spectacular sin in all the universe: The piercing and crushing of Jesus by The Lord who laid on him the iniquity of us all.

God allowed Judas and Pilate and Herod and Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin to do this to Jesus, so that it wouldn’t happen to us.

In Acts 4:27-28, the Apostle Peter explains the workings of God to his group of fellow disciples in Jerusalem. In prayer he says to God, “Sovereign Lord . . . Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” According to Peter, it was God’s plan and God’s hand that led Jesus to the cross.

John Piper declares, “If God were not the main Actor in the death of Christ, then the death of Christ could not have saved us from our sins, and [along with Satan] we would perish in hell forever. The reason the death of Christ is the heart of the gospel is that God was doing it.”

If you separate God’s activity from the death of Jesus, you lose the gospel. God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Because of his death, the only darkness that could have destroyed us forever, fell into Jesus’ heart, which is why he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

On the cross, Jesus took for you and me what we could not bear, what we could not take on for ourselves. On the cross, Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves, leading the centurion to blurt out the undeniable truth of Jesus: “Certainly this man is innocent. Truly, he is the Son of God.”