Posts tagged ‘Crucifixion’
When the Heavens Open
The prophet Isaiah requests of the Lord:
Oh, that You would tear open the heavens and come down. (Isaiah 64:1)
As Isaiah makes his request, he is remembering when God met with Moses on Mount Sinai, giving him His law, and the mountain trembled in fire and smoke:
When You did awesome things that we did not expect, You came down, and the mountains trembled before You. (Isaiah 64:3)
Though the people trembled when God gave His law, they did not obey His law, and so God has hidden Himself from people:
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on Your name or strives to lay hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us and have given us over to our sins. (Isaiah 64:6-7)
Because of Israel’s sin, rather than rending open the heavens and coming down, God has closed up the heavens and gone home. So, Isaiah ruefully asks:
How then can we be saved? (Isaiah 64:5)
Around 730 years after Isaiah mourns God’s hiddenness in heaven, the Gospel writer Mark records:
Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, He saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on Him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are My Son, whom I love; with You I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:9-11)
In Christ, the heavens are torn open once again as God returns to His people once again. But that is not all that is torn.
When Christ dies on a cross, Mark recounts this scene:
The curtain of the temple was torn open in two from top to bottom. (Mark 15:38)
The curtain in question is the curtain that guarded the Holy of Holies – the place where the ancient Israelites believed God dwelled. When Christ died, it was torn open so God’s inner sanctum could be seen by all and any.
It turns out that God does eventually answer Isaiah’s prayer. But He answers the prophet’s prayer in a greater way than he could have ever imagined. Not only does God tear open the heavens and come down, as is revealed when Jesus is baptized, He also tears open the curtain to His own inner sanctum so that we may go in, as is revealed at Jesus’ death. Because of the cross, we can walk right into the place of salvation.
The heavens that once separated us and God separate us no more. God is with us – and, one day, we will be with Him.
“I am thirsty.”
Credit: Gerard de la Vallée, “Longinus piercing Christ’s side with a spear,” 17th cent.
This Friday, Christians around the world will commemorate the death of Jesus Christ. At the church where I serve, we will hold services centering around the traditional seven final phrases that Jesus speaks from the cross. Many of these phrases are extraordinarily well-regarded and famous. For instance, when Jesus prays for His executioners, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34), we are treated to a tour de force in what true forgiveness looks like. When Jesus cries out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Mark 15:34) we hear in His words both an ache for God’s presence in suffering as well as a separation from God because of sin.
One of my favorite phrases from Jesus on the cross is one that can sometimes be overlooked:
“I am thirsty.” (John 19:28)
This hardly seems like a profound statement. It seems more like a mundane request. A man who is baking in the hot ancient Near Eastern sun while hanging exposed on a cross has developed a case of cotton mouth. And yet, these words represent not only the cry of a parched mouth, but the yearning of a scorched soul.
The Psalmist once said:
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for You, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? (Psalm 42:1-2)
The Psalmist describes his desperate thirst for God. And how does God respond to his thirst?
Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls; all Your waves and breakers have swept over me. (Psalm 42:7)
God not only gives the Psalmist’s soul spiritual water, He offers the Psalmist a superabundance of this water in the form of waves and breakers.
Jesus invites anyone who has a thirst like the Psalmist’s:
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” (John 7:37-38)
But this takes us back to Jesus’ words from the cross. For when Jesus, who offers all men refreshment for their souls, Himself complains of thirst, how do men respond to Him?
A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. (John 19:29)
God responds to human thirst with refreshing water. Humans respond to God’s thirst with bitter vinegar. What a contrast.
And yet, the incredible thing about Jesus’ death on the cross is that sin’s vinegar never quite manages to strip Him of His life-giving water:
One of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. (John 19:34)
The water of life stubbornly remains, flowing from the side of the One who died.
This week, as we reflect on and remember Jesus’ death, may we drink deeply from the water of His life. For the water of His life gives us eternal life.
1500-Year-Old Bible Discovered! Christianity Debunked! Not Exactly.
Here we go again.
I’ve been seeing it all over Facebook. The headline reads, “1,500 Year Old Bible Confirms That Jesus Christ Was Not Crucified – Vatican In Awe.” It seems startling. The only problem is, it’s not true. And, it’s nothing new. These kinds of articles that seek to undermine the veracity of the Bible have been being published for years now. Indeed, the discovery of this 1,500-year-old Bible is news that’s now better than two years old. But it’s just now hitting Facebook. And because many people are being confused by it, it’s worth a look.
The article opens:
Much to the dismay of the Vatican, an approximately 1,500 to 2,000 year old Bible was found in Turkey, in the Ethnography Museum of Ankara. Discovered and kept secret in the year 2000, the book contains the Gospel of Barnabas – a disciple of Christ – which shows that Jesus was not crucified, nor was He the Son of God, but a prophet. The book also calls apostle Paul “The Impostor.” The book also claims that Jesus ascended to heaven alive, and that Judas Iscariot was crucified in His place.[1]
Let’s separate some fact from fiction here.
“Much to the dismay of the Vatican…” The Vatican did, according to The Christian Post, make an “official request”[2] to see and study the Bible, but it was not out of dismay. Like any theological artifact, it piqued their curiosity. Many people desired to study this book.
“…an approximately 1,500 to 2,000 year old Bible…” Maybe. But probably not. There are reasons to believe this book is a forgery, probably written around AD 1500, which is, coincidentally enough, about a century after many scholars believe the Gospel of Barnabas itself was written.[3] Timothy Michael Law, a Junior Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, has a nice blog on the antiquity of this Bible here.
“…the book contains the Gospel of Barnabas…” Again, maybe. But possibly not. We actually don’t know what the book contains because it has not been widely studied. The Christian Post quotes theology professor Ömer Faruk Harman who notes that people may be “disappointed to see that this copy … might have no relation with the content of the Gospel of Barnabas.”
“…which shows that Jesus was not crucified … and that Judas Iscariot was crucified in His place.” The Gospel of Barnabas does indeed purport that Judas Iscariot was crucified in Jesus’ place. But this is because this Gospel was written as an apologetic for Islam. Indeed, it prophesies the arrival of Muhammad, but, if the 15th century dating of this Gospel is correct, it does so about 800 years after Muhammad! In other words, its prophecies are really no prophecies at all, but polemical forgeries.
The line from this Facebook article that made me sigh the loudest is this one:
It is believed that, during the Council of Nicaea, the Catholic Church hand-picked the Gospels that form the Bible as we know it today; omitting the Gospel of Barnabas (among many others) in favor of the four canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Ever since Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code, this has been a canard that just won’t die. At no time during the Council of Nicaea did the Catholic Church hand-pick any Gospels. The four Gospels we have today were already widely accepted by the Church by the time of this council. If you want to read the canons issued by the Council of Nicaea for yourself, you can check them out here. None say anything about the Gospels. Indeed, none say anything about the canon of Scripture at all.
Ultimately, even if this Turkish Bible is indeed 1,500 years old and even if it does contain the Gospel of Barnabas, the Council of Nicaea was held in AD 325, which is still before the time of this Bible. Thus, part of the reason the Council of Nicaea never considered the Gospel of Barnabas during its meetings is because there was not yet a Gospel of Barnabas to consider!
It was David Hannum, criticizing P.T. Barnum, who said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Don’t be suckered by this Facebook article. The Bible as we have it still stands. And on it, your faith can still stand.
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[1] “1,500 Year Old Bible Confirms That Jesus Christ Was Not Crucified – Vatican In Awe,” Moorish Harem: Man’s Greatest Accomplishments (4.28.2014).
[2] Clara Morris, “Turkey’s 1500-Year-Old, $28M Bible Linked to Gospel of Barnabas?” The Christian Post (2.23.2012).
[3] See Jan Joosten, “The Gospel of Barnabas and the Diatessaron,” Harvard Theological Review 95, no. 1 (2002).
Not Just Any Old Crucifixion
“Calvary” by Josse Lieferinxe, c. 1500
In the ancient world, crucifixions were a dime a dozen. Hardly a day passed without one. Consider these statistics:
- 519 BC: Darius I, king of Persia, crucifies 3,000 of the leading citizens of Babylon.
- 332 BC: Alexander the Great crucifies 2,000 people after invading the city of Tyre.
- 100 BC: Alexander Jannaeus, king of Judea, crucifies 800 Pharisees.
- 71 BC: A great uprising of slaves against the Roman Empire, led by the great gladiator Spartacus, leads to the crucifixion of 6,000 of his followers along a stretch of highway from Capua to Rome, totaling 120 miles.
- 4 BC: Varus, governor of Syria, crucifies 2,000 Jewish rebels who were leading a Messianic revolt.
- AD 70: The Roman general Titus sweeps into the city of Jerusalem, sacks it, and begins crucifying 500 people a day he runs out of wood to make crosses.
Crucifixions happened all the time. In fact, according to one estimate, as many as 30,000 people were crucified just in Israel by Jesus’ day.[1]
This Friday is Good Friday – a day when we commemorate a crucifixion. But with crucifixions being so commonplace in the ancient world, it’s worth it to ask: Why do we commemorate one particular crucifixion? Why don’t we commemorate the many crucifixions of the citizens of Babylon, or of Spartacus’ followers, or of the Jews under Titus’ reign of terror? Why do we commemorate only one crucifixion – Jesus’ crucifixion?
The Mishnah, an ancient compendium of Jewish rabbinical teaching, explains that if a criminal was condemned to execution, which would have included crucifixion, he was to say, “Let my death be atonement for all of my transgressions.”[2] The idea was that if a person’s crimes were so heinous that he was deserving of death, only death could save him from those crimes. Crucifixion, then, was connected not only to punitive punishment, but also to personal atonement.
Jesus’ crucifixion, however, was different. Rather than making recompense for His own sins by His death, Jesus asks for forgiveness for others’ sins: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). And rather than seeking atonement for Himself by His execution, the apostle John says Jesus makes atonement for the world: “[Christ] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).
This is why we commemorate Jesus’ crucifixion. For we remember not only that Jesus was crucified, but why Jesus was crucified. He was crucified not for His own sins, but for ours. Jesus’ crucifixion did what no other crucifixion could do. It saved us. And that’s worth remembering…and celebrating. And that’s why this Friday is not just any Friday, but a Good Friday.
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[1] John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Matthew 24-28 (Chicago: The Moody Bible Institute, 1989), Matthew 27:27-37.
[2] m. Sanhedrin 6.2.
Good Friday
On this Good Friday, the words of the prophet Isaiah are especially striking to me:
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. (Isaiah 53:2-3)
It is important to remember that before Good Friday was “good,” it was ugly. As Isaiah explains, Jesus, in His hours on the cross, because the most ugly, hideous, depraved, grotesque creature this world has ever known – so ugly, in fact, that people hid their faces in repulsion. For Jesus, in His hours on the cross, bore the sins of the world. Martin Luther explains:
God sent His Son into the world, heaped all the sins of all men upon Him, and said to Him: “Be Peter the denier; Paul the persecutor, blasphemer, and assaulter; David the adulterer; the sinner who ate the apple in Paradise; the thief on the cross. In short, be the person of all men, the one who has committed the sins of all men. And see to it that You pay and make satisfaction for them.” Now the Law comes and says: “I find Him a sinner, who takes upon Himself the sins of all men. I do not see any other sins than those in Him. Therefore let Him die on the cross!” And so it attacks Him and kills Him. (AE 26, Galatians 3:13)
History’s most infamous sins were heaped upon the head of Christ. What an ugly Friday this so-called “Good Friday” must have been! What an ugly Christ the people gathered around the cross must have beheld! Indeed, at the cross, it looked as though the ugliness of sin had overtaken the very beauty of God. But then, all the ugly sins of humanity encountered something for which they never bargained. Again, Luther explains:
The sins of the entire world, past, present, and future, attack Christ, try to damn Him, and do in fact damn Him. But because in the same Person, who is the highest, the greatest, and the only sinner, there is also eternal and invincible righteousness, therefore these two converge: the highest, the greatest, and the only sin; and the highest, the greatest, and the only righteousness. Here one of them must yield and be conquered, since they come together and collide with such a powerful impact. (AE 26, Galatians 3:13)
One of these – either man’s sinfulness or God’s righteousness – must yield and be conquered. So which one yields? Which one is conquered?
It is here that we find what’s “good” in Good Friday. For on the cross, a truly bloody battle was waged between righteousness and sinfulness. And righteousness won. This is the good news of Good Friday.
As you gaze upon the ugliness of cross today, remember that God’s beautiful righteousness is hiding there. And righteousness won. And not only did righteousness win, but righteousness is now given to you and me by God’s grace on account of our faith. And this makes this Friday a very good Friday indeed!
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