The Shamefulness of the Cross

The writer of the Hebrews says in Hebrews 12 and verse two that we should look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. So the writer is saying that Jesus endured the cross. So what did he endure? We have a clue in the very next phrase. It says that he endured the cross despising the shame. So here the writer is immediately connecting the cross with shame. And it's this connection that I want to meditate on with you this evening. We've been in church for a long time, maybe familiar with the many ways in which the cross would have been something to endure physically. And it's true, crucifixion in the Roman era was a brutal torment. It was calculated to inflict the maximum pain and suffering on its victims. But perhaps we think a little less often about why the Romans executed certain criminals in this way. Capital punishment has been a standard mode of enforcing the law, really since there's been laws. I suggest that one reason they did it this way is that crucifixion is an especially shameful kind of death. In fact, Roman citizens were spared this threat in order to preserve their honor, or at least the honor of Roman citizenship. Crucifixion was a way not only to deter rebellions, but to remind people who had the real power. Being crucified by Rome meant not only that you were a criminal, but that you weren't part of Rome. You were outside the group. And really this basic principle about the shame of this punishment comes down to us. We have a law in our country against cruel and unusual punishment. And so both the Roman practice and ours show that there are in fact some fates worse than death. There are some kinds of death that are particularly bad. And the Romans were really good at finding exactly whatever means would be the most shameful. I'm not sure we even have a social practice in our society that even comes close to this, the unique shamefulness of the cross. The particular mode of death on the cross is not the only way in which Jesus had to despise the shame, as the writer says in Hebrews. There's also a kind of shame associated with guilt. And it's this aspect that I want to consider for the rest of our time. So I've just added a new word to our discussion. So we need to define some terms before we move too far ahead. My guess is that we all have a rough notion of what guilt and shame are. We usually don't think about the connection between them very much. So let me suggest a way to consider the two. Guilt says, this action was bad. Shame says, this person is bad. So we can be ashamed of things that are not sinful, right? Someone who's poor may feel ashamed of that. Someone who lacks social graces might be ashamed. Someone who's overmatched in a sporting event might be ashamed. A very common way to experience shame in the ancient world was to be on the losing side in a battle. None of these cases require that someone is guilty of anything. The bad thing isn't their fault. They don't need forgiveness or to make restitution, but they'd also very much prefer that people not talk about it, right? So that's shame. We can actually see this difference another way. When someone is guilty, we blame them for the wrong, and then we punish that person. We expect restitution, as if they owe us something. If they've broken a rule or a law, the law demands payment. When someone is shameful, we shun that person. We throw them out of the group. We ignore them. Often this is worse because it shows that the relationships between that person and the group are not important enough to maintain. You can't pay your way back into the group. You didn't do anything to get kicked out. And so there's nothing you can do to get back in. Guilt links with shame when we view someone as a sinner and so exclude them from our fellowship. We treat the wrong that they have done as a permanent stain on them. We want to purify our group to show that we're the good ones, not like those sinners over there somewhere. No amount of restitution will let them buy their way back in because the problem is not their wrongdoing, it's them. So why does this matter on Good Friday? Simply put, Jesus took our guilt on himself and did not care about the shame of doing so. If you want to turn in your Bible or in your bulletin actually to the passage that Hannah read earlier from Isaiah 52 and 53, we'll spend most of our time here. We often notice in these familiar verses how God's servant suffers. Just for some examples, in 52.14, it says that his appearance was so disfigured that he didn't even look like a human being. In 53.2, he had no attractive appearance that we would desire him. 53.4 and 5, he's stricken by God and afflicted, pierced, wounded, and punished. And in verse 10, it was God's will to crush him. In verse 11, he experiences anguish. But let's notice, too, how we are said to respond to this suffering. In 52.14, for example, it says, many were appalled at you. 53.3, he's despised and rejected by us, like someone that we turn away from. We don't want to see this. In verse four, we esteemed him stricken by God. So the picture here is of a man in unspeakable suffering, and yet our response to this is not to try to help him, but to despise and to reject him, perhaps even to shun him. So why do we react this way? Why do we look at this one on the cross and think, we don't want any part of this? I mean, at one level, I think there's a kind of pagan impulse here. So I call it pagan because it fits with this pagan worldview in which the gods need to be appeased. The gods orchestrate the circumstances of someone's life and they punish him for his lack of piety. And, you know, it's dangerous to be associated with someone who's under the wrath of the gods. You know, if you read, if you've ever read any Ancient literature, this is kind of a main theme. You know, it's kind of scary to be next to the guy who the gods are angry at, right? You don't want to be there. This is a false worldview. But we are easily tempted by it. Remember the disciples asking Jesus about the man who was born blind? They want to know whether it was his sin or his parents' sin. And Jesus says it was neither because that's not how things work. But there's another aspect in which our disgust and rejection of such a one as this makes sense. And here we need to talk about our psychology some, how we think and how we feel. And I'm going to warn you that what I'm going to say for the next couple of minutes isn't necessarily a good thing. It's just how we are. Just because something is natural to us doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it real for us. We do care about our company. We do want our community to be pure and sinless, even if we know that it won't be perfect on this earth. We want to be right. We want to approve of others' actions and to feel their approval of our own. In fact, we who believe the Bible should think that social purity is important in some way. Deuteronomy tells God's people to purge the evil from among you. And Paul, the Apostle Paul, cites this very verse in 1 Corinthians in reference to the church. Indeed, Deuteronomy declares a curse on anyone who hangs on a tree. So Jesus, by all appearances, is not a good person. That's what it looks like. And how do we know that someone has sinned? Well, I mean, Our sins are often internal, right? They're sins of the heart. They're something that happens inside. We only see their effects. So we can know that someone has sinned when we actually see them sin. Is that the only way? I don't think so. Sometimes we can tell, especially when someone is guilty, because we can see their guiltiness. And guilt is one of the ways God punishes sin. So when we feel guilty, we are experiencing some small bit of God's displeasure toward our sin. The Puritan pastors would describe this as an anticipation of God's ultimate judgment on our sin. It's this feeling of guilt when we've done something wrong. Honestly, this experience can be crushing. We sometimes speak of the burden of guilt. And if you've read Pilgrim's Progress, for example, Christian begins his journey and he has this huge weight on his back and it's the weight of the guilt of his own sin. He's literally feeling weighed down by it. Perhaps you have had this experience. And these internal feelings, these guilty feelings often have outward signs. I dare say that every parent in this room knows that it's possible for someone to look guilty, right? Guilt makes us act differently and others can notice. So it could be that the we here in Isaiah see God's servant suffering and think that God is punishing him. It feels kind of inappropriate to rejoice in that punishment, but it's awkward and uncomfortable to keep watching it. And because this one is being punished, our instinct is to purify our community. And we want to exclude somebody who seems to be bearing such a weight of guilt. If it's really so bad that they have to suffer so much, do we really want them around? In our natural state, this is what we have to work with. This is how we think. It's how we're wired. It doesn't mean it's right or wrong. It's just the way we react. So we need to ask a question then. Was God actually punishing Jesus? I think the simplest answer is yes. Punishment is treating someone as if they are guilty, and God was doing that. Now, the as if is very important here. And in this respect, the answer is not so simple. God was punishing Jesus, but Jesus was not guilty. So then why did he look guilty? What was God punishing him for? We see the answer here in verses four through six of Isaiah 53. Here the prophet writes, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. John Calvin in his magisterial Institutes of the Christian Religion says this, this we say that he, that's Jesus, bore the weight of the divine anger that smitten and afflicted he experienced all the signs of an angry and avenging God. Jesus shows all these signs of guilt because as verse 10 says, God has made his soul a guilt offering, a sacrifice to atone for sin. So here's the simple truth. God treated Jesus as if he had committed all the sins of everyone who would ever believe in him. I'll say it again. God treated Jesus as if he had committed all the sins of everyone who would ever believe in him. This is almost incredible, like almost impossible to believe. It can be hard to wrap our minds around what this is like. Could you imagine the experience of it for Jesus? We can barely stand the weight of guilt for just the few sins of ours that we know about. The burden of guilt and the shame that we feel for our own sin can seem like too much to bear. And it is. And so God laid it on Jesus. And this is the great irony, right? We esteemed Jesus stricken and smitten by God because to our eyes, it looked as if he had displeased God and deserved to be shunned and despised. But in reality, it is we who have displeased God and have by our own sin excluded ourselves from fellowship with him. It is our natural state and we don't recognize it. When we look to the cross, we see what our actions really deserve. Now God in his mercy can reveal to us enough of our true nature that we actually feel some of that weight. And we perceive some of the shame of being excluded from his presence. This is called conviction. And it's an essential step on the path to repentance and faith. When we feel the guilt of our own sin, we are on the right path. But it is not enough for us to recognize our sin. This itself would just drive us to despair, for we are not strong enough to bear our own guilt. So instead we look to the cross where Jesus took upon himself the punishment we deserved, including the guilt of having rebelled against a holy God. He did this so that he could be both just and the justifier of the ones who believe in Jesus. If we have repented of our sins and believed in him, then all of our sins have been punished and we need not bear them anymore. God's righteousness is preserved in his grace and wisdom are displayed for all to see. In fact, Isaiah foretells this in verses 10 and 11. He says, the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous. And he shall bear their iniquities. So our guilt is gone, having been taken by Jesus. What about our shame? Remember that shame means that you're forced out of the group, excluded from fellowship? The shame that our sin brings reminds me sometimes of a phenomenon that we talk about in academia. It's called imposter syndrome. And imposter syndrome is the feeling that you're just kind of faking it, And that someday everyone's going to figure that out, and you're going to be really embarrassed that you're really not any good at this, and they're going to throw you out of your program, throw you out of the profession, and everyone's going to talk about you behind your back and laugh at you and all this other stuff. This is, like, apparently almost every graduate student feels this at some point. In fact, some people think graduate school is designed to make that happen. I think there's a Christian version of this. We're afraid that if someone finds out about all the bad stuff that we've done, they'll be shocked and angry and they'll think that we don't deserve their fellowship anymore and that we should be excluded from the group. Sometimes we feel this so much that we will almost hide from each other because we're afraid of actually admitting our failures or even afraid that if we're around other Christians, they'll be able to see the guilt that we feel inside us and they'll figure it out. And they'll figure out what's really going on. Do you know what? God already knows about it. And he is the one who is inviting you to be with him. He is the one who is making that fellowship possible. And he already knows. Paul tells the Colossians to give thanks to the father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. So notice here how Paul links forgiveness, that removing of guilt, with fellowship and inheritance. We can join in the fellowship of the Father and the Son, being rightful citizens of God's kingdom. And this helps us understand what Jesus is saying when he says, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. One final question that deserves our attention. Why? Why did God do this? Well, he did it for you. Remember that familiar verse, John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. The letter to the Ephesians tells us more about this. It says, God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you've been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. But God did this for us. We also have a clue here in Ephesians that God did this for himself. In a parallel passage in Colossians, Paul writes this, God made us alive together with Jesus, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Remember from the beginning how one way to be ashamed is to be on the losing side of the army, losing side of the battle? All the powers of hell thought they had defeated Jesus on the cross. But in reality, God, from the foundation of the world, had planned that this would be how he would defeat them. and defeat them so completely that they would bear all the shame. And he sealed that victory by conquering death himself. That story is for Sunday. Tonight we remember that Jesus took the guilt we could not bear and suffered in shame so that we wouldn't have to. If you have never repented of your sins and asked Jesus to forgive you, He is inviting you, even now, to do that. If you want to know more, please don't leave here tonight without talking to me or some other member of this church. We would love to tell you more about this great Savior who has paid the price and freed us from our shame. Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you that we can participate in the grand plan that you have for all time to bring glory to your son. We thank you that we can participate by being co-heirs with him, by being welcomed to be with you forever, to reign with you, to join in the inheritance that he has. We thank you that you have done all of the work to qualify us for that citizenship, that you have forgiven us for our sins, that you have cleansed our guilt, and you've restored us to the fellowship that you always intended for us. Lord, we can scarcely praise you enough, and so we look forward to the day when we will have all eternity to do that. We pray that as we conclude this service, though, that you would accept our praises to you, our great Savior. In Jesus' name, amen.