Good Friday

Good Friday – April 18, 2025

Hosea 6:1-6; Habakkuk 3:2-4; Exodus 12:1-11; Psalm 140

St. John 18-19

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty…you are still in your sins…If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.”[1] The death and resurrection of Christ are the center, the heart, of our faith. This is because Christ vicariously (that is, in the place of man) rendered to God, who was wrathful over our sin, a satisfaction which changed His wrath into grace toward us.[2] The vicarious satisfaction of God’s wrath on your behalf is the focus of our service today.

Pilate asked the Jews, “Shall I crucify your King?”[3] All Christians ought to consider that question. All Christians ought to be bothered by how to answer it. Knowing the depth of your own sin, it seems impossible to answer, “Yes! Crucify Him!” You know that it is your sin that ultimately put Christ on the cross. He lived a perfect life. There was no sin in Him. He knew no sin and yet He died the death of a criminal because of your sin. No one desires to see an innocent life taken. It is even more difficult to know that the innocent life was taken because of you.

At the same time, knowing the depth of God’s love for you, knowing what the Scriptures say about the Christ, and knowing that God will raise the innocent Lamb from the dead, Christians are also obligated to answer Pilate’s question with, “Yes, crucify Him.” It is this dichotomy that I hope to lay before you this afternoon by looking 1) first at the immutable justice of God; 2) second, what it means that Christ is our substitute; and 3) finally, the benefits of Christ’s substitution.

I.                   The Immutable Justice of God

God’s immutable justice demands perfect obedience to His Law and pronounces eternal damnation on all who transgress.[4] This justice is an inherent quality in God. He is perfect in every way and will not stand in the presence of imperfection. As for the demand of perfect obedience, that is precisely how God created the universe. In the beginning, He called all things good. With the creation of man, He called all things very good. Man was created in original righteousness. His will was perfectly conformed to God’s will. Adam and Eve trusted God more fully and obeyed His Law more precisely than we can even imagine.

The proclamation of eternal damnation on all who transgress was also present at the beginning. God told Adam and Eve that should they transgress His Law, they would surely die. The consequence of sin is death, not strictly because one logically follows the other, like one domino hitting the next, but because of God’s judgment against transgression. God passed the death sentence for the transgression of sin because it is a tearing of the relationship between man and God. It is a destruction of the relationship into which God first created man. If God is life, then severing our connection to Him via sin is to choose death. Therefore, God’s judgment of death for transgression does logically follow, even if the cause and power of death is God’s proclamation, not logic. It is the Word of God that makes death deadly.

Some might try to comfort themselves by saying that God’s justice and proclamation of damnation for transgression of that justice only apply in general, to His general governing of the world. However, this is not the case. Scripture is clear, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them;”[5] “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”[6] All means all. Everyone means every individual person. Every person is born a sinner, a consequence of original sin, and every person continues to sin. Stumble in one minor point of God’s Law and you are guilty of it all.[7]

It is our own guilt and shame that would plead with Pilate to reconsider. Knowledge of sin leads us to realize that we are not worth the death of another, let alone the innocent death of Christ.

II.                Christ is the Substitute

Yet it is the very death of Christ that pleads on our behalf. The hour of His crucifixion is the hour of His glorification. It is the very reason He came into our flesh. “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law.”[8] Motivated by the deep, eternal, divine love for man, Christ made Himself lower than the angels that He might reconcile us to the Father and plead our case before the Divine Judge. He willingly accepted the obligation to stand in man’s stead both to keep the Law perfectly and bear the punishment the Law exacts on transgression.[9]

By standing in the of man, Christ fulfills both elements of God’s justice. He perfectly kept the Law. He was obedient in every way, even triumphing over the temptations of satan that were the demise of Adam and Eve. He was obedient to death, even death on a cross.[10]

Christ’s death was gruesome. He was tortured, stricken, smitten, and afflicted. His face and body were unrecognizable as He hung on the tree. He suffered physical and spiritual pain on a scale billions of times greater than we can imagine. He knew the pain He must endure on your behalf. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He begged the Father that if there was another way to save mankind, any other way, to let it be so.[11] And yet, He faithfully submitted to His Father, knowing what must happen. What mother’s heart isn’t broken by the suffering of her child? And yet any mother would give anything to suffer in her child’s place. So too, Christ is willing to suffer even this on behalf of His beloved.

Knowing the depth of Christ’s love for us, that while we were yet sinners, He died for us, we ought to answer Pilate’s question, “If it is the Father’s will, then please, do not crucify Him; yet do not act according to our will, but let God’s will be done.”[12]

III.             The Benefits of Substitution

Through Christ’s substitutional obedience and death, God’s wrath against man was appeased, or in other words, the judgment of condemnation was set aside.^[13] The verdict was rendered, and the sentence was carried out, but not on you. Christ stood in your place and received the full sentence due to man for sin, and there is no double jeopardy in the divine courtroom. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”[14]

Having been justified by Christ, declared righteous before God, the relationship between God and man has been restored. That which was sundered by sin has been repaired through the death of Christ, which satisfied God’s wrath against sinners. “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”[15]

There is sometimes the idea that faith or religion is for the purpose of personal fulfillment, comfort, encouragement, or self-actualization. That idea leads to the modern thought that while you might find fulfillment in Christ, someone else finds fulfillment in friendship, the teachings of the Buddha, or even a fine glass of whiskey. This thinking fails to realize that in Christ, we have something objective. A real change has happened outside of ourselves. Christ’s vicarious satisfaction is an objective truth that stands outside of our sense of fulfillment, joy, or encouragement. He has satisfied the wrath of God such that we are now reconciled with God. The restoration of this relationship means that we have access to the Father. We are declared free from the bondage of sin.

In this freedom, sure, we find a sense of fulfillment, joy, encouragement, and even happiness, but these benefits derive from the true benefit of the Cross – a restored relationship with God, an objective declaration of our innocence before God. The deadly power of death has been removed. It had no claim on Christ, the truly innocent One, and so now death has no claim on you. “The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”[16]

We must never separate the Crucifixion from the Resurrection. The Resurrection of Christ is the sign that His sacrifice to the Father was accepted, pleasing to the Father, and that it made atonement for man. Death had no claim on Christ because He had no sin. Yet He bore the sins of the world, your sin, into death that it would be buried there in the tomb. It was necessary for Christ to die so that by His death, death would be destroyed.

And standing on this side of the Resurrection, our eyes opened like those of the disciples in Emmaus, we can hear Pilate’s question with new ears, “Shall I crucify your King?” Pilate and the Jews, though themselves agents of death and the devil, were also working to fulfill the way of salvation. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.[17] Therefore, we can confidently answer Pilate, “Yes, crucify our King because by His crucifixion, we shall be made righteous before God. Yes, crucify our King because by His death we are saved and the wicked shall be judged. Yes, crucify our King because in three days, He will be raised triumphant over the death you so wickedly have commanded.”

The cross of Christ is His glorification and the moment of our salvation. If there was any other way for salvation, even Christ found it preferable. Yet this was the only way to save sinners. And because Christ loves you, He endured the sins of the world by hanging on a tree. Thanks be to God that He “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”[18]

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.

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[1] 1 Corinthians 15:14, 17, 19.

[2] This definition of the vicarious satisfaction comes from Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, Volume 2 (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1951), 344.

[3] St. John 19:15.

[4] Pieper, 344.

[5] Galatians 3:10.

[6] Romans 3:23.

[7] James 2:10.

[8] Galatians 4:4-5.

[9] Pieper, 345.

[10] Philippians 2:8.

[11] St. Matthew 26:39-46; St. Mark 14:35-42; St. Luke 22:41-44.

[12] Romans 5:8; St. Luke 22:42.

[13] Pieper, 346.

[14] Romans 3:23-24.

[15] Romans 8:1.

[16] 1 Corinthians 15:56-57.

[17] Hebrews 9:22.

[18] St. John 3:16.