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Suffered Under Pontius Pilate

Writer's picture: Doug BaslerDoug Basler

N.T. Wright once wrote, “Christianity is about something that has happened.” As has often been pointed out, the Gospel is good news not good advice. Advice is about something that may happen in the future that we might be able to do something about. News is something that has already taken place.


Yesterday the Cubs traded away Cody Bellinger. This is news. You might think it is good news or bad news or you might be totally indifferent. But regardless of how you feel, you can’t do anything about it. A week ago, if you had the ear of Jed Hoyer, the Cubs General Manager, you could have given him advice about what he should do with Belli. But now, it has already happened. As Martin Lloyd-Jones notes, all we can do with news is live in light of it. Or not.  


Christianity is about something that has happened. In its most condensed form, it is about the events that took place on Good Friday and Easter Sunday - the death and resurrection of Jesus. The core of our faith is not a list of rules. It is not primarily about what we do. It is not advice. This is why the Apostles’ Creed, the longest standing summary of the faith, doesn’t include a single phrase about being a good person, not even a passing reference to something as all-encompassing as the golden rule. 


Instead, the Creed uses the entirety of its central paragraph to highlight the major movements of Jesus’ life: Jesus was born, suffered, dead, buried, risen, ascended, and will one day return. 


There is nothing that you or I can do about any of that. Apart from Christ’s return, everything stated in the Creed about Jesus has already happened. The Creed is not offering advice. It is declaring what God has done. We can only live in light of it. Or not.    


Scripture, of course, contains lists of rules. And discussions on ethics. Jesus preaches the Sermon on the Mount long before he goes to the cross. Justice matters. A lot. It is found in every corner of the Bible. Loving God and loving neighbor is how Jesus sums this up. Love of God and neighbor assumes concrete actions. The fruit of the Spirit includes love and joy and peace and patience and self-control. Those are abstract concepts, but they imply specific ways of living - serving lunch at the local shelter, cleaning your aging mother’s soiled bed linens, again, forgiving your son for the tirade of hate that came out of his mouth when he stomped out of the house last month, or bringing a friend lasagna after surgery.     


But even the rules, the ethical conversations, and fruit of the Spirit are not offered as advice. As if Jesus has some Dear Abby suggestions about your marriage or how to Dave Ramsey your tax return next year. Paul doesn’t say, “your life would be much simpler, and people would like you more, if you tried to be loving or kind or patient or more joyful.” Paul says this is the fruit of the Spirit. This is what happens when the Holy Spirit has a hold of you. They are descriptions of the life that flows out of someone who’s whole being is being turned into something new because of the work of Jesus in their life.  


We don’t trust in Jesus to die for our sins and then go on trusting in ourselves to be able to keep the ten commandments. 


Jesus didn’t suffer for good people


Jesus suffered. This is what we say in the Apostles’ Creed. Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate. I always find it striking that millions of people name an obscure, regional governor (Pilate) from a small province of the Roman Empire every Sunday in worship. Jesus suffered and died. He was crucified as a criminal. Crucifixion was the most humiliating mode of execution that the Empire had devised. 


The center of our faith is about a man dying. Not ten steps to a better life or five ways to make the gods happy or karma or following your heart or being true to yourself or hakuna matata. Instead, it is this: Jesus suffered.  


And Jesus didn’t suffer for good people.


Paul says it this way, “...to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness” (Romans 4:5). Notice who God justifies: the ungodly. 


Or here, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

 

Jesus didn’t wait for us to get our act together. He didn’t wait for us to act justly, to love mercy or to walk humbly. He died for us while we were unjust, loving cruelty, and filled with pride. This is the scandal of grace. Jesus loves sinners.  


This is not how I would have done it if I were God. I would have made people demonstrate at least a hint of change, a crumb of guilt and regret, before I offered them forgiveness. I would have demanded signs of repentance. I like to think I might be willing to suffer for good people. 


Before Paul’s magnificent line “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” Paul makes this observation: “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die” (Romans 5:7). Our hearts are usually touched when we read a story or see a movie in which someone sacrifices themselves for the sake of the people they love. We hope, if we were ever forced into a similar situation, that we would do the same. But Jesus died for self-centered and self-absorbed people who didn’t even know enough to know they needed saving - “people who cannot tell their right hand from their left” (Job 4:11). People like you and me.   


Sinclair Ferguson reminds us, “Everything we need for salvation is in him and not in us…the Gospels make clear that it was to the ‘disqualified’ that he delighted to offer himself.”


Jesus suffered to make us good 


Jesus didn’t die for good people. He died to make people good but not for good people. 


As David Powlison used to say, “grace comes with a change agenda.” Here is how Paul says it to Titus:


For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It (the grace of God) teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. (Titus 2:11-12)


The grace of God, in the suffering of Jesus, offers salvation. And it teaches us to live anew. 


Paradoxically, the woman who comes to see that Jesus suffered for her while she was still a sinner is going to be the very woman who is learning to work towards justice, to love and extend mercy, and to walk with humility. 


The man who recognizes that everything needed for salvation is in Jesus and not in himself is the very man who will, slowly but certainly, begin to deal more patiently with his children, defend the cause of orphans or those with dementia, and find joy in an evening card game with his family or a simple walk through the woods.   


There has been much outrage in recent years as scandal after scandal in churches and ministries have been revealed, as the church has played political games using the same means and seeking the same ends as the world does, as Christians grasp for power and anxiously wring their hands over their slipping influence on the culture. 


The outrage is warranted. Sin is ugly. Sin perpetrated, celebrated or tolerated by the church is even uglier. The reality that at the center of our faith hangs a suffering Man should remind the church that the power and influence the world desperately clambers after is worthless and foolish in light of his kingdom. If grace “teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness” then the church still has much to learn. 


But grace remains the answer. The “ungodly” are the only people God justifies. Sin within the church requires the same remedy as sin outside of it: the suffering of Jesus. And Jesus has already suffered, under Pontius Pilate, on a Roman cross. Christianity is about something that has happened. The church in Corinth was riddled with scandal, which is why Paul was resolved “to know nothing while [he was with them] except Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).


And the same Paul makes it clear that grace is not an excuse (or encouragement) for more sin (Romans 6:1-2). "Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all."


I have been preaching regularly for almost twenty years now. And I have wrestled almost every week with how to articulate the twin truths that Jesus died for sinners and that God calls us to and equips us for lives marked by mercy, justice, love, joy, peace, patience and kindness. Admittedly, in my own life and ministry I have seen the need for God’s grace much more clearly than the transformation that flows from it. Lord, have mercy.     


I am not sure what to say about this other than to acknowledge this is why Jesus had to suffer. Sin is so ugly that the only remedy is the ghastly and wondrous cross.


I’ll close this, already too long, reflection with a quote that has provided some ballast for me over the years. It is from the Epilogue of Cornelius Plantinga’s marvelous book, Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A breviary of sin.  


“Evil rolls across the ages, but so does good. Good has its own momentum. Corruption never wholly succeeds…Creation is stronger than sin and grace stronger still. Creation and grace are anvils that have worn out a lot of our hammers.


“To speak of sin by itself, to speak of it apart from the realities of creation and grace, is to forget the resolve of God. God wants shalom and will pay any price to get it back. Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way…To concentrate on our rebellion, defection and folly - to say to the world ‘I have some bad news and I have some bad news’ - is to forget that the center of the Christian religion is not our sin but our Savior…


“But to speak of grace without sin is surely no better…In short, for the Christian church…to ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel. For the sober truth is that without full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally uninteresting.” 


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