Sermon Summary: John 19:14-30 – The New Passover
John’s Gospel makes very specific connections between Jesus death on the cross and the Jewish passover. These connections help us to understand the mystery of the cross.
Doctrine 1: Jesus died to save us from something, Firstly, just as God saved Israel from slavery in Egypt, so he saves us from slavery to evil. Secondly he saves us from his own judgement on sin. God’s judgement against sin is enacted in two ways: eternally at our final judgement, and temporally in this life, as God’s wrath is poured out on all wickedness through the reign of the risen Lord Jesus. Each of us is not only a victim of evil, but also a perpetrator, however, Jesus’ passover saves us from both aspects of his judgement.
Doctrine 2: Jesus died in our place. Jesus died as a ransom, to conqueror evil, and as an example, but also as a substitute. The Passover link makes this explicit, Jesus died instead of us. It is important to reaffirm this doctrine as it is being questioned by many popular Christian teachers.
Applications
1. We should be moved to share the Gospel, not only by people’s eternal destiny but also by their difficulties in this life, since they are living under God’s wrath, the explicit purpose of which is to bring about repentance.
- We need to be living free from slavery to sin so that our joy moves us to tell people, and also so we are believable!
- Christ’s death is not automatically applied people. Just as the Israelites had to specifically eat the passover meal and daub the lamb’s blood on their doors, so we must have faith in Christ to receive his salvation. This faith will normally follow a specific pattern of baptism, inclusion into life of the Church and a lifestyle of obedience, repentance and forgiveness. This way of life delivers us from many of the temporal consequences of God’s judgement and consequently gives us assurance of eternal salvation.
- Since this is the case we should renew our efforts to persuade those who claim to be Christians but whose lives do not follow this normal pattern of faith to deepen their faith, since otherwise they are still living under many of the consequences of God’s wrath and, lacking any assurance, may even be deceived about their faith.
5. Passover help us better understand our trials. As with Pharaoh, the enemy may still pursue us, threaten and attack us, but he will not be victorious in our lives. God will never turn against us, nothing that happens to us is God’s judgement against us in the sense of condemnation or punishment. God shields us from all that will not deepen our knowledge of his love and sanctify us as his people.