This sermon was preached on Sunday
evening, August 2nd, 1981, at the Trinity Baptist Church in
Montville, New Jersey. Now will you turn, please, in
your Bibles to the first letter of Peter, 1 Peter, chapter 2, and follow as I read, beginning
with verse 18, and conclude the reading with verse 25, 1 Peter
chapter 2 beginning with verse 18. In the midst of a string of exhortations
to various segments of the Christian community, Peter now addresses
slaves and he says, slaves be in subjection to your masters
with all fear. not only to the good and gentle,
but also to the froward. For this is acceptable if, for
conscience toward God, a man endures griefs, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it if when
you sin and are buffeted for it, you shall take it patiently?
But if when you do well and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently. This is acceptable with God. For hereunto were you called,
because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example
that you should follow his steps. Who did no sin, neither was guile
found in his mouth. Who, when he was reviled, reviled
not again. When he suffered, threatened
not, but committed himself to him that judges righteously.
who his own self bear our sins in his body upon the tree, that
we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness, by whose
stripes you were healed. For you were going astray like
sheep, but are now returned unto the shepherd and overseer of
your souls." Now the text which will form the basis of our communion
meditation this evening is verse 24. Who his own self bear our
sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins,
might live unto righteousness. But before seeking to unpack
albeit but briefly, some of the leading lines of thought in the
text, let me say just a word about the setting in which this
wonderful text concerning the death of Christ is given to us. As I've already suggested, Peter
is exhorting, particularly in this paragraph, slaves with respect
to their reaction to their masters, particularly masters who treat
them unreasonably and unjustly. What is a slave to do if, when
he fulfills all that his master requires, he is then punished
for his good service? Well, Peter says he is to take
this patiently, he is not to revile, he is not to stand upon
his rights for the simple reason that as a Christian slave he
is called upon to follow the example of his own Lord and Master
Jesus Christ. And so he says, if when you do
well and suffer for it and take it patiently, this is pleasing
to God, because in so doing you are following the pattern of
your Savior. who, when he was reviled, did
not revile again. When he suffered, he did not
threaten. And so the whole subject of the
suffering of Christ is introduced in the context of regulating
the practical, ethical behavior of slaves. But as is so often
true in the Bible, the most practical duties are buttressed by the
most profound doctrines, and the most profound doctrines form
the basis of exhortation to the most practical duties in this
very setting of setting forth the death of Christ and the suffering
of Christ as exemplary for believers Peter makes one of the most profound
statements about the death of Christ in a dimension which is
not exemplary, but in a dimension which is exclusively propitiatory,
exclusively the death of Christ on behalf of others. And those
very basic questions with respect to the death of Christ, such
as, what precisely did Christ do upon the cross? That question
is answered in explicit language in verse 24. What exactly transpired
when Jesus Christ died upon the cross? What is the relationship
to what transpired when He died upon the cross and our personal
salvation? What is the practical fruition
of what He did when He died upon the cross in terms of our own
practical experience? Well, I say these very fundamental
questions concerning which no man or woman, boy or girl, ought
to be ignorant are the questions which are answered in our text. And for the next 25 minutes,
and I'm making a covenant with you on the basis of empathy,
with respect to the closeness of the weather and the fact that
we still have time to meet together about the table of the Lord.
I do not want to weary you so that you cannot come with freshness
to the Lord's table. So approximately for the next
25 minutes will you follow with me with your Bibles open as we
seek to unpack four very profound and fundamental aspects of the
death of Christ opened up in this passage. And the first thing
that verse 24 tells us is that the work of Christ upon the cross
was exclusively personal. Look at the language of verse
24. Who his own self bear our sins in his own body upon the
tree. And the wording in the original
underscores with tremendous emphasis that the work that Christ accomplished
upon the cross was an exclusively personal work. Now we read in
the Gospel of Luke that in the midst of the agony of Gethsemane,
God sent an angel to strengthen Christ in the garden. But you
see, the angel came to strengthen Christ, to perform the work which
only He could do. The angel did not come to be
a co-worker with Him in that work of redemption. So whatever
the heart of the message of the cross is, It is a work which
points to something utterly unique, something in which Christ personally
and exclusively engaged Himself for the salvation of sinners. And it is not without reason
that when we come to the Lord's table, we come in obedience to
His own command, this due in remembrance of one person. me. He did not say this do in
remembrance of me and my mother Mary. He did not say this do
in remembrance of me and my apostles, me and my saints, me and my priests,
me and my ministers. No, no. He said this do in remembrance
of me and of me alone. And he did that because the work
that he accomplished in procuring our salvation is a work in which
he worked alone. And coming to the Lord's table
tonight, we must fix all of the attention of our minds, all of
the devotion of our hearts, upon the one who His own self alone
accomplish something for us men and our salvation. So that's the first thing Peter
tells us about the work of Christ upon the cross. It was exclusively
personal. But then a second thing is given
to us in the text, and it is this. The work of Christ upon
the cross was not only exclusively personal, but it was strictly
sacrificial. Look at the language. who his
own self bear our sins in his body. And the word used, translated
here, bear our sins, is the word used for the sacrificial ritual
again and again in the book of Hebrews. For instance, in Hebrews
7 and verse 27, we have this word used, Hebrews 7 and verse
27. We should back up to verse 26,
For such a high priest became us, holy, guileless, undefiled,
separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens, who
needed not daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices,
first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. For
this he did once for all, when he offered up himself. This is sacrificial language. It's used concerning the offering
up of Isaac by Abraham in James 2 and verse 21. And this is why Peter says, "...who
his own self bear our sins in his body." Now it does not mean
his body apart from his soul, for you'll remember again in
Gethsemane he said, my soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto
death. But the emphasis is placed upon
the body because of the sacrificial imagery that is here in the text. For you remember in the Old Testament,
when the blood had been drained from the sacrificial victim,
then the victim himself was placed upon the altar and the body was
consumed in the fire upon that altar. And just as we are exhorted
to offer ourselves living sacrifices with reference to our bodies,
Romans 12.1, I beseech you by the mercies of God that you present
your bodies, that is, the entirety of your persons, in the concreteness
of all that you are. But so the text says that our
Lord's death was strictly sacrificial in the concreteness of all that
He was as a true man with a true soul and a real body. He bore our sins in His body. And again, you see, it is not
without significance that when we come to the Lord's table,
what is one of the activities of that table? The scripture
tells us that the Lord Jesus, the night in which he was betrayed,
took bread. And when he had blessed it, he
broke it and said, This is my body which is for you. In other
words, there was to be a true, a real sacrifice. His going to
the cross was not a matter of religious notions. It was not
a matter of a mere adjustment of some ideas and some abstractions. No, no. He could say, a body
thou hast prepared me. And in that body he lived the
life we should have lived but did not. And in that body he
died the death that we should have died. And he was both offerer,
high priest, and offering the true sacrifice. And he was that
sacrifice in the giving up of his body to death. upon the cross. And so, this is the second fundamental
element in the death of Christ that is underscored in our text. It was exclusively personal,
who his own self, it was strictly sacrificial, bore our sins in
his body. But then thirdly, it was genuinely
penal, P-E-N-A-L, and every intelligent Christian ought to have that
word as part of his working vocabulary. He bore our sins in his body
upon or up to the tree or literally to the wood. Now why does Peter
emphasize that he bore our sins in his body upon the wood or
upon the tree? Well, to underscore that His
death was a genuine penal sacrifice, that is, God was meting out upon
His Son the punishment due to our sins. And it was his bearing
of our sins upon the tree that underscored, as nothing else
could underscore, that he was dying a penal death. He was being punished of God. Turn please to Deuteronomy chapter
21, which is the pivotal text underscoring this principle.
Deuteronomy chapter 21. Here, couched in the directives
of God through Moses to his old covenant people, God says in
verse 22, And if a man hath committed a sin worthy of death, and he
be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree, his body shall
not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt surely bury
him the same day, He that is hanged, not hanged anyway, but
he that is hanged in the context, hanged upon a tree, upon wood,
he that is hanged is accursed of God. And to be hung up to
public display after execution was the ultimate expression that
this person was executed under the anathema of God. And when
people would pass by and see a corpse strapped to a stump,
they would know immediately that man died for whatever crime under
the curse, under the malediction, under the frown, under the anger
of the Almighty. When we turn to the New Testament,
we see that the language of Deuteronomy is picked up and underscored
and emphasized by the Apostle in Galatians chapter 3, and I
direct your attention to that passage, Galatians chapter 3
and verse 13, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law,
having become a curse for us. For it is written, and here we
have a direct quote from Deuteronomy 21-23, Cursed is everyone that
hangeth on a tree. So when Peter tells us that he,
his own self, bear our sins in his body upon the tree, Peter
is underscoring that it was a genuinely penal sacrifice for sin. The committing of sin was the
act of the creature. The guilt of sin was the liability
of the creature. But the punishment for sin became
the experience of the sin-bearer himself. And as we think of the
cross of Christ, we will never begin to understand the ABCs
of its message until we see beyond the angry mob, beyond the taunting
soldiers, beyond the blasphemous jeers of the scribes and the
Pharisees, see beyond the tragedy of the cowardice of disciples
who flee hither and yon in the hour of our Lord's deepest need,
we will never understand the ABCs of the cross until we see
that the cross is supremely this. It is God the Father bringing
upon God the Son, the accursedness which your sins and my sins deserved. In the language of Isaiah 53,
which was obviously in Peter's mind as you follow through the
latter verses of this second chapter of his letter, it was
Jehovah heaping upon his son the iniquity of us all. It was
the Lord who was bruising him. It was Jehovah who was putting
the servant of Jehovah to grief. And I say we do not begin to
understand the cross until we come to grips with that reality.
And has God the Holy Spirit through the Word ever made that truth
a burning reality to your heart and mine? Have you seen beyond
the external circumstances of the cross? Have you seen beyond
that scene which just is filled literally with those elements
which touch our sympathies and move us on the one hand to pity
and to anger and to disgust. Have you come to the place where
you've seen this that is the heart of its message? He bore
our sins in his body upon the tree. And when the guilt of our
sin was imputed to Jesus Christ, the sin-bearer, He took nothing
less than our accursedness. He experienced nothing less than
the anger of the Almighty. He took nothing less than that
forsakenness which sin deserves and which the judgment of God
inevitably brings. It is this reality that caused
our hymn writer to say in words that express this far more profoundly
than I can express it. A hymn we've often sung as we've
come to the Lord's table. Tell me, you who hear Him groaning,
was there ever grief like His? Friends through fear His cause
disowning, foes insulting His distress, Many hands were raised
to wound him, none would interpose to save, but the deepest stroke
that pierced him was the stroke that justice gave. You who think of sin but lightly,
nor suppose its evil great, here may view its nature rightly,
here its guilt may estimate. Mark the sacrifice appointed. See who bears the awful load. Tis the Word, the Lord's anointed,
Son of Man and Son of God. My friend, do you think of sin
lightly? Then take the words of Peter, he bore our sins in
his body to the tree. God does not take sin lightly. He engineers the death of his
son under the Roman government that he shall appear for all
time as the one who was accursed of God. Your lies, dear children,
your bad words, your disobedience to mommy and daddy, your thievery,
your pride, your anger, your lust, your selfishness, your
covetousness, your intemperance, and all the other catalogs of
sins given in the Bible, what do they look like in the estimation
of God? See the sin-bearer accursed of
God upon a tree, so that it is evident to all who look that
he does not die simply as one who in the pursuit of a noble
cause was unappreciated and therefore discarded by society. No, he was discarded by God the
Father. It is the Father who casts him
off. It is the Father who bruises
him. It is the Father who makes him
accursed. And Peter is very careful to
underscore that by saying, who his own self bear our sins in
his own body upon the tree. But then there is a fourth thing
that Peter tells us about the death of Christ that needs desperately
to be underscored. He has told us that that death
was exclusively personal, who his own self strictly sacrificial,
bore our sins in His own body, genuinely penal upon the tree,
but it was radically effectual. Look at the language of the text.
Why did He do all of this? In order that we, having died
unto sins, might live unto righteousness. Now that's a strange stroke of
the pen on the surface of things. We might think that Peter would
have written, who his own self bore our sins in his own body
upon the tree, that we, having full forgiveness, might have
joy unspeakable and full of glory. And that would be a true statement.
But that isn't what he said. Nor does he say who his own self
bore our sins in his own body upon the tree that we being delivered
from the just penalty of hell might rejoice in the hope of
heaven. Now that's true, but that isn't what Peter says. You
see what Peter says? Look at the language. The whole
end that Christ had in view and the language in the original
does not suggest that there is any tentativeness in the securing
of that end. As certainly as he died, the
end will be secured. It is a radically effectual end
secured by his death. And what is it? Look at the language.
In order that we, having died, or more literally translated,
having ceased to exist for the sins, might live unto or for
righteousness. In other words, The radically
effectual end of the death of Christ is to bring every person
who he leadingly embraces the provisions of that death to this
place where he has this total transformation of attitude and
of pattern of life with regard to sin. And it is expressed in
this language that we, having ceased to exist for the sins,
might live unto righteousness. In other words, Jesus did not
undergo the accursedness of the cross simply to release men from
the just penalty of their sins while leaving them wedded to
their sins to go on sinning with impunity. No, He did not do that. He died so that when there is
a believing embrace of the significance of his death and of the one who
died, there will inevitably occur in every person who embraces
Christ a ceasing to live for sin and a commitment to a life
of righteousness. Now that teaches us two very
simple but fundamental principles. The first is this. There is no
way to a life of holiness but the way of full and free pardon
based on the death of Christ. How do people become holy? Not
by saying, if I undergo this discipline and that discipline
and fix myself up here and fix myself up there, then eventually
I'll become a holy man. No, no. You see, that was Martin
Luther's painful experience for years. He tried to become a holy
man by working his way up to the cross. God says no. There is only one way that men
and women cease to exist, to live unto sins, and begin to
live unto righteousness. And that is when they see the
full and free pardon of sin extended to them in the death of Jesus
Christ. When they come to grips with
this glorious fact, He, His own self, bore our sins in His body
upon the tree. He was accursed of God. He tread
the winepress alone. He died that I might not die,
and He offers me without money and without price. the gift of
pardon and life. And there is only one way to
break the dominion of sin in the heart of a sinner, and that
is by the Spirit and the Word to bring that sinner to the place
where he embraces a free pardon. And when he embraces the free
pardon, sin's dominion is broken and he begins to live to righteousness. There is no way to promote holiness
but by the preaching of the cross. There is no way to advance godliness
but by the proclamation of a free pardon to sinners sealed in the
blood of Jesus. But then there is a parallel
truth, and the parallel truth is this. There is no true acceptance
of pardon and forgiveness based on the death of Christ if the
radical change from a life unto sin to a life unto righteousness
is not your experience. And frankly, this is what pains
my heart with not a few of you who seem to show some intellectual
understanding of the truths that I've expounded tonight. elementary,
A-B-C, truths of the Word of God, that Christ exclusively
accomplished the work of salvation. He did it as a sacrifice. He did it as a penal substitute
for sinners. You understand those truths,
and you say that you have embraced Christ and the benefits of His
death. But, my friend, listen to me.
Do these words describe you? that you should die unto sins
and live unto righteousness. Is that a description of your
life? A description of a life far from perfect? Yes. A life
in which there are ups and downs? Yes. But a life in which this
fundamental issue is non-negotiable? I have turned from sin. I am the property of Jesus Christ,
and I shall pursue holiness at any cost. I say concerning not a few of
you, my heart breaks and my tears flow. in my place of prayer when
I pray through the membership list, because I don't see you
living unto righteousness at any cost. You are unwilling to break with
your godless friends. You are unwilling to break with
your godless movies and entertainment. When I hear of some of the movies
that some of the members of this church attend, I want to blush
and dig a hole and hide. Because I read the reviews in
Time magazine that is no friend of grace, and I see what pagan
reviewers say about those films. And then I think that Trinity
members take the emblems of the broken body and the poured-out
blood of my Savior and put them in their mouths when their eyes
have watched the seductive scenes of the latest James Bond movie. I blush, and I believe I have
grounds to blush. Jesus didn't die to have that
kind of shoddy return from His death. He died to have people
that say, the sins that crucified my Savior, I will nail them to
the cross of personal mortification at any cost. And if you're not
prepared for that, show your colors! Don't take his name upon your
lips and disgrace the end for which he poured out his blood. You say, that's fanatical. You
show me that I've misinterpreted that verse. Live unto righteousness. That means God's standard of
holiness in terms of the movies you watch. in terms of what you
do on your dates, young people, in terms of who you date. And
I'm going after this thing until there are some changes. How in
God's name can you spend four and five hours with an unconverted
fellow or girl and even feel that that's a good time? What
in God's name do you have in common with an unconverted person
that you can enjoy four or five hours of social intercourse with? Ah, you're old-fashioned. You
show me where I'm unbiblical. Live unto righteousness. That
means God's righteous demands of self-denial touch your checkbook,
your income. You're not free to do with your
money what you would like to, what your flesh would dictate.
It touches every area, whether you eat, drink, whatever we do. Oh, dear people, God have mercy
on this assembly if with a beautiful new building we have a fashionable
Christianity that has no cutting edge of radical holiness. You
hear me? God have mercy if we have a fashionable
building but a Christianity that has no cutting edge of radical
holiness. And if you don't want radical
holiness, my friend, you better find another church, because
as long as some of us have breath, that's the only time we're going
to preach. There are all kinds of churches where you can be
comfortable believing enough about Jesus to make you feel
all is well and you'll go to heaven when you die. But not
experiencing enough of this radical, transforming power of the cross
to make you a barb in the conscience of this generation. And every
single one of us ought to be a barb in the conscience of this
generation. We ought so to live that men
will know that the radical power of the death of Christ has invaded
us. And we are no longer living unto
the sins that put him to death, but we're living unto the righteousness
that he himself is, that he himself has patterned by his own life.
And in the context you'll see, it touches even how we react
to those who wrong us. So the death of Christ, according
to Peter, is not only personal, sacrificial, and penal, but it
is radically effectual. And what a wonderful thing it
is to come to the Lord's table with no reservations and say
when we take the broken bread and we take the cup, Lord Jesus,
With all my heart, I want your death to affect in me more and
more what you purposed when you died. There's a sense in which
if we could, if it were not improper in terms of the physical surroundings,
every one of us who's a true Christian would gladly come up
individually and prostrate ourselves on the floor in front of the
table of the Lord and say, Lord Jesus, your death for me, has
brought me to that place where I gladly say, here Lord, I give
myself away. It is all that I can do. Would you gladly do that if it
were proper to do so? Would you have any reservations?
Oh, my friend, if you have any reservations and you've never
seen a crucified Savior, with the saving eye of faith. And if you haven't, may God the
Holy Ghost help you to behold Him tonight and embrace Him as
your own. Let us pray. Our Father We marvel that your
only begotten Son would count our salvation worth taking upon
Himself all of the responsibilities entailed in purchasing a salvation
for the likes of us. We are ashamed at our carnality. Lord, I confess as an under-shepherd
in this assembly my embarrassment at the meager measure of my own
walk in holiness. I confess, Lord, the sins of
my people. Oh, give us such a sight of the
dying love of our Savior that we shall, with renewed vigor
and strength and power and in the joy of the knowledge of full
forgiveness, more and more die unto sin and more and more live
unto righteousness. Seal the word to our hearts,
and oh, may we walk in its light. We pray for those who have never
known the power of the cross, severing their ties to the world
and to sin. Oh, may that power be operative
tonight. Lord Jesus, show yourself. Show yourself through the word
to the hearts of some who prior to this night have seen no beauty,
in yourself and in your death for sinners. Seal the word. May it work in us new measures
of love and faith. And as we come to the table of
our Lord Jesus, draw out our hearts in new dimensions of love
to him. We ask these mercies in his name. Amen.