We are winding down our current series “Passion: It Wasn’t the Nails” with messages this week and then next. On April 13th I will preach on a Palm Sunday text to help set things up for our Holy Week services. This Sunday we will look at what John records about the actual crucifixion of Jesus. There has been a lot recorded about the brutality of Roman crucifixion. Many of you have watched Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, where that history is described in gut wrenching visual reality. While that sells movies, because we tend to gravitate toward the sensational, that is not in the record of the Gospels.
Sometimes an author can say more by what they don’t say than by what they actually do say, and John is definitely doing that in chapter 19. John uses one word to describe the method of Jesus execution: Crucifixion! People living during the writing of John’s Gospel would have a far better understanding of crucifixion than most of us would because it was still very much a part of the culture. They likely would have seen a crucifixion in person. However, I believe John desires to make a point with what he doesn’t say about it. The focus of Christ’s passion was not on the cruelty of his execution; many people were executed in a similar way during the Roman Empire. The focus is on the mission of Christ being fulfilled. Yes, fulfilled through His death, but even more through the resurrection. The gospel writers are careful to not leave Jesus on the cross, but to see it as part of what was needed for Jesus to defeat death, Satan and sin through the resurrection. Join me this Sunday as we consider Christ’s passion to fulfill scripture.

C.S. Lewis has famously said of Jesus, “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” There is no middle ground when it comes to who Jesus is. In this week’s text, the trial of Jesus in the courtyard of Pilate continues, and we see Pilate struggling through this very question.
The identity of Jesus is unique in the universe and difficult to grasp at times. Jesus is fully God and fully man, all at the same time. The theological term for it is The Hypostatic Union. More heresies of the church have arisen out of trying to explain the two natures of Jesus. One extreme heresy would deny that Jesus ever had a material, physical body. Another one says that Jesus only temporarily occupied His physical body. And yet others will deny the divinity of Jesus, espousing he only had the “spirit” of Jesus in a similar way to an Old Testament Prophet. In order for our salvation to be complete in Christ, Jesus has to be fully divine and fully human at the same time. The divine is needed to overcome and atone for the sin we have – only God can do that. Yet, that savior needed to be one of us so he could face the frailties of our human existence for us.
In John 19 Pilate tries to show to the Jewish leaders that Jesus is just a man. He flogs Jesus, makes a crown for Jesus out of thorns and puts a robe on him as the soldiers all mockingly call Jesus the King of the Jews. What Pilate doesn’t understand is that the frailty of Jesus’ humanity is all part of what was required for Him to do His work of salvation. The book of Hebrews describes Jesus as a High Priest that is “well acquainted with our sorrows.” That sorrow is on full display in the Passion of Jesus. Do you sometimes feel as though no one understands the sorrow you are going through? Jesus passionately understands the human experiences you and I have. In John’s Gospel, the author uses the term “Son of God” as a unique term to identify the fullness of who Jesus is. Fully God and fully man. Join me this Sunday as we explore the nature of Jesus that makes Him the Son of God and the savior of mankind.

Is there absolute truth? That is a question mankind has struggled with since the beginning of humanity. The encounter between Satan and Eve in Genesis 3 posed the idea that God had not been completely truthful with them, and that they could live a better life by discovering their own truth. In our passage this Sunday, not only is Jesus on trial, but truth itself is on trial. Jesus’ trial shifts from the religious leaders to the secular justice of Rome’s Pilate. Pilate first asks the Jewish leaders what are the charges they have against Jesus: they have none. Then Pilate turns to Jesus and asks Him, “What is it you have done?” After describing the nature of His Kingdom, Jesus responds to Pilate’s question with the reason He came into the world. Jesus came to testify to the truth, the absolute truth as found in the Father.
When sin entered the world, it did many things against the character and nature of God, but none is more drastic than sin’s assault on the absolute truth that is found in the very nature of God. In His redemptive act, Jesus makes the point that who He is and what He does is a full revelation of the absolute truth of God. It was the passion of Christ to testify about the truth that took Him to the cross. Join me on Sunday as we look at the trial of Jesus and seek to answer the question, “What is Truth.”

In our current sermon series, we are going through John 18 & 19 covering the events leading up to and including the crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus. Passion: It Wasn’t the Nails. The nails are not what put Jesus on the Cross, nor did they keep Him there. It was the passion of Christ alone that took him to the cross.
This Sunday we will consider Jesus as the solidary figure in the Passion account. The focus comes down hard on Peter for his denial of Jesus, but let’s remember, Peter was the only one to follow Jesus back into the city for the trial. Everyone else fled for their lives. Peter may be the only one to speak words of denial, but the rest denied Jesus with their actions. One of the reasons I love John’s Gospel is because he uses stylistic devices the other gospel writers do not use. In this passage we see the three denials of Peter are broken up with the word “meanwhile,” to set his denial in the context of the interrogation of Jesus. Jesus was looking for a witness to speak either for or against him, yet there was no one – not even Peter who was just yards away. Jesus was all alone – he is the One Solitary Life! What he came to do, only He could do, and no one could help him or even share in what he did to fulfill the Father’s mission. That is the point of John’s depiction of Jesus’ trial and Peter’s denial. HOWEVER – Peter’s account of failure is used later in the story of Christ to show God’s love through restoration and the mission he calls all of us to engage in. Join me this Sunday as we consider the passion of Christ as the One Solitary Man.