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"The Three ’Vs’ of Calvary"

Mark 15:20                                                                April 13, 2003

“Then they led Him out to crucify Him” –Mark 15:20.

The image of the Cross seems to be everywhere. It hangs from the rearview mirrors, and rests
upon the dashboards, of our cars. It dangles as jewelry from about our ears and necks. It adorns
ballcaps, t-shirts, bumperstickers and buildings. From sheer visibility alone it would appear that
the Cross is a much beloved, revered and respected object of people’s faith. But you and I know
that that isn’t the case. Far from it. Indeed, turning the Cross, an instrument of capital
punishment, and the object of scorn and fear, into a marketing tool reveals how little people really
understand what happened on it.


What did happen on the Cross? Taken from merely a human point of view, not much. A Jewish
itinerant teacher, accused of sedition, was executed there. Taken from a legal point of view the
Cross was simply a terrible miscarriage of justice. The Jewish religious establishment feared
Jesus’ popularity, so they paid witnesses to testify against him, and they brought him before the
Romans on trumped-up charges. And because the Roman governor was a weak man, he had
Jesus executed, though he himself, by his own admission, could find no fault in him. Taken from
the point of view of drama the Cross rivals all of the tragedies that either the Greeks, the
Romans, or William Shakespeare ever penned. A humble, innocent and gentle man—the hero of
the story—who came to help others, was railroaded and murdered by an immoral and unfeeling
establishment.

But if those were the only ways to view the Cross, it really wouldn’t merit much notice. After all,
other men have died more horrible and agonizing deaths than Jesus Christ.

And yet, taken from the divine point of view the Cross becomes the fulcrum of history, the apex
and the acme of Almighty God’s work to redeem a fallen, wicked and rebellious human race
from sin, death and hell. For, on that lonely hill outside of Jerusalem, suspended between heaven
and earth, between two thieves, God’s Son bore the entire burden of humanity’s sin upon
himself, satisfied the Father’s justice, and freed from guilt and judgment all who fly to Him in
faith.

What did happen on the Cross? Why was the Cross necessary? And what difference does the
Cross make to you?


The answers to all of those questions can be found in three “V’s. The three “V’s” of Calvary.


The first “V” is for voluntary. Voluntary. Jesus Christ suffered and died on the Cross voluntarily.
No one compelled Him. No one forced Him. He was not constrained or compelled to go and die
on the Cross of Calvary by anyone but Himself. He went and died there voluntarily—of His own
accord.

During His trial Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate, and the Roman Procurator, representing the
mightiest power in the world—the power of Imperial Rome—said to Him, “Do you not know
that I have power to crucify you, and power to release you?” To which Jesus replied, “You
could have no power at all against me unless it had been given you from above.”

Over and over, throughout His public ministry, Jesus told His disciples, “I am going to
Jerusalem, and there I will be handed over to the Gentiles and I will be put to death.” Jesus
confessed that He had legions of angels at His command to come and rescue Him from the
Cross, had that been His desire. But it wasn’t. Because He was there voluntarily.

Christ’s death on the Cross was voluntary. But why? For what reason did Jesus willingly submit
to an ignominious death upon the Cross? One reason, and one reason only: Love. Because He
loved you, and He loved me. “Greater love hath no man than this: That he lay down his life for
his friends.” “Therefore My Father loves Me,” Jesus said in John 10, “because I lay down My
life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power
to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.”

But more than simply one man dying for his friends, the death of Jesus Christ upon the Cross
becomes the premiere event which proclaimed God’s love for all of mankind.

St. Paul puts it this way. In Romans chapter 5 the apostle writes:

“God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were

still sinners, Christ died for us…”
While we were still God’s enemies; while we were still disobedient, selfish, dishonest, lustful and
murderous, Christ showed the Father’s love to us by coming and dying on the Cross.

The Cross is a demonstration of the unsearchable riches and depth of God’s love for you and for
me. Why? Because the Cross was voluntary. Jesus didn’t have to die. But He died because He
loves you.


The first “V” of Calvary is that Christ’s death was voluntary.


The second “V” of Calvary is that Christ’s death was vicarious. It was vicarious. Webster’s
Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines the word vicarious as: serving instead of someone or
something else, or performed or suffered by one person as a substitute for another or to the
benefit or advantage of another. And Mr. Webster is exactly right in his definition—not only of
the word vicarious, but also of the death of Jesus Christ upon the Cross.

In the New Testament, two different Greek words are frequently used in conjunction with Christ’
s death on the Cross. They are the words “anti” and “huper.” “Anti” means “instead of,” or “in
place of,” and “huper” means “in behalf of,” or “to the benefit of.”

So Christ died on the Cross both instead of us, and on our behalf, or for our benefit. Jesus
Himself said, “The Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a
ransom for many.” Jesus Christ was my substitute on the Cross. And He was your substitute on
the Cross. His work of redemption there was a work for us.

What we have to remember is that in God’s economy the consequences of sin are always death.
“The wages of sin is death,” Paul writes in Romans chapter 6. God told Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden, “The day you eat of the tree”—that is, the day you disobey me—“You shall
surely die.” “The soul that sins, it shall die,” the prophet Ezekiel declares.

And every one of us is sinful. If we all received from God what justice demanded there would
not be a one of us here alive today. Because we have all sinned. And we all deserve death.

In the Old Testament, God, in His infinite goodness and mercy, provided for His people Israel the
sacrificial system of the Old Covenant. In that system, a sinner who violated the Law of Moses
would bring an animal to the Tabernacle, or the Temple. He would place his hands on the head of
the animal and symbolically identify himself with that animal. Then, he would confess his sins to
a priest, and symbolically transfer his sins on to the sacrifice. Next, the worshiper would watch
as the animal he had brought was killed and offered on an altar.

The death of that animal brought two facts home to the one who offered it: 1) The wages of sin
is death; and 2) God in His mercy has allowed a substitute. That innocent animal died so that the
sinner wouldn’t have to. That animal’s death was vicarious. It died for the sinner.

All of this becomes all the more poignant when we see John the Baptist standing on the banks of
the Jordan River and crying out the Agnus Dei. He points to Jesus and says, “Behold the lamb of
God which takes away the sin of the world.” Because the blood of bulls and goats was
insufficient to eternally redeem man, God sent His one and only Son as a perfect sin offering for
all of the sins of the whole world. Because Jesus was fully man, His death could truly be for us.
And because He was also perfect God, His death had infinite value.

The prophet Isaiah, 600 years before Christ was even born, prophesied that His work on the
Cross would be vicarious. Listen to what he wrote in Isaiah 53:

But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement
for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone
astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity
of us all.


St. Paul put it like this: In II Cor. 5:21 he writes,

“God made him [that is, Christ] God made him who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we
might become the righteousness of God.”


Jesus’ death was for you. And it was for me. He was our substitute. On the Cross He paid the
penalty for all your sins and mine, so that we might be acquitted by the Father—freed from guilt
and punishment. Jesus’ death was “anti” you, as the New Testament puts it: it was instead of
you. It was also “huper” you: on your behalf, for your benefit. Jesus died for you. His death on
the Cross was vicarious.


And finally, not only was Christ’s death on the Cross voluntary and vicarious, it was also our
victory. It is our victory. Victory over what? Sin, death and hell.

“Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul writes in I
Cor. 15:57.


Matthew, in his Gospel, records two separate but important and related events for us which
followed Jesus’ death upon the Cross.

The first was that the veil which covered the entrance of the Holy of Holies in the Temple was
torn in two—from the top to the bottom. Next, the Gospel writer records that many graves
around Jerusalem were opened, and the bodies of those lying there were raised.

Why are those two things significant? Because they reveal, in a powerful way, the victory Christ’
s death upon Cross won for us.

The veil of the Temple was torn to show that the days of sacrificing bulls and goats to cover
human sin was over; it showed that Jesus’ death also brought an end to the separation which
existed between and God and man because of the Law of Moses. Jesus had fulfilled the Law. His
death was a victory over our accuser—the Law of Moses.

Paul writes in Col. 2:13-15:

And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive
together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of
requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And he has taken it out of the way,
having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public
spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.


Notice the word “Triumph.” That is just another word for victory.


Also, some of the bodies of the Old Testament faithful were raised when Jesus died as a tangible
witness that His death defeated death. If the wages of sin is death, and sin has been defeated by
Christ’s death, what does that do to death itself? It kills it!


“I am the resurrection and I am the life,” Jesus said, “whoever believes in me, though he die, yet
shall he live…”

The death of Jesus Christ won a victory of over all of the enemies we face in this life—and in the
next: sin, death and judgment.

If you have put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and you are trusting in His finished work of
redemption upon the Cross for you, then you do not have to be afraid of death or hell or
judgment. All of those things have been put to flight. All of those things have been subdued for
you.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,”
Paul says in Rom. 6:23.

Christ’s death is our victory over sin, death and hell.

I heard and old, old story, how a savior came from glory, How he gave his life on Calvary to
save a wretch like me;I heard about his groaning, of his precious blood’s atoning, Then I
repented of my sins and won the victory.

O victory in Jesus, my savior, forever, he sought me and bought me With his redeeming blood.
He loved me ere I knew him, and all my love is due him.
He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.


What happened on the Cross? Why, Jesus died there voluntarily for you and for me. His death
was vicarious—it was in our place and for behalf. And it was and is our victory of sin, death and
hell.

Folks, if you have never received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you need to do that. The
death of Jesus on the Cross was and is God’s one and only provision for your eternal life. There
is no other. “I am the way, the truth and the life,” Jesus said, “no man comes to the Father but
by me.”

Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, but His death is efficacious only for those who put
their faith and trust in Him. “Those that have the Son have life,” Scripture says, “and those that
have not the Son have not life.”

Salvation is not an “if/then” proposition, as in “If you do such and such then you will have
eternal life.” The Bible tells us that we are saved by God’s grace through faith—it is a gift. We do
not and cannot earn it. Salvation is rather a “because/therefore” proposition. Because Jesus Christ
has died for you, therefore repent of your sin and believe in Him.

Don’t leave this place without knowing for sure that your sins are forgiven, and that if you were
to die today heaven would be your home. You can know. The Bible says that these things were
written so that you may know—K.N.O.W.—that you have everlasting life. Whosoever calls upon
the name of the Lord shall be saved, the Bible says.

You may think that you are here by happenstance, but I believe you are here by divine
appointment. Do not wait until your deathbed to repent and believe. Scripture records only one
deathbed conversion: The thief who died on the cross next to the Lord. And even though he had
been railing and mocking Jesus, as his life drained away, he turned to Jesus and said 9 short
words—“Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus said, “Today, you
shall be with me in paradise.”

No sin is too great. No past is too horrible. No possession, promotion or pleasure in this life is
worth an eternity of separation from God. Don’t you wait. This moment is certain. Tomorrow is
not. Salvation is as simple as 1, 2, 3. 1)Acknowledge your trespasses before God; 2) Ask for
forgiveness and for Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior; 3) Accept the free of gift of
everlasting life.

Down at the cross where my Savior died, down where for cleansing from sin I cried, there to
my heart was the blood applied; Glory to His name.

I am so wondrously saved from sin, Jesus so sweetly abides with in, there at the cross where He
took me in; Glory to His name.

Oh, precious fountain that saves from sin, I am so glad I have entered in, There Jesus saves me
and keeps me clean; Glory to His name.

Come to this fountain so rich and sweet; cast thy poor soul at the Savior’s feet; plunge in to
today, and be made complete; Glory to His name.

Jesus said that there is rejoicing in heaven when one sinner repents. He said He hadn’t come to
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He is calling you. Believe and receive. Today.
AMEN.
Welcome to the First Baptist Church of Norwich
239 West Main Street Norwich, Connecticut                Phone: 860-889-0369