Thursday, April 02, 2026

Easter Week - Jesus Suffered and Died on a Cross

(Jerusalem - some think this is Golgotha)



Jesus died on a cross. 

He died as he lived; viz., below the bottom rung of the honor-shame ladder. Jesus, the Supreme Somebody, was viewed as a nobody, and killed as a nothing.

"Jesus was executed in the manner regularly reserved for insurrectionists." (N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 148)

God identified with the abandoned and godforsaken because Jesus the Son was executed in a manner regularly reserved for such people. The Word became expendable flesh, and suffered, and died as one of us. Tim Keller writes:

"Christianity alone among the world religions claims that God became uniquely and fully human in Jesus Christ and therefore knows firsthand despair, rejection, loneliness, poverty, bereavement, torture, and imprisonment. On the cross, he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceeds ours. In his death, God suffers in love, identifying with the abandoned and godforsaken." (Keller, The Reason for God, 29-30)

On a cross, God suffered. Can God suffer? Theistic philosopher Alvin Plantinga writes:

"As the Christian sees things, God does not stand idly by, cooly observing the suffering of His creatures. He enters into and shares our suffering. He endures the anguish of seeing his son, the second person of the Trinity, consigned to the bitterly cruel and shameful death of the cross. Some theologians claim that God cannot suffer. I believe they are wrong. God’s capacity for suffering, I believe, is proportional to his greatness; it exceeds our capacity for suffering in the same measure as his capacity for knowledge exceeds ours. Christ was prepared to endure the agonies of hell itself; and God, the Lord of the universe, was prepared to endure the suffering consequent upon his son’s humiliation and death. He was prepared to accept this suffering in order to overcome sin, and death, and the evils that afflict our world, and to confer on us a life more glorious than we can imagine." (Alvin Plantinga, "Self-Profile," in Alvin Plantinga, ed. James E. Tomberlin and Peter Van Inwagen, Profiles, vol. 5, 36)

He bore our scandal.

By his stripes we are healed.

***

For a deep dive into the matter of the suffering of God, see Divine Impassibility: Four Views of God's Emotions and Suffering.
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Wednesday, April 01, 2026

The Atonement - My Blog Posts



                                                       

                                                                       (Jerusalem)


My blog posts on The Atonement...

Atonement - The Death of Jesus on a Cross Heals the Separation Between Us and God






















LISTEN TO MY SERMON ON THE ATONEMENT here.
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Easter Week - Jesus Takes the Second Cup

 


(Linda, walking in Jerusalem)



SCRIPTURE - LUKE 22:14-18

14When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15And he said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God." 

 17After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, "Take this and divide it among you. 18For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes." 

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THESE VERSES?

The cup Jesus takes is one of the four cups taken at the Passover meal. New Testament scholar Joel Green thinks it was the second cup. This is important.

Cup #1 – the head of the family gave a blessing over that cup. Cups 3 & 4 came after the Passover meal, and then Psalms 114-118 were sung – "The Great Hallel."

Cup #2 – that’s the point in the Passover Meal where the youngest son in the family asks the father, "Why is this night different from other nights?” “Why is unleavened bread eaten on this night?” And other questions…

Jesus, on that night 2000 years ago, took the second cup. It was a different night, and would change the world.

At the Passover meal the father, on taking Cup #2, would tell the story of the exodus, and give a message on Deuteronomy 26:5-11. The meal was interpreted as and seen as an act of remembering and thanking God for his past liberation of an oppressed people. It was a celebration of God’s faithfulness and hope for the future deliverance of God’s people.

They would eat lamb and bitter herbs. They would drink the series of four cups of wine.

At the original exodus Passover lambs were slaughtered. The blood of these lambs was applied to the doorways of the Jewish homes as a sign for the Angel of Death to pass over their homes and spare the life of their first born. When the father tells this story, the Jews at the meal imagine themselves right back in the world of Moses in Egypt. Haven't you ever heard someone tell a story in such a way that you feel as if you are right there? You feel the emotions that were felt back then, as if you could smell the food being described and sense the oppression yourself, and then... 

            … experiencing the incredible thing of being set free!

Here, unknown to Jesus' disciples, it was one of those different nights. The Jewish Meal of all Meals was happening, for the one-thousandth time. The original Passover WAS a night different from all other nights. It was the night when the avenging angel of death “passed over” the homes of the Israelites so God could liberate the people of Israel! But this night, recorded in Luke 22, is going to be very, very different from any other night. And it will be remembered forever, not just by Jews, but by the peoples of the world.

This quite-and-very-different night begins by Jesus talking, not of the Moses-Exodus story, but about His impending death, and His Kingdom that is coming in its fullness. Jesus is changing the meaning of Passover. This is shocking and unexpected.

Can we just stop here for a moment?

Change is hard. This change is beyond hard. Because up to this point Passover was celebrated in the SAME WAY ALL THE TIME! "We always have done it this way!” (These, BTW, are the 7 Last Words of the Church.) The same questions are asked. The same answers are given. And it has been this way, this very same way, for hundreds of years.

But ON THIS NIGHT, as Joel Green says: “Instead of the expected focus on the historic deliverance enacted by God in Israel’s past, Jesus talks about his own death and vindication, and the coming of God’s dominion.” (JG, Luke, 761) "As you drink Cup #2, this cup, remember Me. "What Jesus does on this night draws on the Exodus story. But, as N.T. Wright is so fond of saying, this is the "New Exodus.""

"After taking the [second] cup, Jesus gave thanks and said..." He did this on a night that is different from any before it, and from any that will follow. Jesus was showing that He was the "New Moses" who was leading not only Israel but all of humanity in the New Exodus and the liberation of all humanity.

On the night Jesus was betrayed, Jesus lifted the second cup.

It was the night before the day when all humanity would be set free.

REFLECTION

1. Had you been one of Jesus' disciples at that Passover Meal, how would you have felt when Jesus reinterprets hundreds of years of tradition in terms of His own life and sacrificial death?

2. Think of how Jesus has liberated you from your enslavement to sin. Count the ways He has done this. Give thanks to God for this. 
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