Christ’s
Predetermined
Death
By
Rev. Robert C. Harbach
"Him being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have
crucified and slain" (Acts 2:23). Many years ago, Jonathan Edwards
preached a sermon entitled, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
Today, with the widespread low view of God, many think of God in the hands of
angry sinners. God, to many, is a very little
"God" indeed, who is being hindered and limited by the wicked hands
of men. One man thinks he can hold God off at arm's length and say to Him,
"I will not!" or that he can, if he choose,
open his heart to the Savior and let Him in. What a burlesque caricature of the
"Almighty God, whose power no creature is able to resist!" Our text
does not say that Christ was delivered up to death on the cross by man's wicked
hands, but by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. Yet we hear
"the Cross of Jesus" being spoken of as an emergency measure on the
part of God. As one writer put it: "Emergencies change all habits of
action, divine and human…. The greatest event on earth,
the Cross, was an emergency action" (S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on
Prayer, p. 55). What a travesty of the truth! God never gets into an
emergency. He is the Creator of circumstances; and no circumstance is or
becomes any problem to Him. God is never put into a predicament; and the Cross
was no afterthought, suddenly brought in to cope with an unforeseen difficulty.
Nor was the death of Christ a calamity which calls for man's sympathy and pity.
Neither was His death a mere experiment, uncertain in its results. It was not a
mere trial which God put into operation to see what good could be accomplished,
or what favorable response to it could be elicited from man. It was perfectly
planned in the eternal purpose and counsel of the sovereign God. "For of a
truth against Thy holy servant (same word, v. 25) Jesus, whom Thou didst
anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of
Israel, were gathered together, to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel
determined before to be done" (Acts 4:27-28). Hear the whole purpose of
the Cross from the lips of incarnate Truth: "And I, if I be lifted up from
the earth (on the cross), will draw all unto Me"
(John 12:32); and "all that the Father giveth
Me shall come unto Me" (John 6:37). I delight in this truth and love to
proclaim it, that the counsel of the Lord shall stand, and He shall do all His
pleasure. Therefore of all that the Father giveth to
Christ, He shall lose nothing. By His predetermined death they are eternally
saved, and they shall never perish (John 10:28). Every part of the crucifixion
was according to the eternal purpose of God which He purposed in Christ Jesus
our Lord (Ephesians 3:11).
You can see, then, that the principle cause
of Christ's death was no contingency, accident or chance, but the sovereign
counsel and eternal foreknowledge of God.
It was God Who planned it, Who ordered it, and
Who disposed all things concerning it. This in no case implies that the
murderers of Christ were forced into their evil act. They acted freely, and did
unto Him whatsoever they listed. Yet they are accountable to God for their sin,
and are not excused on the ground that it was all the work of God's determinate
counsel. Their malice, cruelty and wicked hands God was pleased to use as
instruments to accomplish His own holy purpose. From the human side, it was (1)
a violent death. He was put to death outrageously by furious men: "ye have
taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." Yet from the point of
view of God's sovereignty, no man could touch Him, except by the will of the
Almighty Lord. To the Father's will He was always obedient. So it was (2) a
voluntary death. He laid down His life of himself; no man took it from Him. He
had power to lay it down, and power to take it again. It was (3) a painful
death. "The cross was a rack as well as a gibbet" (John Flavel). The pains which He suffered were the pains of
death and hellish agonies. His body was wracked with pain. He endured bitter
sorrow and travail of soul. Further, it was (4) a shameful death. Only slaves,
and the basest and vilest of men were crucified. They were made an ignominious
spectacle. But Jesus "endured the cross" and "despised the
shame."
Now why did Jesus thus die? Not to show us
how a good man dies; not to teach us how even before the threat of death to
remain true to our convictions; nor to prove that martyrdom is better than
compromise. No, it was because in and by His death He must hear the curse of
God against sin. The curse of the Law was against all of us, since we all fall
short of that divine Law. Christ bore the curse for His people and redeemed
them from it. His was (5) a prefigured death. In the Old 'Testament we have the
figure of the lamb being sacrificed as a type of Christ, Who is the Lamb of
God. His was (6) a predicted death. He himself had predicted His own death:
"For indeed the Son of Man goes on His predestined way; but woe to the man
who is betraying Him!" (Luke 22:22,
Thus it is with the precious blood of Christ.
Believers are saved by that blood while on earth, that they may live with
Christ in heaven. And the blood which is redemption to them on earth, is confirmation to those in heaven. Because of His
shed blood, the saints in heaven have more perfect joy, but not more security,
than the saints still on earth. As the gleaning of a "handful of
purpose" from an old forgotten field has it:
"But
Christ's to the end shall endure,
As sure as the earnest is given;
More happy, but not more secure,
The glorified spirits in heaven"
So it is by His blood that He has opened the
kingdom of heaven to all
believers; notice, not to all men, but to all believers! That is the extent and
intent of His death: "By Him all that believe are justified from all
things, from which they could not be justified by the Law of Moses" (Acts
13:39). According to II Thessalonians 2:13, "chosen… through . . .
belief of the truth," believers are the elect.
The world sees this mighty sacrifice held up
as the means of pardon and forgiveness for the people of God; and the world
hates every bit of it. The ungodly will have nothing of God's mercy in the
blood of Christ. With them, it is mercy despised. Yet those who trust in that
atoning blood, though they be the greatest sinners, are certain of free, full
and final pardon. The very blackest guilt can no more stand under the cleansing
power of that blood than a wicked reprobate can stand up under God's wrath and
justice. By that Divine blood every stain is washed away. That efficacious
blood blots out all the sins of all the elect, even their most obstinate
unbelief.
As a certain writer so wonderfully described
His death: (1) It was a natural death, that is, it was
a real death. He did not merely swoon on the cross, then
revive in the coolness of the tomb. The eternal Son of God "became
flesh," condemned sin in the flesh, and "tasted death" itself.
That the naturalness of it might be the more apparent,
He was buried, and lay in the tomb for three days. (2) It was an unnatural
death, that is, it was exceptional. Death had absolutely no claim on the Divine
Savior. Death comes by sin, and He had no sin. Peter says, "He did no
sin" (I Pet. 2:22); John says, "in Him is no
sin" (I John 3:5); Paul says, "He knew no sin" (II Cor. 5:21). He is "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners." Pilate found no fault in Him.
Therefore for the Holy One of God to die, it was unnatural. (3) His death was
supernatural. It was the death of the Son of God predetermined from all
eternity. He was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. He
himself had said, "From henceforth I tell you before it come to pass, that
when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am He" (John 13:19).
We are redeemed with the "precious blood
of Christ as of a lamb without blemish (in His person), and with out spot (in
His conduct); who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the
world" (I Pet. 1:20). God in His determinate counsel planned from eternity
that the Savior should die as the sacrifice for sin, that we might live. His
death was supernatural also in that it was different from any other death. It
was a voluntary death, for He "laid down" His life of himself. He was
led, not driven, as a lamb to the slaughter. He bowed His head, and gave up His
spirit. Through all the six hours of excruciating pain on the cross, He had
held His head erect. It did not loll helplessly on His chest. When He died, His
head did not fall; He bowed His head, reverently and voluntarily. Behold, the majestic bearing of Christ on the cross! But
there is further evidence that it was a supernatural death: "Behold, the
veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth
did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened" (Matt. 27:51,
52). The purpose and power of God are very outstanding in the death of His Son.
Everything about His death was in the hands and power of God. The Son himself
was the mighty Conqueror in the battle of the ages (Rev. 6:2), for He killed
death dead by His death, and put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (Heb.
9:26). He was not a helpless victim of human violence. By His death He did what
was assigned Him to do, as He said, "This commandment
have I received of My Father" (John 10:18b). (Cp.
Pink's "The Seven Sayings of the Saviour on the
Cross").
We insist, therefore, that the death of our Lord Jesus Christ was definite
and certain in every respect, historically, naturally, spiritually and
effectually. There was nothing accidental, nothing precarious about it. His
foreknowledge rendered it certain, for God's foreknowledge is based on His
settled counsel and purpose. God foreknows only what He has foreordained. He
has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. So Jesus went to the cross with
absolute determination, with His face set like a flint to go to