An Unfair Trial

Mark 14:53-65
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, July 11, 2021
Copyright © 2021, Gregory Broderick

Mark 14 includes a section describing a very unfair trial.  This is surprising to us in our day and age, as we are used to so many criminal procedural protections that we cannot even convict the guilty, the obviously guilty, much less the innocent.

Look at the number of constitutional violations in our text this morning.  The whole thing is a First Amendment violation:  they are prosecuting Jesus for His speech and for His free exercise of religion.  His Fifth Amendment rights are violated in verses 60 through 62, when they force Him to testify.  They also held Him over on a capital offense without indictment by a grand jury.  That is a Fifth Amendment violation too.  Jesus was not permitted His Sixth Amendment right to counsel.  Also, His trial, while at least speedy, was not public.  And He is not permitted to confront or cross-examine witnesses against Him, nor is He allowed to call His own witnesses.

There is also a lot of manufactured evidence that did not hold up even in this show trial.  And there is cruel and unusual punishment (v. 65), an Eighth Amendment violation.  And, of course, the whole thing is a massive separation of powers problem and a Sixth Amendment violation in that His prosecutors, judge, and jury are one in the same.  This is a trial conducted in one day at night in a private house.  There are so many violations here it is difficult to believe.

Of course, none of our constitutional amendments apply to a first-century Roman-occupied Jewish trial.  But there is a distinct sense when you read this text that the whole thing was unfair and wrong, and even illegal.  In fact, you can find many arguments on the internet that will tell you why this was illegal even under applicable Jewish law at the time.  But the point is that there is a feeling of wrongness to this entire trial, a feeling of unfairness.

And this was indeed a grave injustice that was perpetrated that late night or early morning in the house of the high priest.  In fact, it was the most unjust punishment ever meted out in the history of mankind.  And yet God in His sovereignty used this unjust act of sinful man to accomplish the greatest act of justice and the greatest act of mercy ever conceived:  substitutionary atonement.  Jesus Christ, God and man, perfectly sinless, took all our sin upon Himself and paid the full price for us, the infinite price, that we might be forgiven.  Through this unjust act, through His death and through His suffering, He justly redeemed us.

1. The Unfair Trial

We have already listed some of the granular reasons why Jesus’ trial was conducted in an unfair manner.  But I want to focus this morning on the main reason for the unfair trial.  It was not an inquiry into truth, but rather a search for justification.  For evidence, real or fake, to support a predetermined outcome.

Look at verse 55.  It says, “The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence so that they could put Him to death.”  That is your jury.  If the jury is looking for evidence so that they can put you to death, you are in big trouble.  These are not fair-minded individuals who are neutrally weighing the facts and trying to discover what happened.  They are not even skeptics who might be tough to convince but who could be persuaded by clear and convincing evidence.  No, these are hardened ideologues.  Jesus must die, they have determined.  Find a reason; any reason will do.  In the Sanhedrin, they gin up a charge of blasphemy (v. 64).  Yet a few hours later, before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, the charge is treason and even tax evasion (Luke 23:2).  To these so-called jurors, the charge is ultimately unimportant.  The key is the outcome, and the outcome is that Jesus must die.  Get there however you get there, but Jesus must die, they have concluded.

They had decided this a long time ago; a long time before their Stalinist show trial at the high priest’s house.  They had been watching Jesus for years and planning His death for years.  In Mark 2, they are checking Him out and sneering at Him, despite His miracles of healing performed before their very eyes.  And as soon as He heals the man with the shriveled hand and exposes the Pharisees as the hard-hearted hypocrites that they were, they went out and began to plot how they might kill Jesus (Mark 3:6).  Two or three years before this trial, they had already gone out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

After this, Jesus did very little to placate the priestly class.  He exposed them.  He exposed their greed.  He exposed their absurdity (Mark 7).  He exposed their unbelief (Mark 8) and their ignorance (Mark 10).  And so He grows increasingly confrontational, entering Jerusalem in prophetic and kingly fashion—indeed, in Messianic fashion (Mark 11)—and clearing the temple of their grubby commerce (Mark 11:12–19).  Jesus exposes their ignorance in a series of discourses (Mark 11 and 12), and He spoke parables against them, which they knew were against them (Mark 12).  Jesus shames them publicly in questioning them about Psalm 110:  “The Lord said to my Lord,” and He refuses to be impressed by their man-made temple (Mark 13).  So they are upset.  They are upset with Jesus.

So they have long planned to kill Him, all the way back to Mark 2.  And He did not do anything to remove that desire from them in the subsequent chapters.  They planned to kill Him in Mark 2; Mark 12:12; Mark 14:10; John 11:45–47; and John 5:18.  In fact, it says in John 7:25 that everyone knew that they wanted to arrest and kill Him, so it wasn’t a secret.  And they plot again in John 7:32 and 44.  The point is that the result is decided.  The result of this supposed trial is already decided.  The only trick is how to get there and look somewhat justified.  So we are left to ask:  Why?  Why such hatred?  Why such enmity toward Jesus?  Why such againstness?

John 5:18 gives us the answer.  It says, “For this reason, the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him as He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”  It says the same thing in our text in verse 61.  They asked, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” And when Jesus says, “I am,” and when He says, “And You will see the Son of Man .  .  .  coming on the clouds of heaven” in verse 62, that is the end of trial.  They have what they need.  You see, the reason they are killing Him is that He claims to be the Messiah.

Verse 64 says that as soon as He claims to be the Messiah, they all condemned Him as worthy of death and began to abuse Him.  They never ask, “Is this true?” They never ask, “Is He who He claims to be?” They never inquire, “Is this the One that Moses wrote about?” They reject it out of hand as impossible.  Other people concluded that this was the One that Moses wrote about.  Other people put their faith in Him.  But the religious leaders of that time never even bothered to ask, “Could it be true?” They even refuse to consider the possibility, refuse to consider the question.

When we look at it, their refusal to examine the possibility that Jesus is who He says He is—the Messiah—is quite remarkable.  It is not as if He showed up just running His mouth and saying He was the Messiah.  There is a mountain of evidence that He provided to show that He is, in fact, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior of the world.  Very God and very man, just as He said He was.

He fulfilled dozens of highly specific prophecies about the Messiah.  These are people who claim to study the law, who claim to study the Old Testament, the books that Moses wrote and the prophets.  They claim to know the law.  Jesus fulfilled many of these prophecies about the Messiah.  Isaiah 53 tells us that He will be despised and rejected by men, pierced for our own transgressions, and crushed for our own iniquities.  He was born of a virgin in Bethlehem of the tribe of Judah, of the line of David, and right before a massacre of children.  He came out of Egypt, as prophesied.  He was called a Nazarene, as prophesied.  He brought light to Galilee, as prophesied.  He spoke in parables, as prophesied.  He was falsely accused, as prophesied.  He was praised by little children, and He entered on the colt of a donkey.  Isaiah 50:6 tells us that He would be spat upon and struck, and they do that at the end of our text.  So all these were things that were prophesied, and there are many, many more.  There were many specific things that were prophesied about this Messiah, and He fulfilled them all.  And there were too many for it to be a coincidence.

But there is more evidence than that.  There were many, many witnesses who testified about Him.  John the Baptist testified in John 1:29 that Jesus was the Christ.  His mother Mary testified about the angelic annunciation.  Elizabeth, whose baby leapt within her when the mother of her Lord came to visit her, testified.  The Magi, with no connection and no agenda, came from far away and said, “We heard this Blessed One has been born; where do we find Him?” and they went to Jesus.  Anna the prophetess and Simeon testified in the temple (Luke 2).  God the Father Himself testified at Christ’s baptism:  “This is My Son” (Matt. 3:17).  This was not some private affair.  There were many people there, many witnesses.  Indeed, there are strong indications in the text that these priests and teachers of the law themselves were present when Jesus was baptized:  when He came out of the water, when the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form, and when the voice of God spoke from heaven:  “This is My Son.”

On top of that, Jesus performed many miracles.  He fed the 5,000 with only five small loaves and two fishes, and yet somehow had a lot left over afterwards.  He healed a man born blind in John 9.  Everyone confirmed it, but they refused to believe it.  Remember, they investigate the matter.  They call the man.  They examine the man.  He says, “I was born blind but now I see.”  They call his parents to ask, “Was he really born blind?” They say, “Yes.”  They wisely avoid the ultimate question because they do not want to get kicked out of the synagogue.  But they testify: “Our son was born blind but now he sees.  We do not know how.”  And the man himself tells them, “It was this Jesus who healed me, who made me to see.”  And what is their response?  They shout at him, they call him bad names and kick him out.  In John 9:24 they say, in this discourse with the man born blind but now healed, “We know that this man is a sinner.”  Now, how do they know that?  They never saw Jesus sin.  He never sinned.  They never even accused Him of sin other than the supposed blasphemy for claiming to be God, which He was.

Jesus drove out demons from the synagogue (Mark 1:26).  He healed all the sick people in town and lepers.  Remember, they all came to the house.  He could not even have five minutes of peace.  Everyone knew that this Jesus was performing outstanding miracles.  In fact, it says that He could not even go into town anymore without being mobbed; that is how widely known it was (Mark 2:45).  They even saw it with their own eyes.  The teachers of the law saw Jesus heal a paralytic in Mark 2:12.  The Pharisees and the Herodians saw Him heal the shriveled-hand man in Mark 3:5.  He drove out demons right in front of the teachers of the law in Mark 9.  So when these people see it with their own eyes, when they hear it from eyewitnesses that Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead, their response is not faith.  It is not even skepticism.  It is to plot to kill Jesus.  That is their response (John 11:50).  Indeed, it came from the mouth of Caiaphas the high priest himself that Jesus must die.

Now, I thought it was against the Torah to murder.  The same Caiaphas tore his robes and declared the sinless Jesus as a blasphemer worthy of death.  I thought the high priest was not supposed to tear his robes (Lev. 21:10).  They even made a plot to kill Lazarus (John 12:10).  So they see all this evidence in front of them.  Their response is not to believe the evidence.  Their response is not to consider the evidence.  Their response is to get rid of the evidence.  It says in John 12:10 they had made a plot to kill Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead, for many could see him raised from the dead and many because of that went and followed Jesus.

It is clear that this judge and this jury have no interest in the truth.  They had asked Jesus for signs, for miracles, and He gave them signs and miracles.  They did not care.  They heard of His miracles.  They saw His miracles.  They heard testimony from other witnesses who experienced His miracles.  They heard God’s prophecies about the Christ.  They saw those prophecies fulfilled in Jesus.  They even heard God’s own voice from heaven declaring, “This is My Son.”  That is a lot of evidence.  But they would not believe.  They would not even entertain the possibility that Jesus was speaking the truth because they had no interest in truth.  It doesn’t matter; He must die.  It is already decided.  It has been decided for a long time.

So there is an unfair arrest.  There is an unfair judge.  There is an unfair jury.  There is an unfair trial.  There is an unfair execution.  It was unfair from start to finish.  It had nothing to do with truth.

We are also left to ask:  Why the unfair trial?  Why all the hatred?  Why all the vitriol?  It is true that Jesus had been opposing them increasingly.  And it is true that He had been gaining some followers, although He also lost a lot of followers with His hard teaching (John 6:66).  But most of His work has been in the rural areas like Galilee and even across the Sea.  He still remains, at least from a political perspective, a relatively minor threat to them.  So this focus on having to kill Him, this hatred for Him, seems to be an overreaction.  Why all the hubbub about a minor figure from a minor town in a minor place?  And, as I said, in any case, they give zero consideration to the possibility that He might be the Messiah that He clearly claimed to be.  So why?  Why all the focus?  Why must He die?  Why not consider if He is telling the truth?

The answer is both simple and universal.  The answer is enmity—enmity towards God, enmity towards truth, enmity towards Jesus Christ, the embodiment of this truth.  In fact, He is the truth.  Enmity, if you are not familiar with it, means againstness.  It means hatred.  It means a deep, unchangeable pushing against that thing.  Contrary to the popular opinions of our age, man is not good and getting better.  In fact, I would argue that man is not even bad and getting worse.  Man is the same as ever—dead, spiritually dead—dead towards God and dead in transgressions and sins (Eph. 2:1).

Man, as we know, was created good.  In fact, he was created very good in the garden (Gen. 1:31).  Man and woman were made in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:27).  But man did not stay that way.  Man sinned and was cast out of the garden.  Man believed the devil’s lie and became the devil’s disciple, disobeying God, disobeying the good and perfect and holy God, all for the promise of autonomy from the devil.  Remember, he said, “You will be like God, knowing good from evil.”  In other words, you will be independent from God.  That is the idea.

But this promised autonomy never became a reality.  Instead, man was justly cast out of the garden.  He was made subject to death—physical death and eternal spiritual death.  Man’s infinite sin against infinite God justly earned man the infinite penalty of eternal hell.  Instead of the devil’s promised autonomy, man became a slave—a slave to sin, a slave to the devil, a slave to death, a slave to fear of death and the infinite penalty to follow.  Romans 6–8 covers it.

Every person born of Adam was born under sin and under sin’s penalty (Rom. 6:12–19).  On top of that, we have all sinned personally.  We are born with sin in us—that is our sin nature—and that sin nature manifests itself in our sinful actions.  Sin pervades the whole world.  It pervades our very being.  Indeed, it pervades our hearts and our minds.  This is called the noetic effect of sin.  It has such a grip on sinful man that we cannot escape it.  We cannot escape it because it is in us.  It is inextricably intertwined in us.  It is a part of our very nature.

Romans 7 describes fallen man.  It says he is sin’s captive.  It says he may even try, from time to time, to fight sin and to do what is right based on the leftover but marred conscience and image and likeness of God in him.  He may even try, from time to time, to fight that sin.  But he cannot defeat it.  (GTB)  It has him in its grip.  In Romans 7:7–8 Paul writes, “I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘Do not covet.’ But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire.”  That is enmity.  And in Romans 7:21 he says, “When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.”   It is a part of me as sinful man.

Put simply, unregenerate man is a slave to sin.  He cannot overcome it.  He cannot defeat it, whatever effort he might make.  Our condition is no better than that of the prediluvian people described in Genesis 6:5:  “Every inclination of the thoughts of [their hearts were] only evil all the time.”   Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  So it is a universal problem.  Whether you are a Hitler or a Gandhi, it is a universal problem.  Sin is in every person.

That might sound pretty bad, but it gets worse.  You see, sin is not really the problem.  Sin leads to all kinds of problems, but it is not really the problem.  The big problem is judgment.  God is perfectly holy and perfectly just, and our sin against Him and against His word is an infinite violation.  He is infinite God, who is infinitely holy, and we have violated His infinite and unchangeable word.  Indeed, every time we sin, we are silently saying, “There is no God”; or at the very least, “There may be a God, but He has no right, no authority, no power to tell me what to do.”

For this infinite violation, there is only one just and proportionate penalty:  infinite death.  Not sleep, not non-existence or whatever other thing we may cook up to make it sound nice.  No, infinite death; eternal punishment; infinite, conscious torment in hell forever (Luke 16).  As Romans 6:23 tells us, “The wages of sin is death.”  That is what we are owed because of our sin.

Of course, as finite beings, we cannot pay an infinite penalty.  So we have a serious problem.  We have an infinite debt that we owe, but we are finite people so we cannot pay it.  That is the problem.  What should be our response to this problem?  One response to this problem—in fact, the common response—is to deny it.  To stick our head in the sand, to ignore it, to hide from it, and to say, “There is no God.”  If there is no God, then there is no sin, there is no judgment, there is no eternal hell, there is no eternal punishment to come, and I am in the clear.

The only problem with that is that you know deep down that you are wrong if you say there is no God.  You know that there is a God, and that He is holy (Rom. 1:21).  There is simply too much evidence surrounding you.  The canon of the Holy Scriptures declares it in objective form, and so the response is to reject those Scriptures that declare it; to reject the very word of God.

The heavens and the earth declare the glory, existence, and power of God (Ps. 19:1).   So you concoct a theory that everything came from nothing for no reason with no cause and for no purpose.  Problem solved!  Our lives, our existence, and, in fact, the entire universe and anything else that exists, under their theory, is the result of a causeless cosmic coincidence.  Anyone who questions this scientific theory is derided as a heretic and anti-science.  In short, you are confronted every day as you walk around with the reality of God in creation.  So we shut our eyes and we cover our ears, and we say, “There is no God.”

But that doesn’t work either.  Even with your eyes closed and your ears covered, you still have a conscience, and you have the witness of your conscience (Rom. 1:18–20).  And those verses explain that, in your conscience, you know that there is a God.  You know that you are made in His image and likeness.  You are marred by sin, but you are made in His image and likeness.  You were made for Him, and you were made to worship Him and have fellowship with Him.  And you know it, and everyone knows it deep down.  When you know something is true, but you live in active opposition to it every day, it makes you crazy and irrational.  This is how every sinner is living, certainly to a different degree.  Not everyone is as depraved as they could be, at least in the sense outwardly.  There are some restraints by common grace.  But every sinner lives a conflicted and false life based on a false premise that there is no God; that is, based on a false premise that they know is false.

Every unbeliever is constantly reminded of his doomed and damned condition, and it makes him angry.  So he tries to kill his conscience, kill that silent witness by sinning and sinning and sinning the more, and urging others to do the same (Rom. 1:21–32).  Such people are always trying to suppress the truth by their wickedness (Rom. 1:18).  So they hate Christianity.  They hate morality.  They urge on more and more wickedness, and the requirement that you validate their wickedness.  You must bake a cake for my transgender reveal.  You must validate it.  You must arrange flowers for my homosexual wedding.  You must abort my baby, even if it is against your conscience.  You must use my personal pronouns.  It is not enough that you tolerate me and say, “Live your life the way you want to.”  No, you must validate me.

Now, the Pharisees were not into transgender reveals and homosexual weddings, but they were being confronted in the lie of their self-righteousness.  Their thing was, “We can earn our salvation if we keep this set of laws which we mostly made up.  We can earn our salvation.  We can be good enough.  We have self-righteousness.  I don’t need a Savior.  I can do enough to save myself.  I give this amount of tithes and offerings.  I give these particular sacrifices.  I wear my hair in a certain way, and I wear certain things.  I can be good enough for God.”  It is all a suppression of truth by wickedness.

So they are desperate to push their self-righteousness while this Jesus is standing before them, a corporeal refutation of their entire mode of existence and of their entire theory of life.  They have all this testimony about Him.  They saw Him perform all these miracles.  They saw Him display His divinity.  He did outstanding miracles that they could not deny.  They would have liked to deny them, but they could not deny them.  Here is the blind man.  He is standing there and he can see now.  His parents are saying that he was born blind, but now he can see.  He is standing there, and we cannot deny it.  Here is the dead man, Lazarus.  He was dead.  He was in the tomb.  The rock was closed.  He was gone.  And everyone went out, and then the dead man came out of the tomb.  We cannot deny it.  Jesus called him out and raised him to life, and there he is, walking around and doing stuff.  It cannot be denied.

It is a terrible confrontation to the dead and wicked sinners.  It is a terrible confrontation in their time.  It is a terrible confrontation in our time to have to see with your own eyes that the thing you hold to so tightly is wrong.  It is a powerful refutation of their whole way of living.  In our time, that there is no God; in their time, “I can be good enough to earn my salvation.”

So they cannot tolerate it.  And what is to be done about it?  They hit on the solution:  Kill Jesus.  Then they would not have to look at Him anymore.  Then they would not have to be confronted by Him anymore.  Kill Him.  Suppress the truth by killing Him.  Any charge will do.  Any evidence will do.  No evidence will do.  Just kill Him and get rid of Him.  Kill Him and remove His confronting presence from our sight.

What about that Lazarus who was raised from the dead and is walking around?  Fine; kill him too.  “The chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well,” it says, “for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in Him” (John 12:10–11).  Kill Lazarus too.  What about the man born blind?  Slander him and throw him out of the synagogue.  Tell him that he is a sinner, steeped in sin from birth.  Ad hominem attack.  They couldn’t deal with his argument.  He said, “This man performed outstanding miracles.  Sinners cannot do these miracles.”  They said, “You are a sinner.  Get out of here!” That is not a good answer to the argument.  So slander a man when you cannot counter his argument.  Suppress the truth, suppress the truth, and keep on suppressing the truth.  Shut it down.  Get it away from me.  I don’t want to see it.  Stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel.

That is why the unfair trial.  That is why the manufactured evidence.  That is why the false and conflicting witnesses.  Arrested for one thing, tried for another thing, and executed for some third thing.  Not because of truth, but because of hatred—deep, deep ingrained hatred, againstness.  That is the state of our judge and jury in our text this morning, and that is the state of every person before they put their faith in Jesus Christ.  It is the state of every person ever born.  As I said, this hatred may manifest in different degrees in different people.  Not everyone is going to hate to the maximum.  Some people will be nice about it.  Some people will be nasty about it.  Some people will be nice at the beginning of their life and grow nasty at the end, or vice versa.  But in every person, there is a deep enmity towards God until God moves to save that person.

So that was their response:  Kill Him.  But a different response is available.

2. The Alternative Response

There is an alternative available.  I told you the bad news, that you, like everyone else, are or were a sinner due to your sin nature.  And you have sinned, and you deserve God’s judgment, which is certain, sure, and eternal.  You, like all others ever born, including me, are against God and have enmity towards God to one degree or another.  And you keep that until He saves you and until you put your faith in Him—until He regenerates you and you confess Him as Lord.  And you, like countless others, are powerless to do anything about it.  You are powerless to pay the full price for your sins.  You are powerless to change your sin nature.  That is the bad news.

But I have good news too—good news for all people.  You may be powerless to change your nature, but God is not.  He is powerful and He is mighty to save.  You may be unable to pay the full price for your sin, but God is not.  He is infinite and He can pay.  You may have enmity towards Him, but He does not have enmity towards you.  He has love for you, great love, the greatest love.  John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him”—speaking about faith, speaking about trust—“whoever believes in Him shall not perish but shall have eternal life.”  In other words, be saved—saved forever, rescued from that judgment, from sin and hell and death.  No longer destined for eternal death, for eternal punishment, but destined for eternal glory, eternal worship of God with God forever.

Every sinner, every person, begins as an enemy of Christ, full of this enmity that I spoke about.  Every person starts out dead in his transgressions and sins.  But none of them, not one of them, has to stay that way.  Salvation is available to everyone.  What must you do to gain this salvation, to be delivered from the just punishment?  What must you do to be saved?  It is quite simple.  Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved (Acts 16:31).  This means you understand that this Jesus is Lord, you agree that this Jesus is Lord, and that you entrust yourself to Him alone to save you.

This is the only way.  Some people say there are many paths to God.  That is a lie.  This is the only way.  Acts 4:12 says, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”  Jesus Himself said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).  Faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to be saved.  But, praise God, it is available to all people.  Rich or poor, male or female, young or old, whatever race, whatever color, whatever religious upbringing you had—none of it matters.  Jesus made it available to all.  Jesus Christ offers salvation to all.  “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:13).

He didn’t have to offer it to all.  He didn’t have to offer it to any.  But He offered it to everyone in His great love and His rich mercy, that everyone who calls on His name will be saved.  In John 11:25, Jesus said, “He who lives and believes in Me will live, even though he dies.”  In other words, he will go on to eternal life.  And then He said, “Whoever lives and believes in Me will never die” (John 11:26).

So you do not have to pay anything.  You don’t have to do anything to earn it.  You don’t have to be born in a particular place or any particular family or in any particular time.  There is only one requirement:  Faith in Jesus Christ.  Saving faith:  entrustment of my whole self to Jesus Christ to save me.  So cry out to Him, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!” That is all you have to do, and declare Him Lord and Savior of your life.  He is already Lord and Savior, but you have to claim Him as your Lord and Savior.  And then, having been saved, you live a life of joyful obedience to Him, to your new Lord and your new Savior, to your new Master.

I said before that man became a slave to sin.  But now we have become slaves to Christ, in glorious slavery to Jesus Christ for all our days.  This is the offer that He makes to all.  And, in fact, this is His desire for all people (1 Tim. 3:4; 2 Pet. 3:9; Ezekiel 18).  God desires that all should be saved.  So this is His invitation.  It is His biblically expressed desire.  Yet you are free to decline, and most people decline, due to the wickedness within them.  Now, there is some element of mystery.  God elects a certain people, a certain number of people to be saved, to confess Him and to cry out to Him.  We don’t know why, other than His great love.  We don’t know why He picked one and not another.  It is not because of anything in us.  We don’t know.  Am I the elect?  Is that person the elect?  Is that other person the elect?  But He makes His salvation available to all.

So I say, do not decline the offer.  Don’t do it.  This is a good deal.  Our Pastor remarked in the office recently, “Our God offers the best deal for the worst sinners.”  So take the deal.  Take the deal today.  Trust in Jesus Christ today.  Call upon His name today, and He promises that He will save you.  He will regenerate you.  He will make you born again by the Holy Spirit, able to place your faith in Him, able to repent of your sins, able to live for Him forever.

3. Perfect Justice Prevailed

It was an unfair trial, and surely it was.  In fact, it was the most unjust action ever taken.  Jesus was the only person who never sinned.  He literally never did anything wrong.  He never said anything wrong, and He never thought anything wrong.  He lived in perfect obedience to God.  Yet they falsely convicted Him and executed Him as a criminal.  It is the most unjust act ever.  Even if you executed someone for a crime he did not commit, there are probably some other crimes he did commit—maybe not worthy of execution, but at least he did something wrong.  This Jesus never did anything wrong.  He never sinned.  And yet they executed Him as a criminal.

So it was very unjust.  Yet God used this greatest act of injustice to justly perform His greatest act of mercy.  God, being perfectly just, could not simply wave off our sins and forgive them.  We owed that infinite debt.  To simply wave them off would have been unjust.  It would have left our infinite debt unpaid.  That would violate His just nature.  So to perfectly satisfy our infinite debt required an infinite payment.  This Jesus Christ, who is both God and man, paid it in our behalf.  As a man, He could stand as our representative.  As God, He is infinite, and He could satisfy the whole infinite debt that we owed.  As one who lived a perfect and sinless life, His self-sacrificial offering was perfect and unblemished, and so acceptable in the sight of God.  Second Corinthians 5:21 sums it up:  “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

We owed that infinite debt of eternal death due to our sin.  The wages of sin is death.  So the sinless One, the infinite One, infinite God yet fully man, paid that price by suffering God’s full wrath on the cross for us in our place and then dying the death that we deserved.  When we think about it, all we can say is, “Hallelujah!  Our debt is paid, paid in full.”  In fact, this is one of the last things that Jesus said as He died on the cross: “Tetelestai,” “It is paid.  It is fully satisfied.  It is finished.”

How do we know that it worked?  Very easy:  He rose from the grave.  He never sinned, so death could not keep its hold on Him (Acts 2:24).  Jesus paid it all by His perfect sacrifice, and God the Father showed that His sacrifice was acceptable and effective by raising Him up from the grave, and He appeared to many witnesses thereafter.  This demonstrates the mercy, the justice, the wisdom, the sovereignty, and the love of God.  Mercy, because He forgave our infinite debt of sin in Christ.  Justice, because He did not merely close His eyes to sin or wave it off or excuse it, but ensured that the whole infinite debt was repaid.  Love, because God so loved the world that He sent His Son to do this, who came voluntarily to pay the price while we were still His enemies.  And the wisdom and sovereignty of God because, through the most unjust execution and the most unfair trial of the sinless Savior, God the Father engineered the greatest act of mercy and justice ever conceived—the forgiveness of sin.  In view of this, what can we say but praise the Lord!  Praise, praise, praise the Lord.  Glory, hallelujah, praise the Lord.

Thanks to their injustice and God’s perfect justice, we can be forgiven.  We can be redeemed.  We are able to be born again by the action of His Holy Spirit.  We are adopted as His sons and daughters.  We are joined to the household of faith and to the family of God.  We can have fellowship with God because of their injustice and God’s perfect justice.  Indeed, we will have this fellowship—this is our purpose—we will have this fellowship with God face to face with God forever; glorifying Him and enjoying Him forever, which is the chief end of man.  We will do this in eternal glory and eternal worship, in perfect obedience to God, together with one another who have also put their faith in Christ—together with God, together with the saints of God forever.

Praise God for the unfair trial!  Praise God for His perfect justice!  And I will close with Romans 5:1:  “Since we have been justly justified through faith, we now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.”  Amen.