Our Lord's Passion and Death

A is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out And 1, If I be htted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, sieuifving what death he should die.” — John xii. 31 — 33.

Our Lord passed through his passion in a kind of rehearsal before it came. He saw those Grreeks, who came to Philip, and whom Andrew and Philip brought to him, and his heart was flushed with joy. This was to be the result of his death, that the Gentiles would be gathered to him. That thought reminded him of his approaching decease. It was very near; only a few days would elapse, and then he would die upon the cross. In anticipation of Calvary, his soul was full of trouble; not that he feared death, but his death was to be a very peculiar one. He was to die the Just for the unjust; he was to bear our sins in his own body on the tree; and his pure and holy soul shrank from contact with sin. To stand in the sinner’s place, to bear his Father’s wrath, this bewildered him. He was very faint of heart and he cried, ‘’ What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name.” Without any wicked weakness, he proved how truly human he was; without any sinful repining at his Father’s will, he saw how terrible that will was, and he shuddered at what it included. This was a kind of rehearsal for Gethsemane; it was a sipping of that cup whereof he was to drink until his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground, while his whole soul poured out the agonized petition, *’ 0 my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

When our Lord Jesus was in this great distress of mind, in anticipation of the terrible sufferings he was about to endure, his Fathei Kpoke to him; and when you are in your direst distress, God will speak to you. If you are his child, when the weakness of your flesh seems ready to prevail over your spirit, you, too, shall have a reassuringvoice out of the excellent glory even as your Master had. He seemed No. 2,338..

to recover himself at once, and bracing himself up, he indulged his heart again with a vision of the glorious result of his death. Then he uttered the happy words on which we are to meditate to-night, in which he summed up the consequences of his death in these three points: “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”

Let us, first, to-night, consider the threefold result of Christ’s death; and when we have done that, let us think about Chrisfs death as it is described in our text.

I. First, let us consider the threefold result of Christ’s

DEATH.

There is, first, the judgment of the world: ‘’ Now is the judgment of this world.” If you like, you may read it ‘< crisis “, for that is the Greek word used here: ‘’Now is the crisis of this world.” The world is sick, it grows worse; and the physician says that its malady has come to a climax, it is a case of kill or cure. There was a crisis in the world’s disease, and that crisis was when Christ died; his death was the turning-point, the hinge of the world’s history. There have been many hinges in history; every nation has a hinge in its history: the cross of Christ was the hinge of the world’s history, it had reached the turning-point. I thank God that the death of Christ was the future death of sin. When he died, the arch-enemy received his death-stroke. That death was the bruising of Christ’s heel; but in that death he bruised the old serpent’s head. Now there is hope for the world; its crisis is passed. Now will the gods of the heathen fall; now will the dark ignorance of men yield to the Light of the world. After this crisis, there shall come a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness; for Christ’s first coming is a pledge of his second coming, wherein he will exterminate sin, and make the wilderness and the solitary place to blossom as the rose. Thus we may render our Saviour’s words, “Now is the crisis of this world,” the turning-point, the hinge on which all its history hangs. Still, I greatly prefer to keep to our old version, which is a translation, whereas mine is only a borrowing of the original word “crisis.”

“Now is the judgment of this world.” This means that, when Christ died, the world that lieth in the wicked one, the ungodly world, was judged in this sense; first, it was convicted of being guiltiest of the guilty. I daresay you have heard people use pretty phrases about the dignity of human nature, and so on. They are lying phrases; for human nature is as bad as it can be. If you want the proof of that assertion, behold how God himself came here among men, incarnate virtue robed in love! Did men love him ‘? Did they fall down before him, and do him homage? The homage of the world was, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” The world hates virtue; it cannot bear perfection; it might endure benevolence, but absolute purity and righteousness it canaot, away with. Its native instincts are wrong; it is not towards the light that men are going, their backs are to the sun, they are journeying into the thick darkness.

And, next, the world was convicted of the stupendous crime of murdering the Son of God. I will not call it regicide, but deicide; iHE CRISIS OF THIS WORLD. 3

and this is the crime of crimes. Truly was the world guilty of all that proj)hets ever charged it with, and much more. When wicked men slew the Prince of life, the Holy One and the Just, then was it proven that the world is at heart atheistic, that it hates God, and would put God himself to death if he were within its grasp. Thus did men put the Incarnate God to death when he submitted himself to their power. You need not talk about the virtues of the world; it slew the Christ, and that is enough to condemn it. We want no other proof of its guilt; you cannot bring evidence more complete and overwhelming than this, they slew the Lord of life and glory, they said, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.”

Christ’s death was the judgment of this world, next, by sentencing the world; for if Christ, who was perfectly innocent, must die when he stood in the sinner’s place, what think you, 0 guilty men, will not you also die? If the Well-beloved of heaven, bearing nothing but imputed guilt, sins not his own, must nevertheless be smitten of God and afflicted, and a voice must be heard, “Awake, 0 sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts;” if he must die on yonder cruel tree, if he must cry, ‘’My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” then, be sure of this, there is wrath treasured up against the day of wrath, and no soul of man that doeth evil shall go unpunished. Is there not a God who is the Judge of all the earth, and who must do right? If it be right to smite the Innocent, who assumed the place of the guilty, it must surely be right that the truly guilty should die the death. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” So there was not only the conviction, but also the sentence of the world, when Jesus died.

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