The Motive and Motivation for Sacrifice
This is a transcript. It may contain small inaccuracies.
One of the points toward which God is taking each one of us who are His is to get us to the point where we are beyond flippancy, that we would be free from that which is glib, from that which is casual, from that which is cliché, from that which is mundane, from that which just represents words, from that which we haven't really fully, seriously, soberly considered. One of the things we must be very careful about, whether it's in our praying, whether it's in our teaching, or in any realm, any area of our life, is using mindless words. Pulling words out of our brains that sound right and not really thinking about it, so that what we say ends up being heartless—heartless. We say things that sound right, but what should attend those words is absent. It's absent because it's not really coming from our hearts; it's mechanical—mechanical. We don't really think about it, we haven't really weighed what we're saying, we haven't really considered what we're saying.
Still, we can come to the point where, God forbid, what we say is actually hypocritical, because we say the right things, but we don't really mean it. We sing songs steeped in lofty theology. What happens Monday morning? We get a call and we act like practical atheists. We say the right things, but we're not ready to live it. And God is bringing us, as His children, to the point where we would be free from that—free from empty, mindless speech.
And Christ is not only our Savior and our Shepherd, He is also our model, He is our example. Now we're to imitate Him. He's our Redeemer and He's our example. He has not only given us life, but He has demonstrated in His own life how we are to live this life that He has given to us. He is the way and He also tells us how to live while being on the way. He's been speaking here of His death. You remember in these verses, particularly the verses that precede the text that we just read together. He's been thinking of His death. He's talked about it, how a kernel of grain must die in order for there to be harvest. He must die in order to bring us salvation. And if He dies, we will surely be saved. Those of us chosen for salvation before time would be saved through His death. He's been talking about that.
And He's not only been talking about His death, He's also—you remember last week—He's been also talking about our death. To be His followers, we must also die. We must die to ourselves. We must die to our way. We must die to our own selfish ambitions, self-centeredness. We must die to our life. If we seek to save our lives in this world, we're going to lose them forever. But if we will lose our life in this world, or in the language of this text that He uses here, our Lord, in John chapter 12, if we hate our life in this world, we will keep our life for eternity. We will keep it for eternal life.
He's told us that to serve Him means what? To follow Him, right? Look at verse 26. He says, "If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him." To serve Christ means that we follow Him. Wherever He is, we are. His lot is our lot. His friends are our friends. His enemies are our enemies. That's what it means to walk with Christ. And His Father, who is our Father by faith in Christ, who is our Father by spiritual birth—His Father, who is our Father—honors those who serve His Son that way. That's a promise here. And people who don't serve His Son that way reveal that they don't serve Him at all—at all.
So He's been talking about His death. His death, our death. But now in verse 27 and following, we see that these words that were uttered from the lips of our blessed Lord have not been lightly spoken. No, not lightly spoken. Jesus isn't just talking about death. He has deeply, deeply, deeply felt the weight and the weightiness of every single word that He spoke. What He's talking about is real—real. What He's talking about involves real cost. And what He's talking about, He has given real, deep considerations.
So in these verses, we see both His motive and His motivation for laying down His life. His motive and His motivation for sacrifice, for the cross. Why? Why is Christ willing to die? Why is Christ willing to lay down His life? Why is Christ willing to shed His blood? What moves Him toward Calvary? Why should we be willing also to die? And what should move us to follow Him? Weighty words, not mindless, not flippant, not cliché, not glib, not superficial—fully, fully considered.
And the first thing I'd like us to see together this morning, as we look in verse 27, is Christ's troubled soul—my soul. "Now My soul has become dismayed," He says. Look at His troubled soul.
Now, I want to admit at the outset that there is a mystery in that statement that you and I will never be fully able to really delve into. It's just unfathomable. You can get to a certain part and just can't go beyond that. What went on in the mind and the heart of our Savior as He went to the cross, as He made His way to the hour, His hour of suffering, only God can fully know.
But what I do know is that what God revealed to us in Scripture, and what I do know is that our Savior was genuinely, deeply troubled in view of His coming death. And this tells us something. He was troubled, deeply troubled, dismayed before the garden of Gethsemane. We think of the garden, we think of that scene in the garden of Gethsemane, don't we? We see Him there wrestling. We see Him there sweating great drops of blood. We see Him—if not for being sustained by the Father, sending an angel—He could have perished in the garden under the weight of it all; aversion to the cup. We see Him in the garden of Gethsemane. We think of that being as agony, and we don't recognize, perhaps, what John lets us in on here in this text, that Christ was troubled, deeply troubled, before even He got to the garden of Gethsemane.
Luke, by the way, gives us the same picture. In Luke, chapter 12, verse 49—12:49 of Luke—Luke tells us, he writes, our Lord saying, "I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is finished!" There in Luke's account, we see something of what's going on internally, something inside of Him, *synecho*, distressed, literally to press together. But here in John, in our account in John 12, the word used, translated "dismayed," is a very, very strong word—*tarasso*, *tarasso*, troubled, dismayed. Literally, it means to be stirred up in the inner person, to be agitated, like a stirring of water, to get it really muddy, stirred up in the inner person, to be disturbed with various emotions, stirred. In some places, it even means to be terrified, to be in great distress, to be distraught. Well, this word was used of Herod in Matthew 2, in verse 3, when he heard that the King of the Jews had been born, he was—we're told—*tarasso*, troubled, dismayed. In Mark, chapter 6, in verse 50, it was used of the disciples being terrified when they thought they were seeing a ghost when Jesus was walking on the water. In Luke, chapter 1, it was used of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. Verse 12, it says, he was troubled—same word—when he saw the angel and fear fell upon him. That's the word, *tarasso*. It's used in Luke 24 of the startled reaction of the disciples. Remember, Jesus had visited with the men on the road to Emmaus after His resurrection, and after the conversation with Him, at a later time, Jesus suddenly appears in the midst of His disciples, and they were startled and frightened. And we read in verse 37 and 38 of Luke 24, they were thinking that they were seeing a spirit, a ghost. And He said to them, "Why are you *tarasso*, troubled, troubled?" It's used in Acts 17 twice of the disturbing—disturbing the crowds, stirring up of the crowds against the apostles. Stirring up is the word, *tarasso*, to be stirred up in your inner man, to be troubled, to be greatly distressed, to be startled. This is the word, Jesus says in verse 27, "Now My soul has become dismayed," *tarasso*. He's not just been talking about death. He feels it. He deeply feels it. He senses it.
Now, what does it say to us? Well, a few things. This says to us a few things. One, it speaks of the true humanity of Jesus. The true humanity of Jesus, doesn't it? It's possible for people to recognize in their minds the humanity of Jesus and not get a grip on the fact that He was divine. But it's also equally possible for people to think so much about the divinity of Jesus, the deity of Jesus, that they don't grasp the fact that He was really a man, the perfect man, the God man; that He took to Himself a true humanity; that in Jesus Christ, you have someone who was fully God and fully man. And He is to this day in heaven, the God man, the God man. That He really had a human soul. He had thoughts and emotions on this earth. He considered things. He weighed things in His heart. He felt this, "My soul has become dismayed." “Now is My soul deeply troubled.” And it was.
But it also speaks to us—this speaks to us of the horror of His death, of the horror of His death. It says to us that when Jesus speaks of laying down His life for His sheep, when He speaks of the kernel of grain that must die in order for there to be a great harvest, it is something weighty that He's talking about. It's not something casual. It's weighty. It's something weighing on Him heavily, deeply, something costly—costly.
There's something in His death, there's something in this death that He's going to die that is worthy of the perfect man who is God being dismayed, troubled by. There's something so heavy, so weighty, so horrible about this death that it is worthy of Him being deeply troubled. And may I just say this as well? Just to keep it in mind. You know, He allowed Himself to be troubled. He allowed Himself to feel this. Christ was never controlled by emotion. He was in control of every aspect of His life. So there's a lesson for us in the fact that He was troubled.
You say, well, what troubled Him? But why? Why was He dismayed? Well, what? Well, He makes it clear in His next statement, doesn't He? "Now My soul has become dismayed; and what shall I say? 'Father, save Me from this"—what?—"hour." It is the hour that troubles Him. The hour that troubles Him. It's His coming death. That's what troubles Him. It's His coming crucifixion.
And I have no doubt, no doubt, that the omniscient, the all-knowing Son of God, God the Son, the God-man was fully aware of the prospect of the physical suffering that awaits Him. That He would undergo enormous, enormous physical agony. And there was no more cruel way to die than by crucifixion. And He will be beaten without mercy. He knew that. He knew that. He's the omniscient Son of God. He knew that He would be beaten without mercy, flogged, bruised, a crown of thorns thrust on His blessed head. And that He will be crucified, nailed hands and feet, gasping for air, for breath on that cross, pushing Himself up to breathe, the pain of His torn flesh on His back.
I don't doubt for a second that He was fully aware of the immense physical suffering that He would undergo. But I submit to us, based on the Word of God, that is not why His soul has become dismayed. No, that is not why His soul was deeply troubled. What deeply troubled Him is an aspect of His death that no human being has ever, ever endured. The spiritual aspect of it, the spiritual reality of it. And ultimately, He alone would know all that is contained in those mysterious words: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" What does all that mean? I don't think we can fully comprehend it, but He could. And He knows, He knows it's on the horizon. It's coming very near. His hour has arrived, and He knows that He's going to suffer as a sin sacrifice. He's going to take upon Himself our guilt, and He's going to be crushed by God for our salvation. Commenting on this, Pastor MacArthur says, quote, "His trouble came not from anticipating physical suffering, but anticipating divine wrath, spiritual suffering. That was a terrifying reality. Though the nails must have gone through His hands and feet thousands of times as He thought about it, the agony of the sinless Son of God was not that He would be nailed, but that He would be judged by the wrath of God." And he ends with this: "Not that He would be stained with blood, but that He would be condemned for sins He had not committed. The sins of all who would ever believe, those tortured His soul with a fierceness."
So it speaks of His true humanity. It speaks of the horror of His death, but it also speaks to something else. It speaks of the trouble of His soul. It speaks of the trouble of His soul. It says to us that it's not always sinful for a soul to be troubled. It's not. Christ was sinless, but He's troubled. He's dismayed. And so you can have something set before you, something set before you by God Himself, something that you genuinely desire to accomplish, and without sinning, you still feel the weight of it. You're troubled. You still feel the weight of it. And I think too often people, Christian people, want to leave the impression that doing the will of God is the easiest thing in the world. But we really do a disservice when we leave that impression that doing the will of God is just something really easy, no weightiness to it, no difficulty associated with it, no trouble in the soul as you go through it, just sort of like you float through obedience. You glide, easy-breezy—lest, you know, people think you're unspiritual. I want to ask this morning, do we think that we're superior to Christ? Now, I grant you, His obedience involved a dimension that none of us will ever, ever know. His obedience will purchase our obedience, but it's still true to say that you have the sinless Son of God voluntarily choosing a mission given to Him by His Father, knowing the end of that mission from the beginning, having no doubt about the outcome of this mission, desiring it with all of His being, and yet, He still feels the weight of it. And the cost associated with it is real. It's not imagined. He is troubled, dismayed.
And I want to say to us this morning that our obedience has a cost associated with it, beloved. And there are going to be times that you and I are going to feel the weight of what it will mean to obey God in a given situation. If I obey God here, this will be the cost. And yes, God has set it before me, and yes, I must follow Him, and I want to follow Him, and ultimately from His Word, I know the outcome of it, but I still feel it, and it troubles me. Can that happen in our lives, and you and I not be guilty of sinning in that circumstance? Yes, yes.
Christ's troubled soul.
The second thing I want us to see together as we look at this portion of God's Word is Christ's triumphant perspective. Not only His troubled soul, but His triumphant perspective. How is He going to respond to this trouble in His soul, to this dismay in His soul? And we can state it negatively and positively. How does He respond?
Well, first of all, negatively. Negatively. He doesn't ask to be delivered from it, does He? Does He? We need to notice that because He Himself brings it up. That's why we bring it up, because He Himself brings it up. Christ brings it up. He wants us to recognize this, that He's not asking to be delivered from it. "My soul has become dismayed, and what shall I say? 'Father, save Me from this hour?'" Is that what I should say? Deliver me from this? And what is clearly implied is what? The implied answer is, of course not. No. No, no. That's not what I should say. That's not what I will say. In fact, He goes on to say, to put it this way, "But for this purpose I came to this hour." In other words, I've arrived at an hour that I aimed at. There's a purpose for me to be here, so I'm not asking for deliverance. I have marched to this hour. I'm troubled by it, but I'm not asking to be delivered from it.
It's an amazing thing, isn't it? When you really think about this. Because elsewhere, Jesus pointed out that He could have asked for deliverance in Matthew 26. Remember that account? They came to arrest our Lord. Matthew 26, verse 52: Jesus said to him, to Peter, "Put your sword back into its place." And you remember what this was about. The previous verse, verse 51: Peter drew out his sword, struck the slave of the high priest, cut off his ear, the ear of Malchus. Christ says, "Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels? Therefore, how will the Scriptures be fulfilled which say that it must happen this way?" Isn't that amazing? Did you hear that? Peter, don't you know that I could ask my Father and in just a moment, more than twelve legions of angels would be at my disposal? But if I were to do that, the Scripture will not be fulfilled, so I choose not to. Let that sink in. He could have asked to be delivered from this, but He didn't. This was something voluntary on the part of the Son of God - voluntary. John 10:17, "For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again." A mission given to Him by His Father, yet it is just as true to say chosen by the Son.
And in another sense, it was non-optional for Him to ask for deliverance, and what made it non-optional is the very nature of the Son of God. He is God incarnate, and God keeps His Word.
And what is happening to Christ is prophesied. It is given in Scripture. He's marching down a road set forth by God, marching according to the will of God. And how then should the Scripture be fulfilled if He were to ask for deliverance? So this is something that He must do in order for the Word of God to be fulfilled, and God will always fulfill His Word. And the only way for the Son of God to be delivered from it was at the expense of the fulfillment of Scripture, and the nature of God, the very nature of Christ, completely ruled that out.
Christ is troubled, but how does He face it? Negatively, we can say this: He doesn't ask to be delivered from it. He could have, but He didn't. In another sense, He couldn't have because He's God. I'll leave it at that. You're on your own with the rest.
But the second thing we could say about His triumphant perspective, to state it positively, what does He do? He looks right into the face of it, understanding the horror of it, understanding to the extent that He could have desired another way, He looks right into the face of it, and He chooses it. It was the very purpose for which He had come.
All the way back to John 3, remember when He performed His first sign, turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, and when Mary requested that He do something, He said, "My hour has not yet come." So all the way back to the beginning of His ministry, He has this hour in view. And so here over this 3-plus year period of time, He's been marching toward this particular hour. Would He march all the way to the hour and then ask to be delivered from it? No. It is for this purpose that He's come to this hour, and now He chooses it willingly, voluntarily. He looks straight into the face of the horror of it, and He chooses it. He's going to drink it all. He's going to experience every drop of what is required for us to be saved. He's going to drink that cup to the last drop.
So how does He do that? How does He do that? How does someone with a troubled soul—not asked to be delivered from what troubles Him—look straight into the face of the weightiness of it, understanding it perfectly, knowing exactly what it's going to cost to such an extent that His holy soul shrinks from the idea of it, and yet He chooses it? He answers the question for us here. He answers this question for us.
Look at the text, and this is amazing. "But for this purpose I came to this hour." What purpose, Lord? What purpose, Lord? What purpose, Lord? Verse 28, "Father, glorify Your name." This is it. "Father, glorify Your name." As His soul is troubled, what is His greatest desire? What is His one and only desire? The glory of God. The glory of God. The glory of the Father. And this is characteristic of our Lord: "Father, glorify Your name." No matter what it costs, glorify Your name.
What a magnificent illustration of committal into the hands of the Lord. The purpose Jesus said He came for was to glorify the Father. I only do what the Father tells Me to do, He said all along in His ministry, right? Repeatedly. What the Father wills for Me to do, I will do. What the Father shows Me to do, I will do. I only do what glorifies the Father. And here, this is the driving—the driving engine. This is the purpose. This is it. This is the answer to the question, why? "Father, glorify Your name." We read that all through the Gospel of John. He desires that the Father's name—the character of God, that is, the Father's name is all that is bound up in who God is, the character of God, the attributes of God, the purpose of God, the plans of God, the wisdom of God, the power of God—all of that to be put on display. He said, "Father, glorify Your name."
I love what Pastor MacArthur said here concerning how the Father will be glorified through the hour of death, the cross of Jesus Christ. Listen to what he says. He says, “The cross glorifies the Father in several ways. The cross puts on display all God's attributes. On the cross, you see God's love in action. You see His grace in action. You see His mercy in action, His justice, His wrath, His judgment. You see His wisdom. You see truth being vindicated. You see prophecy being fulfilled. His word is affirmed. You see righteousness declared. You see power declared. All of that is on the cross. God is putting on display more of His attributes in a concentrated form at the cross than in any other event in redemptive history. God is glorified in the event itself, the event of making Christ a substitute for sinners who bears our justice, our wrath, God's vengeance on us in our place. But the glory of God is further displayed at Calvary in the fact that it is by the death of Christ that God is able to redeem humans from all human history, bring them to heaven to forever glorify Him. It was the death of Jesus Christ that formed the hallelujah choir that occupies heaven.
So the Father will, by means of His revelation in the Son, cause the radiance of His own majestic attributes to become publicly displayed at the cross in order that He might redeem people from all human history who will forever gather into His presence and give Him glory by ascribing to Him the honor that He deserves.” End of quote.
Father, glorify Your name. Your name refers to all that God is. The name stands for the person of God, the character of God. And that's the strength of His resolve. That's the motive and that's the motivation that takes Him to Calvary, that takes Him to the cross. Let me put it this way, beloved. The chief end of the life of the Son of God is the glory of His Father. The chief end of the life of the Son of God is the glory of His Father.
Do you realize this morning that's the chief end of God? What is the chief end of God? What's the chief end of God? What's God's chief end in all that is made, in all that is created in your life, in my life? What is God working toward? What is His chief end? What is the answer? The glory of God. The glory of God. God's chief end is the glory of God.
Do we really understand that? Does it really sink in? Do we get that into our minds and hearts that God's chief end for your life and my life is not our happiness? God's chief end for my life and your life is not for our comfort, is not for our ease, is not for smooth sailing? Do you ever wonder why we go through so much trouble in this life? God, is it Your goal for me, for me to be happy and healthy and go in this life smooth sailing? Now certainly, certainly we can and ought to be joyful because we have everything when we have Christ. But we do face and endure trials and go through many troubles.
Why does God allow us to go through things that strain us and pressure us and trouble us? Because His chief end is His glory and His glory is my good. And we will never be able to deal with those troubles in an obedient way, not running away from them, but willingly, submissively face them knowing it's the will of God. We will never be able to live our lives that way until our chief end is His chief end. Father, glorify Your name. Let that sink in, beloved. It's for this purpose that I've come to this hour that You would be glorified. That's the right motive, isn't it? That's the right motivation. The Father affirms it and we'll talk about it more next week, Lord willing. Then a voice came from heaven, "I have both glorified it and will glorify it again." But Christ's chief end is the Father's chief end. Christ's desire is the Father's desire. What Christ has voiced, the Father will do, has done and will do.
Now, with the remaining time that we have this morning, I want us to take this and apply it. Let's apply this together. This is very important. Let's apply it.
First of all, by way of application, I would ask us, do we ever underestimate—do we ever underestimate—the unfathomable difficulty of our salvation? Do we ever underestimate the unfathomable difficulty of our salvation, what it took to save us? And I say this reverently, but are we guilty of thinking that our salvation is something that was easy for God to do? I think we're guilty of that at times, more often than not. We understand that God is almighty, He's all-powerful, and that He's utterly sovereign, and so we speak—we speak—we get used to that, we speak mindlessly, and at times, it grieves my heart to say this flippantly, flippantly: Christ came into the world to save sinners, He died on the cross, He was raised from the dead, that's how I'm saved. And we think of it and we speak of it as if it were easy for the Son of God to do it.
Do we dishonor the blood of Christ by making it, in our minds, something easy, something flippant, something light, something without much thought or without much cost? Or do we take these statements of God's Holy Word soberly, seriously? We take them to heart, and do we realize that sin—sin is something so heinous to God and that it would require death on the part of the Son of God, that in His perfect humanity as the God-man caused Him so much trouble. How wicked are we? How heinous is our sin? So heinous that Christ would die—that would have to die—the kind of death that, as He considered it, caused Him to sweat great drops of blood in the garden. That's how great.
And I want to say to us this morning, it was no easy thing for us to be saved. It was very, very difficult. If the Son of God understood the horror of it; if He understood the horror of what He must suffer to save you and me, do we understand the horror of it? Do we understand that sin is no light thing, that it cannot be dealt with easily? One sin, one sin. Genesis 3, one sin. The wages of sin, singular. It required something that the angels in heaven look upon with wonder, that God would take to Himself sinless humanity, suffer on a tree, becoming a curse for us that we might be delivered from the curse.
Go back to Good Friday and that cry of dereliction. If the angels look upon it with wonder, then what should your response and mine be to it? And how often we treat it as if it was a light thing. And do we understand if Christ saw the horror of what He must suffer in order to save us? Do we understand the horror of what sinners—what sinners will experience for the rest of eternity if they reject Christ?
Hebrews 2, verse 3: "How will we escape if we neglect, what is the word of God say? so great a salvation?" That God would do such a thing to save sinners, that sinners would look into the face of it and say, no—thank you, but no. How will anyone escape who has that attitude toward what Christ suffered to save sinners? And in Hebrews 10, verse 31, we read, "It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Do we understand the difficulty of salvation?
Secondly, by way of application, second question: do we take seriously that His response to His troubled soul was meant by God to be a lesson for us? Do we take seriously that His response—Christ's response—to His troubled soul was meant to be by God a lesson for us? Do you look at Christ and how He responds to His troubled soul and you admire Him, you adore Him, you worship Him in view of it, but then you don't make the connection that the way He responded to His troubled soul is to be a lesson for you and for me as we live our lives on earth?
Do you realize that God meant for this to be an example for us? That we should imitate, that we should follow? Think about it. Why does Christ even mention that His soul is troubled? Why is it recorded for us? Because He wants us to know, doesn't He? He wants us to know. He wants us to know, and there's a lesson in it for us.
In fact, you know the Bible makes a direct connection. I want you to look at 1 Peter chapter four with me. 1 Peter chapter four. And look at verse one: "Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with"—what does the Bible say?—"the same purpose." The same purpose. The same *anea*. The same way of thinking. The same intention. Same purpose, same way of thinking, same mindset. "Because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to no longer live the rest of the time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God."
“Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh”, he says, look at His suffering, behold His suffering, and arm yourselves also. Have as your weapon in this warfare—is the idea—you be armed with the same thought, with the same way of thinking, the same purpose. You see, I must understand His thinking to be armed in my thinking.
I must understand what He saw, what He thought, what He felt, what His motive was, what His motivation was, in order for me to be armed with the same way of thinking as I face suffering in this world and in this life. Now, let me say at this point, there are two ways to take this passage. Let me give you both.
One way is this. What is being said is this: "Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh," verse one. Now, what did Christ suffering in the flesh mean for Him? This view says, well, it meant death. It meant death—He suffered in the flesh, that's death. Now you arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, that is, you be ready to die. And realize this: whoever has suffered in the flesh—he goes on to say, i.e., died—whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. And that's a perfect tense in the Greek language. It's something that is finished, done with, ceased from sin. So the idea is, realize the worst thing that could happen to you is you die. You die as a martyr. Someone is going to kill you because of your association with Christ. The worst thing that could happen to you is actually the best thing that will ever happen to you, because the moment you die, this current relationship you have with sin, this battle that we have with sin—guess what—it's over. And it's true, isn't it? It's over. No more struggle with sin. If you're killed in the name of Christ, there's no more struggle with sin. You have ceased from sin. So there's nothing for you to fear in death. There's nothing for you to fear in martyrdom. And the worst thing that could ever happen to you will be, in fact, the best thing that has ever happened to you.
How many believers here this morning will be glad when your struggle with sin is over, right? No more fighting with the remaining corruption. No more being distracted and pulled away and failing and disappointing God and grieving the heart of God. So the worst thing that can happen to you is actually the best thing that will ever happen for you.
And in view of that, verse two: "so as to no longer live the rest of the time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God." In light of this understanding that I am to arm myself with the same mind, the same purpose that Christ had, understanding that the worst thing that could ever happen to me will be the best thing that ever happened to me—now, how should I live my life now in light of that, with the rest of the time that I have in the flesh? How should I live? He says, not for the lusts of men, not for human passions, not for what I would most want from my human point of view, what would be most comfortable, most pleasant, most self-satisfying, but rather I'm living—I'm to live—for the will of God, not for sin. You see, look, if what I really desire is to be free from sin, why do I want to live in sin right now? If what I say, if what I say I look forward to is to be sinless one day, then why would I want to live my time on this earth pursuing sin? Let me instead live for the will of God. And if you look at Christ, if you look at Him in John 12, He expresses that in His incarnation. There's something in this hour that He dreads, but He's not living for human passions, He's living for the will of God. "Father, glorify Your name." That's one way to take this passage.
But there's another way to take this passage—not to completely discard the first view, but to not really restrict it. And let me explain. And I'm compelled, and I think this is a more natural way to understand it, a more transparent way to understand it, and that is that the first part of the equation stays the same: "Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh," now, not necessarily—this is where I would really slightly move away—not necessarily the, though He did die, of course, not just necessarily tying it to death only. Because if you look at the context here, a lot of what Peter's talking about has to do with slander, people attacking us verbally, mistreating us, and so He's not just talking about death. All our sufferings as a Christian—I take it to be broader. We look at how Christ endured His suffering, and we're to arm ourselves with the same purpose, the same mind. Now, get this, because "he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin." Whoever has done this has ceased from sin. You say, well, what does that mean? It means, beloved, that the rule of sin has been broken in their lives. The rule, the mastery, the dominion of sin has been broken in their lives. Show me someone who's a genuine follower, a genuine disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is where their Master is, whose lot is His lot, whose friends are His friends, whose enemies are His enemies, who would be willing to follow Him wherever He is, even if it does mean death, and I'll show you someone who is saved. They're not a slave to sin anymore. The rule of sin has been broken in their life, and in that sense, they ceased from sin as a pattern. Their old relationship to sin, where they were a slave to sin, has been broken forever. They've been set free.
And the reason why, verse two, so as, so as. The reason why this rule of sin has been broken in their life by God is so as—so that they would no longer live on this earth pursuing the lusts of men, but to live for the will of God. Do you realize, beloved, God has saved you, He has set you free from the rule, the dominion of sin, and He has broken your old relationship with sin forever. Why did He set you free? Not so that you can live for yourself, but so that you would live for Him. Not according to your human passions, but according to His will.
And so we see Christ, our Savior and Lord, troubled in His soul, but choosing the will of God, for His chief end is God's chief end, and that is to glorify His Father. And we're told in this verse here by Peter that we must be armed by the same purpose, with the same purpose, the same thinking, the same mindset, or I will never follow Him wherever He goes and be wherever He is and do the will of God. And I say this this morning on the authority of the Holy Scripture, that if we're not armed with that mindset, we will not go where God wants us to go. We will not do what God wants us to do. We will not glorify Him, as I know it's in our hearts to glorify Him.
We must look at the Lord Jesus Christ in John 12 and say He mentioned it for a reason. He wants us to know about it for a reason, and Peter tells us why. We must be armed with the same purpose, with the same thinking, with the same mindset, and so our motive, our motivation must be the same motive and motivation that Christ had. What is that? To glorify God, to glorify God.
Why would I obey God if it would cost me my job? Because my chief end is not to have a job, my chief end is to glorify Him, right? Why would I obey the Lord if it means it will cost me my family relationships? Because my chief end in life is not to be pleasing to my family, but to be pleasing to God. Why would I choose to obey God if it means that I have to break off a friendship or a romantic interest? Why? Because my chief end in life is not to maintain a friendship or get married at any cost. My chief end in life is to glorify God, and if obedience to God means a denial of human passions, then let me deny all of that to the glory of God.
That's how we've been saved to live, which gives the last and third question: Do you find that you share the same motive and motivation of Christ, beloved? Do you find that you share the same motive and motivation of Christ? Are we, beloved, willing to get beyond flippancy? Are we willing to get beyond the cliche? Are we willing to get beyond the empty, mindless words? Are we willing to think and really weigh what we're saying, what we're singing?
And can we honestly say, I am living for the will of God? Can we honestly say, I have one ambition, that my heavenly Father and my Savior would be glorified, and in comparison, nothing else matters to me. Nothing. Whatever the cost, whatever the trouble, no matter how weighty, no matter how horrific, Father, glorify Your name. If You choose to glorify Yourself in me through sickness, glorify Your name. If it means to glorify Your name in me through financial leanness, glorify Your name. If it means that You are to glorify Your name in me through me being, whatever the situation, whatever the circumstances, I have to find satisfaction only in You, Lord, glorify Your name. Whatever it means, that's what I want, for You to be glorified. Are those just words, or do you mean it? Do I mean it?
Show me someone who's armed with that mindset, and I'll show you someone who has ceased from sin, in the sense that their old relationship to sin has been broken, they're truly saved. The pattern of sin is broken. Can we say this is the fuel and the focus of our lives, to glorify God?
I know this, you can be raised in church, you can hear the gospel all your life, you can know a lot of Bible verses, you can be able to tell the gospel as well as an evangelist, but until a man, a woman, a young person has genuinely been converted, genuinely been saved, that is until they are born again, they will not have in their hearts to glorify God. They won't.
The pressure that we live with, that moves us to live for Christ, is not external, beloved. Now God may use externals, but I give Him praise, it is internal. It comes from within, it is in the hearts of His people, to live for Him. It is in the hearts of people to cry out, for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Has that miracle of new life been worked in you? Have you looked to Christ in such a way that with genuineness, you gave Him your life, all of you, so that now for the rest of your life, it is in you to live for Him? Not from mom, not from dad, not from husband, not from wife, not from friends, not from people, or what people think, in you to live for Him. And if nobody else ever motivated you, God motivates you, your new nature motivates you. Do you know anything about that?
Now my soul has become dismayed. What shall I say? "Father, save Me from this hour? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, Father, glorify Your name."
May we be armed with the same purpose, with the same way of thinking.
Let's pray.
Still, we can come to the point where, God forbid, what we say is actually hypocritical, because we say the right things, but we don't really mean it. We sing songs steeped in lofty theology. What happens Monday morning? We get a call and we act like practical atheists. We say the right things, but we're not ready to live it. And God is bringing us, as His children, to the point where we would be free from that—free from empty, mindless speech.
And Christ is not only our Savior and our Shepherd, He is also our model, He is our example. Now we're to imitate Him. He's our Redeemer and He's our example. He has not only given us life, but He has demonstrated in His own life how we are to live this life that He has given to us. He is the way and He also tells us how to live while being on the way. He's been speaking here of His death. You remember in these verses, particularly the verses that precede the text that we just read together. He's been thinking of His death. He's talked about it, how a kernel of grain must die in order for there to be harvest. He must die in order to bring us salvation. And if He dies, we will surely be saved. Those of us chosen for salvation before time would be saved through His death. He's been talking about that.
And He's not only been talking about His death, He's also—you remember last week—He's been also talking about our death. To be His followers, we must also die. We must die to ourselves. We must die to our way. We must die to our own selfish ambitions, self-centeredness. We must die to our life. If we seek to save our lives in this world, we're going to lose them forever. But if we will lose our life in this world, or in the language of this text that He uses here, our Lord, in John chapter 12, if we hate our life in this world, we will keep our life for eternity. We will keep it for eternal life.
He's told us that to serve Him means what? To follow Him, right? Look at verse 26. He says, "If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him." To serve Christ means that we follow Him. Wherever He is, we are. His lot is our lot. His friends are our friends. His enemies are our enemies. That's what it means to walk with Christ. And His Father, who is our Father by faith in Christ, who is our Father by spiritual birth—His Father, who is our Father—honors those who serve His Son that way. That's a promise here. And people who don't serve His Son that way reveal that they don't serve Him at all—at all.
So He's been talking about His death. His death, our death. But now in verse 27 and following, we see that these words that were uttered from the lips of our blessed Lord have not been lightly spoken. No, not lightly spoken. Jesus isn't just talking about death. He has deeply, deeply, deeply felt the weight and the weightiness of every single word that He spoke. What He's talking about is real—real. What He's talking about involves real cost. And what He's talking about, He has given real, deep considerations.
So in these verses, we see both His motive and His motivation for laying down His life. His motive and His motivation for sacrifice, for the cross. Why? Why is Christ willing to die? Why is Christ willing to lay down His life? Why is Christ willing to shed His blood? What moves Him toward Calvary? Why should we be willing also to die? And what should move us to follow Him? Weighty words, not mindless, not flippant, not cliché, not glib, not superficial—fully, fully considered.
- Christ’s Troubled Soul, v. 27
And the first thing I'd like us to see together this morning, as we look in verse 27, is Christ's troubled soul—my soul. "Now My soul has become dismayed," He says. Look at His troubled soul.
Now, I want to admit at the outset that there is a mystery in that statement that you and I will never be fully able to really delve into. It's just unfathomable. You can get to a certain part and just can't go beyond that. What went on in the mind and the heart of our Savior as He went to the cross, as He made His way to the hour, His hour of suffering, only God can fully know.
But what I do know is that what God revealed to us in Scripture, and what I do know is that our Savior was genuinely, deeply troubled in view of His coming death. And this tells us something. He was troubled, deeply troubled, dismayed before the garden of Gethsemane. We think of the garden, we think of that scene in the garden of Gethsemane, don't we? We see Him there wrestling. We see Him there sweating great drops of blood. We see Him—if not for being sustained by the Father, sending an angel—He could have perished in the garden under the weight of it all; aversion to the cup. We see Him in the garden of Gethsemane. We think of that being as agony, and we don't recognize, perhaps, what John lets us in on here in this text, that Christ was troubled, deeply troubled, before even He got to the garden of Gethsemane.
Luke, by the way, gives us the same picture. In Luke, chapter 12, verse 49—12:49 of Luke—Luke tells us, he writes, our Lord saying, "I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is finished!" There in Luke's account, we see something of what's going on internally, something inside of Him, *synecho*, distressed, literally to press together. But here in John, in our account in John 12, the word used, translated "dismayed," is a very, very strong word—*tarasso*, *tarasso*, troubled, dismayed. Literally, it means to be stirred up in the inner person, to be agitated, like a stirring of water, to get it really muddy, stirred up in the inner person, to be disturbed with various emotions, stirred. In some places, it even means to be terrified, to be in great distress, to be distraught. Well, this word was used of Herod in Matthew 2, in verse 3, when he heard that the King of the Jews had been born, he was—we're told—*tarasso*, troubled, dismayed. In Mark, chapter 6, in verse 50, it was used of the disciples being terrified when they thought they were seeing a ghost when Jesus was walking on the water. In Luke, chapter 1, it was used of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. Verse 12, it says, he was troubled—same word—when he saw the angel and fear fell upon him. That's the word, *tarasso*. It's used in Luke 24 of the startled reaction of the disciples. Remember, Jesus had visited with the men on the road to Emmaus after His resurrection, and after the conversation with Him, at a later time, Jesus suddenly appears in the midst of His disciples, and they were startled and frightened. And we read in verse 37 and 38 of Luke 24, they were thinking that they were seeing a spirit, a ghost. And He said to them, "Why are you *tarasso*, troubled, troubled?" It's used in Acts 17 twice of the disturbing—disturbing the crowds, stirring up of the crowds against the apostles. Stirring up is the word, *tarasso*, to be stirred up in your inner man, to be troubled, to be greatly distressed, to be startled. This is the word, Jesus says in verse 27, "Now My soul has become dismayed," *tarasso*. He's not just been talking about death. He feels it. He deeply feels it. He senses it.
Now, what does it say to us? Well, a few things. This says to us a few things. One, it speaks of the true humanity of Jesus. The true humanity of Jesus, doesn't it? It's possible for people to recognize in their minds the humanity of Jesus and not get a grip on the fact that He was divine. But it's also equally possible for people to think so much about the divinity of Jesus, the deity of Jesus, that they don't grasp the fact that He was really a man, the perfect man, the God man; that He took to Himself a true humanity; that in Jesus Christ, you have someone who was fully God and fully man. And He is to this day in heaven, the God man, the God man. That He really had a human soul. He had thoughts and emotions on this earth. He considered things. He weighed things in His heart. He felt this, "My soul has become dismayed." “Now is My soul deeply troubled.” And it was.
But it also speaks to us—this speaks to us of the horror of His death, of the horror of His death. It says to us that when Jesus speaks of laying down His life for His sheep, when He speaks of the kernel of grain that must die in order for there to be a great harvest, it is something weighty that He's talking about. It's not something casual. It's weighty. It's something weighing on Him heavily, deeply, something costly—costly.
There's something in His death, there's something in this death that He's going to die that is worthy of the perfect man who is God being dismayed, troubled by. There's something so heavy, so weighty, so horrible about this death that it is worthy of Him being deeply troubled. And may I just say this as well? Just to keep it in mind. You know, He allowed Himself to be troubled. He allowed Himself to feel this. Christ was never controlled by emotion. He was in control of every aspect of His life. So there's a lesson for us in the fact that He was troubled.
You say, well, what troubled Him? But why? Why was He dismayed? Well, what? Well, He makes it clear in His next statement, doesn't He? "Now My soul has become dismayed; and what shall I say? 'Father, save Me from this"—what?—"hour." It is the hour that troubles Him. The hour that troubles Him. It's His coming death. That's what troubles Him. It's His coming crucifixion.
And I have no doubt, no doubt, that the omniscient, the all-knowing Son of God, God the Son, the God-man was fully aware of the prospect of the physical suffering that awaits Him. That He would undergo enormous, enormous physical agony. And there was no more cruel way to die than by crucifixion. And He will be beaten without mercy. He knew that. He knew that. He's the omniscient Son of God. He knew that He would be beaten without mercy, flogged, bruised, a crown of thorns thrust on His blessed head. And that He will be crucified, nailed hands and feet, gasping for air, for breath on that cross, pushing Himself up to breathe, the pain of His torn flesh on His back.
I don't doubt for a second that He was fully aware of the immense physical suffering that He would undergo. But I submit to us, based on the Word of God, that is not why His soul has become dismayed. No, that is not why His soul was deeply troubled. What deeply troubled Him is an aspect of His death that no human being has ever, ever endured. The spiritual aspect of it, the spiritual reality of it. And ultimately, He alone would know all that is contained in those mysterious words: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" What does all that mean? I don't think we can fully comprehend it, but He could. And He knows, He knows it's on the horizon. It's coming very near. His hour has arrived, and He knows that He's going to suffer as a sin sacrifice. He's going to take upon Himself our guilt, and He's going to be crushed by God for our salvation. Commenting on this, Pastor MacArthur says, quote, "His trouble came not from anticipating physical suffering, but anticipating divine wrath, spiritual suffering. That was a terrifying reality. Though the nails must have gone through His hands and feet thousands of times as He thought about it, the agony of the sinless Son of God was not that He would be nailed, but that He would be judged by the wrath of God." And he ends with this: "Not that He would be stained with blood, but that He would be condemned for sins He had not committed. The sins of all who would ever believe, those tortured His soul with a fierceness."
So it speaks of His true humanity. It speaks of the horror of His death, but it also speaks to something else. It speaks of the trouble of His soul. It speaks of the trouble of His soul. It says to us that it's not always sinful for a soul to be troubled. It's not. Christ was sinless, but He's troubled. He's dismayed. And so you can have something set before you, something set before you by God Himself, something that you genuinely desire to accomplish, and without sinning, you still feel the weight of it. You're troubled. You still feel the weight of it. And I think too often people, Christian people, want to leave the impression that doing the will of God is the easiest thing in the world. But we really do a disservice when we leave that impression that doing the will of God is just something really easy, no weightiness to it, no difficulty associated with it, no trouble in the soul as you go through it, just sort of like you float through obedience. You glide, easy-breezy—lest, you know, people think you're unspiritual. I want to ask this morning, do we think that we're superior to Christ? Now, I grant you, His obedience involved a dimension that none of us will ever, ever know. His obedience will purchase our obedience, but it's still true to say that you have the sinless Son of God voluntarily choosing a mission given to Him by His Father, knowing the end of that mission from the beginning, having no doubt about the outcome of this mission, desiring it with all of His being, and yet, He still feels the weight of it. And the cost associated with it is real. It's not imagined. He is troubled, dismayed.
And I want to say to us this morning that our obedience has a cost associated with it, beloved. And there are going to be times that you and I are going to feel the weight of what it will mean to obey God in a given situation. If I obey God here, this will be the cost. And yes, God has set it before me, and yes, I must follow Him, and I want to follow Him, and ultimately from His Word, I know the outcome of it, but I still feel it, and it troubles me. Can that happen in our lives, and you and I not be guilty of sinning in that circumstance? Yes, yes.
Christ's troubled soul.
- Christ’s Triumphant Perspective, vv. 27-28a
The second thing I want us to see together as we look at this portion of God's Word is Christ's triumphant perspective. Not only His troubled soul, but His triumphant perspective. How is He going to respond to this trouble in His soul, to this dismay in His soul? And we can state it negatively and positively. How does He respond?
Well, first of all, negatively. Negatively. He doesn't ask to be delivered from it, does He? Does He? We need to notice that because He Himself brings it up. That's why we bring it up, because He Himself brings it up. Christ brings it up. He wants us to recognize this, that He's not asking to be delivered from it. "My soul has become dismayed, and what shall I say? 'Father, save Me from this hour?'" Is that what I should say? Deliver me from this? And what is clearly implied is what? The implied answer is, of course not. No. No, no. That's not what I should say. That's not what I will say. In fact, He goes on to say, to put it this way, "But for this purpose I came to this hour." In other words, I've arrived at an hour that I aimed at. There's a purpose for me to be here, so I'm not asking for deliverance. I have marched to this hour. I'm troubled by it, but I'm not asking to be delivered from it.
It's an amazing thing, isn't it? When you really think about this. Because elsewhere, Jesus pointed out that He could have asked for deliverance in Matthew 26. Remember that account? They came to arrest our Lord. Matthew 26, verse 52: Jesus said to him, to Peter, "Put your sword back into its place." And you remember what this was about. The previous verse, verse 51: Peter drew out his sword, struck the slave of the high priest, cut off his ear, the ear of Malchus. Christ says, "Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels? Therefore, how will the Scriptures be fulfilled which say that it must happen this way?" Isn't that amazing? Did you hear that? Peter, don't you know that I could ask my Father and in just a moment, more than twelve legions of angels would be at my disposal? But if I were to do that, the Scripture will not be fulfilled, so I choose not to. Let that sink in. He could have asked to be delivered from this, but He didn't. This was something voluntary on the part of the Son of God - voluntary. John 10:17, "For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again." A mission given to Him by His Father, yet it is just as true to say chosen by the Son.
And in another sense, it was non-optional for Him to ask for deliverance, and what made it non-optional is the very nature of the Son of God. He is God incarnate, and God keeps His Word.
And what is happening to Christ is prophesied. It is given in Scripture. He's marching down a road set forth by God, marching according to the will of God. And how then should the Scripture be fulfilled if He were to ask for deliverance? So this is something that He must do in order for the Word of God to be fulfilled, and God will always fulfill His Word. And the only way for the Son of God to be delivered from it was at the expense of the fulfillment of Scripture, and the nature of God, the very nature of Christ, completely ruled that out.
Christ is troubled, but how does He face it? Negatively, we can say this: He doesn't ask to be delivered from it. He could have, but He didn't. In another sense, He couldn't have because He's God. I'll leave it at that. You're on your own with the rest.
But the second thing we could say about His triumphant perspective, to state it positively, what does He do? He looks right into the face of it, understanding the horror of it, understanding to the extent that He could have desired another way, He looks right into the face of it, and He chooses it. It was the very purpose for which He had come.
All the way back to John 3, remember when He performed His first sign, turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, and when Mary requested that He do something, He said, "My hour has not yet come." So all the way back to the beginning of His ministry, He has this hour in view. And so here over this 3-plus year period of time, He's been marching toward this particular hour. Would He march all the way to the hour and then ask to be delivered from it? No. It is for this purpose that He's come to this hour, and now He chooses it willingly, voluntarily. He looks straight into the face of the horror of it, and He chooses it. He's going to drink it all. He's going to experience every drop of what is required for us to be saved. He's going to drink that cup to the last drop.
So how does He do that? How does He do that? How does someone with a troubled soul—not asked to be delivered from what troubles Him—look straight into the face of the weightiness of it, understanding it perfectly, knowing exactly what it's going to cost to such an extent that His holy soul shrinks from the idea of it, and yet He chooses it? He answers the question for us here. He answers this question for us.
Look at the text, and this is amazing. "But for this purpose I came to this hour." What purpose, Lord? What purpose, Lord? What purpose, Lord? Verse 28, "Father, glorify Your name." This is it. "Father, glorify Your name." As His soul is troubled, what is His greatest desire? What is His one and only desire? The glory of God. The glory of God. The glory of the Father. And this is characteristic of our Lord: "Father, glorify Your name." No matter what it costs, glorify Your name.
What a magnificent illustration of committal into the hands of the Lord. The purpose Jesus said He came for was to glorify the Father. I only do what the Father tells Me to do, He said all along in His ministry, right? Repeatedly. What the Father wills for Me to do, I will do. What the Father shows Me to do, I will do. I only do what glorifies the Father. And here, this is the driving—the driving engine. This is the purpose. This is it. This is the answer to the question, why? "Father, glorify Your name." We read that all through the Gospel of John. He desires that the Father's name—the character of God, that is, the Father's name is all that is bound up in who God is, the character of God, the attributes of God, the purpose of God, the plans of God, the wisdom of God, the power of God—all of that to be put on display. He said, "Father, glorify Your name."
I love what Pastor MacArthur said here concerning how the Father will be glorified through the hour of death, the cross of Jesus Christ. Listen to what he says. He says, “The cross glorifies the Father in several ways. The cross puts on display all God's attributes. On the cross, you see God's love in action. You see His grace in action. You see His mercy in action, His justice, His wrath, His judgment. You see His wisdom. You see truth being vindicated. You see prophecy being fulfilled. His word is affirmed. You see righteousness declared. You see power declared. All of that is on the cross. God is putting on display more of His attributes in a concentrated form at the cross than in any other event in redemptive history. God is glorified in the event itself, the event of making Christ a substitute for sinners who bears our justice, our wrath, God's vengeance on us in our place. But the glory of God is further displayed at Calvary in the fact that it is by the death of Christ that God is able to redeem humans from all human history, bring them to heaven to forever glorify Him. It was the death of Jesus Christ that formed the hallelujah choir that occupies heaven.
So the Father will, by means of His revelation in the Son, cause the radiance of His own majestic attributes to become publicly displayed at the cross in order that He might redeem people from all human history who will forever gather into His presence and give Him glory by ascribing to Him the honor that He deserves.” End of quote.
Father, glorify Your name. Your name refers to all that God is. The name stands for the person of God, the character of God. And that's the strength of His resolve. That's the motive and that's the motivation that takes Him to Calvary, that takes Him to the cross. Let me put it this way, beloved. The chief end of the life of the Son of God is the glory of His Father. The chief end of the life of the Son of God is the glory of His Father.
Do you realize this morning that's the chief end of God? What is the chief end of God? What's the chief end of God? What's God's chief end in all that is made, in all that is created in your life, in my life? What is God working toward? What is His chief end? What is the answer? The glory of God. The glory of God. God's chief end is the glory of God.
Do we really understand that? Does it really sink in? Do we get that into our minds and hearts that God's chief end for your life and my life is not our happiness? God's chief end for my life and your life is not for our comfort, is not for our ease, is not for smooth sailing? Do you ever wonder why we go through so much trouble in this life? God, is it Your goal for me, for me to be happy and healthy and go in this life smooth sailing? Now certainly, certainly we can and ought to be joyful because we have everything when we have Christ. But we do face and endure trials and go through many troubles.
Why does God allow us to go through things that strain us and pressure us and trouble us? Because His chief end is His glory and His glory is my good. And we will never be able to deal with those troubles in an obedient way, not running away from them, but willingly, submissively face them knowing it's the will of God. We will never be able to live our lives that way until our chief end is His chief end. Father, glorify Your name. Let that sink in, beloved. It's for this purpose that I've come to this hour that You would be glorified. That's the right motive, isn't it? That's the right motivation. The Father affirms it and we'll talk about it more next week, Lord willing. Then a voice came from heaven, "I have both glorified it and will glorify it again." But Christ's chief end is the Father's chief end. Christ's desire is the Father's desire. What Christ has voiced, the Father will do, has done and will do.
Now, with the remaining time that we have this morning, I want us to take this and apply it. Let's apply this together. This is very important. Let's apply it.
First of all, by way of application, I would ask us, do we ever underestimate—do we ever underestimate—the unfathomable difficulty of our salvation? Do we ever underestimate the unfathomable difficulty of our salvation, what it took to save us? And I say this reverently, but are we guilty of thinking that our salvation is something that was easy for God to do? I think we're guilty of that at times, more often than not. We understand that God is almighty, He's all-powerful, and that He's utterly sovereign, and so we speak—we speak—we get used to that, we speak mindlessly, and at times, it grieves my heart to say this flippantly, flippantly: Christ came into the world to save sinners, He died on the cross, He was raised from the dead, that's how I'm saved. And we think of it and we speak of it as if it were easy for the Son of God to do it.
Do we dishonor the blood of Christ by making it, in our minds, something easy, something flippant, something light, something without much thought or without much cost? Or do we take these statements of God's Holy Word soberly, seriously? We take them to heart, and do we realize that sin—sin is something so heinous to God and that it would require death on the part of the Son of God, that in His perfect humanity as the God-man caused Him so much trouble. How wicked are we? How heinous is our sin? So heinous that Christ would die—that would have to die—the kind of death that, as He considered it, caused Him to sweat great drops of blood in the garden. That's how great.
And I want to say to us this morning, it was no easy thing for us to be saved. It was very, very difficult. If the Son of God understood the horror of it; if He understood the horror of what He must suffer to save you and me, do we understand the horror of it? Do we understand that sin is no light thing, that it cannot be dealt with easily? One sin, one sin. Genesis 3, one sin. The wages of sin, singular. It required something that the angels in heaven look upon with wonder, that God would take to Himself sinless humanity, suffer on a tree, becoming a curse for us that we might be delivered from the curse.
Go back to Good Friday and that cry of dereliction. If the angels look upon it with wonder, then what should your response and mine be to it? And how often we treat it as if it was a light thing. And do we understand if Christ saw the horror of what He must suffer in order to save us? Do we understand the horror of what sinners—what sinners will experience for the rest of eternity if they reject Christ?
Hebrews 2, verse 3: "How will we escape if we neglect, what is the word of God say? so great a salvation?" That God would do such a thing to save sinners, that sinners would look into the face of it and say, no—thank you, but no. How will anyone escape who has that attitude toward what Christ suffered to save sinners? And in Hebrews 10, verse 31, we read, "It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Do we understand the difficulty of salvation?
Secondly, by way of application, second question: do we take seriously that His response to His troubled soul was meant by God to be a lesson for us? Do we take seriously that His response—Christ's response—to His troubled soul was meant to be by God a lesson for us? Do you look at Christ and how He responds to His troubled soul and you admire Him, you adore Him, you worship Him in view of it, but then you don't make the connection that the way He responded to His troubled soul is to be a lesson for you and for me as we live our lives on earth?
Do you realize that God meant for this to be an example for us? That we should imitate, that we should follow? Think about it. Why does Christ even mention that His soul is troubled? Why is it recorded for us? Because He wants us to know, doesn't He? He wants us to know. He wants us to know, and there's a lesson in it for us.
In fact, you know the Bible makes a direct connection. I want you to look at 1 Peter chapter four with me. 1 Peter chapter four. And look at verse one: "Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with"—what does the Bible say?—"the same purpose." The same purpose. The same *anea*. The same way of thinking. The same intention. Same purpose, same way of thinking, same mindset. "Because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to no longer live the rest of the time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God."
“Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh”, he says, look at His suffering, behold His suffering, and arm yourselves also. Have as your weapon in this warfare—is the idea—you be armed with the same thought, with the same way of thinking, the same purpose. You see, I must understand His thinking to be armed in my thinking.
I must understand what He saw, what He thought, what He felt, what His motive was, what His motivation was, in order for me to be armed with the same way of thinking as I face suffering in this world and in this life. Now, let me say at this point, there are two ways to take this passage. Let me give you both.
One way is this. What is being said is this: "Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh," verse one. Now, what did Christ suffering in the flesh mean for Him? This view says, well, it meant death. It meant death—He suffered in the flesh, that's death. Now you arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, that is, you be ready to die. And realize this: whoever has suffered in the flesh—he goes on to say, i.e., died—whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. And that's a perfect tense in the Greek language. It's something that is finished, done with, ceased from sin. So the idea is, realize the worst thing that could happen to you is you die. You die as a martyr. Someone is going to kill you because of your association with Christ. The worst thing that could happen to you is actually the best thing that will ever happen to you, because the moment you die, this current relationship you have with sin, this battle that we have with sin—guess what—it's over. And it's true, isn't it? It's over. No more struggle with sin. If you're killed in the name of Christ, there's no more struggle with sin. You have ceased from sin. So there's nothing for you to fear in death. There's nothing for you to fear in martyrdom. And the worst thing that could ever happen to you will be, in fact, the best thing that has ever happened to you.
How many believers here this morning will be glad when your struggle with sin is over, right? No more fighting with the remaining corruption. No more being distracted and pulled away and failing and disappointing God and grieving the heart of God. So the worst thing that can happen to you is actually the best thing that will ever happen for you.
And in view of that, verse two: "so as to no longer live the rest of the time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God." In light of this understanding that I am to arm myself with the same mind, the same purpose that Christ had, understanding that the worst thing that could ever happen to me will be the best thing that ever happened to me—now, how should I live my life now in light of that, with the rest of the time that I have in the flesh? How should I live? He says, not for the lusts of men, not for human passions, not for what I would most want from my human point of view, what would be most comfortable, most pleasant, most self-satisfying, but rather I'm living—I'm to live—for the will of God, not for sin. You see, look, if what I really desire is to be free from sin, why do I want to live in sin right now? If what I say, if what I say I look forward to is to be sinless one day, then why would I want to live my time on this earth pursuing sin? Let me instead live for the will of God. And if you look at Christ, if you look at Him in John 12, He expresses that in His incarnation. There's something in this hour that He dreads, but He's not living for human passions, He's living for the will of God. "Father, glorify Your name." That's one way to take this passage.
But there's another way to take this passage—not to completely discard the first view, but to not really restrict it. And let me explain. And I'm compelled, and I think this is a more natural way to understand it, a more transparent way to understand it, and that is that the first part of the equation stays the same: "Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh," now, not necessarily—this is where I would really slightly move away—not necessarily the, though He did die, of course, not just necessarily tying it to death only. Because if you look at the context here, a lot of what Peter's talking about has to do with slander, people attacking us verbally, mistreating us, and so He's not just talking about death. All our sufferings as a Christian—I take it to be broader. We look at how Christ endured His suffering, and we're to arm ourselves with the same purpose, the same mind. Now, get this, because "he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin." Whoever has done this has ceased from sin. You say, well, what does that mean? It means, beloved, that the rule of sin has been broken in their lives. The rule, the mastery, the dominion of sin has been broken in their lives. Show me someone who's a genuine follower, a genuine disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is where their Master is, whose lot is His lot, whose friends are His friends, whose enemies are His enemies, who would be willing to follow Him wherever He is, even if it does mean death, and I'll show you someone who is saved. They're not a slave to sin anymore. The rule of sin has been broken in their life, and in that sense, they ceased from sin as a pattern. Their old relationship to sin, where they were a slave to sin, has been broken forever. They've been set free.
And the reason why, verse two, so as, so as. The reason why this rule of sin has been broken in their life by God is so as—so that they would no longer live on this earth pursuing the lusts of men, but to live for the will of God. Do you realize, beloved, God has saved you, He has set you free from the rule, the dominion of sin, and He has broken your old relationship with sin forever. Why did He set you free? Not so that you can live for yourself, but so that you would live for Him. Not according to your human passions, but according to His will.
And so we see Christ, our Savior and Lord, troubled in His soul, but choosing the will of God, for His chief end is God's chief end, and that is to glorify His Father. And we're told in this verse here by Peter that we must be armed by the same purpose, with the same purpose, the same thinking, the same mindset, or I will never follow Him wherever He goes and be wherever He is and do the will of God. And I say this this morning on the authority of the Holy Scripture, that if we're not armed with that mindset, we will not go where God wants us to go. We will not do what God wants us to do. We will not glorify Him, as I know it's in our hearts to glorify Him.
We must look at the Lord Jesus Christ in John 12 and say He mentioned it for a reason. He wants us to know about it for a reason, and Peter tells us why. We must be armed with the same purpose, with the same thinking, with the same mindset, and so our motive, our motivation must be the same motive and motivation that Christ had. What is that? To glorify God, to glorify God.
Why would I obey God if it would cost me my job? Because my chief end is not to have a job, my chief end is to glorify Him, right? Why would I obey the Lord if it means it will cost me my family relationships? Because my chief end in life is not to be pleasing to my family, but to be pleasing to God. Why would I choose to obey God if it means that I have to break off a friendship or a romantic interest? Why? Because my chief end in life is not to maintain a friendship or get married at any cost. My chief end in life is to glorify God, and if obedience to God means a denial of human passions, then let me deny all of that to the glory of God.
That's how we've been saved to live, which gives the last and third question: Do you find that you share the same motive and motivation of Christ, beloved? Do you find that you share the same motive and motivation of Christ? Are we, beloved, willing to get beyond flippancy? Are we willing to get beyond the cliche? Are we willing to get beyond the empty, mindless words? Are we willing to think and really weigh what we're saying, what we're singing?
And can we honestly say, I am living for the will of God? Can we honestly say, I have one ambition, that my heavenly Father and my Savior would be glorified, and in comparison, nothing else matters to me. Nothing. Whatever the cost, whatever the trouble, no matter how weighty, no matter how horrific, Father, glorify Your name. If You choose to glorify Yourself in me through sickness, glorify Your name. If it means to glorify Your name in me through financial leanness, glorify Your name. If it means that You are to glorify Your name in me through me being, whatever the situation, whatever the circumstances, I have to find satisfaction only in You, Lord, glorify Your name. Whatever it means, that's what I want, for You to be glorified. Are those just words, or do you mean it? Do I mean it?
Show me someone who's armed with that mindset, and I'll show you someone who has ceased from sin, in the sense that their old relationship to sin has been broken, they're truly saved. The pattern of sin is broken. Can we say this is the fuel and the focus of our lives, to glorify God?
I know this, you can be raised in church, you can hear the gospel all your life, you can know a lot of Bible verses, you can be able to tell the gospel as well as an evangelist, but until a man, a woman, a young person has genuinely been converted, genuinely been saved, that is until they are born again, they will not have in their hearts to glorify God. They won't.
The pressure that we live with, that moves us to live for Christ, is not external, beloved. Now God may use externals, but I give Him praise, it is internal. It comes from within, it is in the hearts of His people, to live for Him. It is in the hearts of people to cry out, for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Has that miracle of new life been worked in you? Have you looked to Christ in such a way that with genuineness, you gave Him your life, all of you, so that now for the rest of your life, it is in you to live for Him? Not from mom, not from dad, not from husband, not from wife, not from friends, not from people, or what people think, in you to live for Him. And if nobody else ever motivated you, God motivates you, your new nature motivates you. Do you know anything about that?
Now my soul has become dismayed. What shall I say? "Father, save Me from this hour? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, Father, glorify Your name."
May we be armed with the same purpose, with the same way of thinking.
Let's pray.
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