Improving Your Serve Series

The word “cup” was a symbol of suffering or affliction. To “drink” means to take something deep inside. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed in Matthew 26:39: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” The cup stood for God’s wrath and judgment as seen in Isaiah 51:17: “Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.”

At its core, baptism means, “to be identified with by being fully submerged.” The idea here is that Jesus is about to be fully immersed in intense suffering. This is illustrated in Psalm 69:2: “I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.”

On top of all the physical pain we talked about last weekend, Jesus is about to experience the undiluted wrath of His righteous and holy Father as He takes the sins of the entire world on his shoulders. This doctrine is called “penal substitutionary atonement,” meaning that Christ died on the cross as a substitute for sinners. God imputed the guilt of our sins to Christ, and He, in our place, bore the punishment that we deserve. This was a full payment for sins, which satisfied both the wrath and the righteousness of God, so that He could forgive sinners without compromising His own holy standard.

This doctrine is at the center of Christian faith and practice but in recent days has been attacked on Twitter by Christian musician and Grammy-nominated Michael Gungor as something “evil” and “horrific” that God would mandate blood sacrifice for sin. Here’s his exact quote: “That God needed to be appeased with blood is not beautiful. It’s horrific.”

William Paul Young, the author of The Shack, (which has sold 20 million copies and has been made into a movie) in his new book called, Lies We Believe About God, says this about the death of Christ: “Who originated the Cross?...If God did, then we worship a cosmic abuser…Better no god at all, than this one.”

I don’t have time to develop this further but suffice it say these are vicious attacks on the central truth of Christianity that Jesus died as our substitute. As Owen Strachan writes: “The atoning work of Christ is not an optional add-on to our doctrine of God.” Romans 3:25-26: “Whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness…so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

It’s interesting that Jesus uses the two words that we use for the ordinances – the cup (communion) and baptism. Incidentally, Jesus is not talking about being “sprinkled” with problems but being fully immersed in extreme and excruciating pain. We have a number of people who will be baptized in two weeks and we’ll be celebrating communion next weekend.

Unbelievably, both James and John answer this pointed question with complete confidence in verse 39, “We are able.” I think they were a bit too eager in their response. Jesus reinforces this when He says: “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” They wanted glory but Jesus tells them to get ready for some grief and to prepare for some problems.