Do any of you like watching movies? Do you like action movies? How about prison escapes?
There are two kinds of prison-escape movies. There are movies like Escape from Alcatraz or The Great Escape. In these movies the hero’s goal is to escape. There is no bigger goal.
Then there are movies which have prison-escape scenes but the escape is part of a bigger plan. In the Avengers movie Black Widow, Black Widow knows she has to break her pretend dad out of prison in order to get some information he has. In Mission Impossible 4, Ethan Hunt is in a Moscow jail. The Mission Impossible team has to break him out in order that the team can carry out the mission they’ve been given.
There’s a similarity between this and the Christian life. Before we become Christians, we're prisoners. We need to be broken out of prison.
In the early 18th century, the hymn-writer Charles Wesley wrote a hymn we still sing today. It’s called ‘And can it be’. In the fourth verse, Wesley wrote:
'Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature's night
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light
My chains fell off, my heart was free
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee'
Charles Wesley was an 18th child! That’s hard to imagine today! He was very privileged in many ways. He went to Westminster School and became head boy and then studied at Oxford University. But look at the words Wesley uses: ‘imprisoned’, ‘dungeon’, ‘chains’. Why would this privileged man feel like that?
Look how Wesley starts. ‘Long my imprisoned spirit lay … FAST BOUND IN SIN.’ Wesley believed that it was his sin that had put him in the dungeon.
He was right. Jesus once said, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin’ [John 8:34]. Paul wrote, ‘But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive…’ [Romans 7:6].
If we sin then the law has a hold over us. We’re captives.
But praise God … by going to the cross, Jesus broke US free from our prison.
I’m going to look at how Jesus did that later in this talk.
But I’d first like us to think about this prison break. I said at the beginning that there are two kinds of prison-escape movies. There are movies where the hero’s goal is to escape. The hero has no other goal. And there are movies where the prison escape is part of a bigger plan.
Christians fall into two camps. Some Christians think that the salvation Jesus has achieved for us is like an Escape-from-Alcatraz prison break. Jesus has broken us free. There’s no more danger of the fire of hell. But that’s it. Job done. There’s no more goal. There’s a great song by Amy Grant titled ‘Fat Baby’ which describes this kind of Christian:
'I know a man, maybe you know him, too
You never can tell; he might even be you
He knelt at the altar, and that was the end
He's saved, and that's all that matters to him.'
This Christian is saved and that’s the end of it as far as he’s concerned.
But some Christians think that salvation is like a Mission-Impossible prison break. Jesus has broken us free – and he’s done so with a purpose.
What do you think?
We started this little series of three talks on why Jesus went to the cross last week. My plan was to start with the Old Testament last week, to go on to the New Testament this week, and to think about how we respond next week.
I don’t want to spend much time going over what we looked at last week. But I’d like to remind you of just a couple of things.
We looked at the story, in Genesis 3, of how Adam and Eve ate from the tree God told Adam not to eat from. The Bible doesn’t use the word sin here. But this is what sin in. Sin is knowingly and deliberately disobeying God. God then banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and later, they die.
We see from this story that God doesn’t tolerate sin. That sin separates us from God. And that sin leads to death. I don’t want to elaborate on any of this now.
We also looked at the Passover. This is a very important story for us because Jesus was crucified during the Jewish feast of Passover. God doesn’t do things by accident so we imagine there is a connection between the Passover and Jesus’ death.
At the feast of Passover, Jews remember the time when they were slaves in Egypt. God sent a succession of plagues on Egypt to force the Egyptians to free his people. Finally, God sent a last, terrible plague. He sent a destroying angel who would take the lives of the firstborn in Egypt. But the destroyer didn’t touch the people of Israel. God had instructed the people of Israel to sacrifice lambs and daub their blood on the doorposts of their houses.
This gives us another very important lesson. Sin leads to death. But it seems that God would accept the death of a lamb instead of the death of a person. Many hundreds of years later, the prophet Isaiah had the revelation that the true lamb was a person and that God would lay on him the sin of the world.
We’re now going to turn to the New Testament. Does the New Testament develop the picture we started to see in the Old Testament? Would a person come to be a sacrificial lamb? How does it work? And what does the New Testament think about the question I asked? Was God’s goal simply to break us out of captivity? Or did God have a bigger purpose?
So, would a person come to be a sacrificial lamb? Absolutely! John the Baptist sees Jesus and says, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’ [John 1:29]. John knows exactly why Jesus has come.
BUT HOW EXACTLY DOES JESUS’ DEATH ON A CROSS FREE US FROM OUR CAPTIVITY?
Theologians use various theological words to talk about what Jesus did on the cross. I’m going to take two of those words to explain what was happening.
The first word is SUBSTITUTION. The word substitution doesn’t actually come in the Bible but the idea is definitely there. What does it mean?
Let’s suppose that Sophie [my daughter] goes into Next in Castlepoint, walks out with a blouse she hasn’t paid for, and is caught. The police issue her with a fixed penalty of £80. If I was feeling very nice, I could pay the fine for her. I could take the hit instead of her.
Jesus has done that for us. But rather than simply pay a fine for us, he took our place on death row. He is the sacrificial lamb who died in our place. By doing that, the demands of Justice were satisfied.
The second word is PROPITIATION. That word IS in the Bible. What does it mean?
Priscilla [my wife] worked for a charity for seven years. When she left, they gave her a bonsai plant. It’s a nice plant and it also has a lot of sentimental value. Let’s suppose I’m doing some cleaning. I accidentally knock Priscilla’s bonsai plant over and it breaks. There’s nothing to be done for it. Priscilla would be annoyed. But if I got her another very beautiful bonsai plant she would hopefully not be so angry. By getting another bonsai I would be appeasing her or – to use the theological word – propitiating her.
That is what Jesus did for us on the cross. John wrote, ‘He’ (that is, Jesus) ‘is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world’ [1 John 2:2].
God is judge and as judge he wants to make sure that justice is done. But he is also the creator of the world. He is deeply angry at the way humankind behaves. It isn’t just that a punishment has to be paid. God’s anger has to be appeased. Jesus’ death on a cross appeased – or propitiated – God’s anger.
That is how Jesus’ death freed us from the snares of death. The punishment that had to be paid was paid. And God’s anger was appeased. Now that it was, the broken relationship between man and God could be restored.
But what about my question?
WAS GOD’S GOAL SIMPLY TO SET US FREE AND THAT’S IT? OR DID GOD HAVE A BIGGER PURPOSE?
Was this an Escape-from-Alcatraz kind of prison break? We’re free and that’s it? Or was this a Mission-Impossible kind of prison break? God has a bigger purpose?
Jesus’ setting us free is DEFINITELY a Mission-Impossible kind of prison break. His purpose goes way beyond setting us free from what bound us.
I can’t possibly do justice to God’s awesome plan in just a few minutes. But I’d like to at least sketch out the main parts. It may seem big-headed to say, ‘This is God’s plan.’ But God has told us his plan! He hasn’t kept it secret.
GOD’S AWESOME PLAN
God’s plan started with the creation of the world. Part of God’s plan was for there to be a very good world.
Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image.’ Part of God’s plan was for humankind to be in his image.
God continued, ‘…let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air' … and so on. Part of God’s plan was for humankind to be in charge of his creation!
There are 1189 chapters in the Bible and we’ve only reached chapter 2!
As we continue through the Old Testament, God chooses the people of Israel. This is a major theme which continues to the end of the Bible. God wants to create a people of his own.
God wants a people who are very special. God describes them as his treasured possession. In the Old Testament, God says that the people of Israel are to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. In the New Testament, Peter says that we – meaning Christians – are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. It’s much the same, isn’t it? Creating a people of his own is very much part of God’s plan.
Are you starting to sense that God’s purpose is bigger than simply freeing us from our slavery to sin? So far, we’ve seen that he wants to create a people of his own, who are in his image, holy, functioning as a royal priesthood, looking after creation.
But there’s a lot more still to say about God’s purposes. The New Testament tells us that God’s purpose for his people is that we should be children of God, adopted into God’s family! Being part of God’s family is even better than being part of God’s people. Jesus taught his disciples to address God as ‘Father.’ Jesus also told us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. That will take some working on!
SO THERE IS NO SENSE AT ALL THAT ‘WE’RE FREE AND THAT’S IT.’
But we still haven’t finished with God’s purpose! There is SO much more we could say. The Bible talks about tough times ahead. There will be the Great Tribulation, when many of God’s people will die. Jesus will come again. He will reign for 1,000 years. There will be a final battle and Christ’s enemies will be defeated and destroyed. The world will be cleansed of evil. A time will come when we have a physical resurrection and we get new, imperishable bodies. We will have eternal life! This isn’t simply eternal life in that we live forever but we could die. We will become immortal! We will gain a quality that at present only God has. We will be perfect!
As children of God, we have an inheritance.
There will be ‘the marriage supper of the Lamb’ [Revelation 19:9].
There will be new heavens and a new earth – although it may be best to think of them as a RENEWED heaven and earth.
The whole world will have one Lord and King, Jesus.
There is much, much more I could say, but time is limited. The plan God has for his people is unimaginably good! Paul wrote:
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him” [1 Corinthians 2:9].
The point is that when Jesus broke us free it was NOT for us to think ‘We’re free and that’s it?’ We need to think of Jesus’ freeing us as the first, critical step into participating in God’s much bigger purpose that stretches to eternity. When we grasp that we grasp that we need to engage with it. God has work for us to do.
How do we respond? That is our subject for next week.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 17th March 2024, 4 p.m. service.
