The Love of God Displayed
Text: John 19:25-30
There’s a great quote that comes from a play written by the poet Francis Beaumont. It goes like this, “O’ Love – Tis enough to make a dog howl in rhyme!” And if you’ve ever been in love, you know exactly what that means. Love can make you do crazy things. Things you wouldn’t normally do…
And love is actually one of biggest problems in our world today… That got your attention right!?!
Let me clarify that – SELF LOVE is one of the biggest problems in our world today. There’s too many people who love themselves too much, and others not enough.
Well that’s never been a problem with Jesus. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Greater love has no man than this – that He lay down His life for His friends.
God IS love… but remember, love IS NOT God.
Well as we go through our text this morning, I do hope that you see the love of God on display through Jesus as He hung upon the cross, because if we do, it will cause us to love Him all the more.
We’re in John 19:25-30 (READ TEXT).
Now that’s love right there… not only the love of a Son for His mother… but the love of God on display.
Now just before our text this morning, we saw the soldiers dividing Jesus’ outer garments, and then casting lots for His tunic… that’s not love in any way, shape, or form. I mean, you’ve got the sinless Son of God, looking down at you, while He’s hanging on a cross… and He’s watching you gamble and squabble over His simple clothes. “I get His belt.” “Well I get His sandals.” “What about His tunic? High rolls wins?” My goodness! What depravity. Jesus isn’t even dead yet, and they’re squabbling about the scraps they get to take home… like modern day politicians screaming about their money laundering… er… uhm… I mean their pet projects being defunded. Squabbling about whatever scraps they can get while everything else around them dies.
What brings a person to that point? SELF LOVE. Loving self above all else.
And then we come to our text… and I love how John starts out verse 25, “BUT standing by the cross of Jesus…”. In other words – the ones who didn’t abandon Jesus. The ones who loved Him more than themselves. The ones who weren’t about their own self-preservation.
And John lists them. He says, Mary the mother of Jesus was there… and Mary’s sister – this would have been Salome, the wife of Zebedee and the mother of James and John. John also mentions Mary the wife of Clopas – she’s the mother of James the lesser and Joseph, and then John mentions Mary Magdalene and maybe you’ll remember her from Luke 8, where she had seven demons cast out of her. And then finally; there’s John himself. The only disciple who dared get close to the cross.
And I personally cannot imagine how they must’ve felt. I mean… I can get a little emotional myself just thinking of Jesus dying on the cross for my sake… but to have been there. To be His mom. It’s probably for the best that Joseph had already passed away because him being a just man… he would’ve been fighting some Roman soldiers that day.
Nobody loves you quite like mom and dad do. As parents we put our lives on hold and pour our lives into our kids. We watch them grow up. And we have hopes and dreams for them. To see your child on a Roman cross would be horrible. Especially knowing He was innocent of any crime.
So we’ve got four women and John – where were the men? That’s a good question right? Maybe they were too busy? Maybe they didn’t see any value in following Jesus. Maybe they were just afraid.
I’m just going to say something, and it’s really not meant to be offensive, but it probably will be. It takes a man to lead his family in following Jesus. It’s one of the hardest things a man can do. It takes strength, and determination, and grit, and stubbornness, and faithfulness. It’s not just 8 weeks like Army basic training… it’s not just 8 to 10 hours a day like your job. It’s all day – every day – day in and day out! From the time you become a husband to the day the Lord takes you home.
You don’t get days off from leading your family in following Jesus. You don’t get a vacation from that. You don’t get sick days, or comp time.
But here at the foot of the cross there’s only one disciple… John the beloved. The guy who wrote this Gospel account. And John was a tough guy. Following Jesus resulted in him being assaulted, attacked, persecuted, tortured, exiled to hard labor in a stone quarry on the Island of Patmos… and at the same time, being used by God to make an impact that changed history.
So five people – four women, and John were there for Jesus as He hung on the cross. Five people who were willing to put their fear aside and stand with the Lord.
Why? The only explanation is love. 1 John 4:18 – “Perfect love casts out fear.”
These five people were able to do what they did in that moment because their love for Jesus was stronger than their fear of man.
But you want to know what’s really cool…?...
Their love… and our love for Jesus is nothing in comparison to His love for them and us.
Jesus looks down from the cross at His mother Mary and says, “Woman, behold your son.” Then He looked at John and said, “Behold, your mother.” And we read that and think, “Oh yeah, that’s the love of a son for his mother.” But I believe it’s more than that. First of all, Jesus addresses Mary as “woman”. We’ve seen Him do that before, when He turned water into wine. It’s not a term of disrespect. But it’s a way of reminding her that she needed to look to Him as Savior, not as her Son. Mary needed a Savior just like everyone else.
So yes, there is this love of a Son for His mother, and Jesus makes sure that His mother will be taken care of by John – and she was. Now why John? Well… because he’s the only one there. Jesus’ own brothers aren’t Christians yet… they aren’t believers yet, and the rest of the disciples have all ran away. But John being faithful to Jesus would also be faithful to take care of Mary.
But again, I want you to see the love Jesus has here. Think this through with me. How long has Jesus been without sleep at this point? He was arrested in the Garden late Thursday, maybe 10 or 11 PM… But He has been up all that day before, eating the Passover meal, coming into the city… So we can figure that Jesus has been up since 6 or 7 AM on Thursday morning. He is then brought before Annas and Caiaphas, and then Pontius Pilate in the morning… It’s probably sometime between 11 AM and Noon when Jesus says this… So we’re looking at close to 30 hours without sleep. He’s been beaten beyond recognition. He’s been nailed to a cross. He hasn’t eaten since the night before. But He still shows His love. And not just to Mary… remember when the soldiers nailed Him to the cross, He prayed, “Father forgive them.”
But there’s Jesus. He’s not angrily cursing the injustice of it all. He’s not wallowing in self-pity. He’s showing love. This is right before darkness would descend upon the land of Israel for the next three hours – from Noon to 3 PM.
And church, here’s what the Bible says. Jesus Christ was our propitiation on the cross. He was the one who took our punishment on the cross. It tells us that Jesus made atonement for our sin, by His blood, on the cross. Both the justice and wrath of God was satisfied by Jesus on the cross. This is why He cries out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Church, if there’s nothing else you take from todays sermon, please get this…
It is important that we understand what our sin cost Jesus. It wasn’t just the physical beating He took, the mocking and ridicule. As a consequence of bearing our sin, Jesus is estranged from His Father.
1 Peter 2:24 says that “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree…”.
All of our sin was placed upon Him, and He bore that sin, in our place, and paid for that sin, in our place – He suffered for our sin, in our place. 1 Peter 3:18, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.”
Do you want to know why Jesus has to be 100% man and 100% God? So that He can die on the cross for our sin, and pay for our sin, and make atonement for our sin, and propitiate the wrath of God for sin.
And this has a very real and practical application to us who are believers.
Listen to what Paul says in Romans 6… Romans 6:1-11: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! HOW CAN WE WHO DIED TO SIN STILL LIVE IN IT? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self WAS CRUCIFIED WITH HIM in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died, He died to sin, once and for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God IN CHRIST JESUS.”
So, Jesus took all of our sin, and He paid for it, and He died, and Paul says our sin died with Him. It’s been put to death. Now if you read through all of Romans, you’ll see that Paul isn’t talking about sinless perfection in this life on earth… He’s talking about our position with God. We have become the righteousness of God in Christ. God looks at us who have trusted in Jesus, and sees us as righteous. He sees that Jesus has paid for our sin. Jesus blood has washed us clean. Our sins are dead and buried and we – because we are in Christ, have been raised up to newness of life, so that we shouldn’t walk in them any longer. We are a new creation in Christ Jesus. So this nonsense that a person can go on practicing sin, and living a lifestyle of ongoing sin and be a Christian is ridiculous and unfounded. That’s not Biblical in any sense (1st, 2nd, and 3rd John make that pretty clear). We will struggle… we will slip up from time to time. We will fight against the old sin nature… but part of our victory over that old nature is realizing that we are dead to sin… Because we are in Christ. He died to sin… and Because we are in Christ… we have been raised up to a new life and live unto God in Christ.
So this is what Jesus did. And what that hopefully shows us is the amazing love He has for us. All the love we have cannot compare with the love that Jesus has for us, and that Jesus has shown to us through the cross.
Let’s go back to the text verse 28 (READ), now look at verse 30 (READ).
It is finished. What is finished? EVERYTHING! Everything that needed to be done to secure our salvation and forgiveness before God the Father. Jesus did it.
Why would we not trust the One that loves us so much He would do this for us? And not only pay for our sins, but also do all that is necessary for our salvation? I pray that you do.
CLOSING.
