Dear Alumni,
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all
people to myself,” said our Lord in anticipation of his
crucifixion (John 12:32). “Lifted up,” of course, meant different
things to his disciples. Picturing a victory parade and
no-expense-spared inaugural festivities for the messianic King,
they expressed irritation whenever Jesus raised the subject of
his death. Instead, the disciples wanted to talk about the
seating chart for the Big Day in Jerusalem.
The Big Day did indeed come, but it was Good Friday. Preceded
a few days earlier by a victory parade upon his entry to
Jerusalem, Jesus’ crucifixion apparently caught the disciples by
surprise. However, Jesus had been aware all along that he was
going to Jerusalem to be installed as king, to be sure, but on a
throne of splinters.
We often talk about the “two states” of Christ in his earthly
ministry: the state of humiliation (birth to death) and the
state of exaltation (resurrection, ascension, and present
reign). However, tidy distinctions become blurred in all the
action. “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw
all people to myself.” But doesn’t this sound more like the
ascension than the crucifixion, especially when he says,
“…lifted up from the earth”? The next verse makes Jesus’ point
plain: “He said this,” writes John, “to indicate the kind of
death he was going to die” (v 33). Jesus used this phrase,
“lifted up,” before in John’s Gospel. To Nicodemus, he said,
“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so
must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him
may have eternal life” (Jn 3:14). Again, in John 8:28, we read,
“When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize
that I am he….” Far from his death demonstrating the failure of
his messianic kingship (as liberal scholarship assumes), or even
thinking of it in terms of a mere prelude to glory (as we often
assume), Jesus is thinking of his cross as his throne—the center
of his royal ministry. Not only at the resurrection, then, but
at the cross, Jesus says his kingly glory and office will be
made apparent. It is from that throne that he will draw all
people to himself. It is as a sacrificial substitute on behalf
of his people that the King establishes his throne forever. Many
empires have been raised on the sacrifices of brave soldiers and
nations preserved by the valor of their sons, but this is the
one place where the King makes himself the sole sacrificial
offering for the good of his whole commonwealth, so that no more
will be offered except for the sacrifice of praise and
thanksgiving.
Not only at Easter, then, but even on Good Friday we begin to
see glory even amid suffering. Our Savior is not first a victim
and then a victor, but conquers sin and death precisely by
offering himself as the only effective and final sacrifice. That
is exactly how he becomes king! Not first a prophet and a priest
and then a king, but rather a king in the very act of fulfilling
the Word as in the very act of being “lifted up” (enthroned) on
a cross. In other words, his sacrificial death is not something
he performed on his way to or as a necessary prerequisite of his
installment as the King of kings and Lord of lords, but it was that
installment. Paul too speaks in 1 Corinthians of the foolishness
and weakness of God trumping human wisdom and power, not as if
God is first foolish and weak (at the cross) and then wise and
strong (in the resurrection), but in the very event of the cross
itself. The paradox is the point: in the event that is to all
human appearances the least likely to result in anything but
failure and defeat, God has actually accomplished the most
surprising conquest of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Thus, the suffering of our Savior was not accidental to his
kingly reign, nor was his glory absent in his cross. Instead, we
are introduced for the first time to a different kind of glory,
a different kind of king, and a different kind of kingdom. It is
a glory that can only be recognized in the redemptive suffering
of a king who gives his life for his subjects in order to make
them co-heirs with him of everything he possesses, and a kingdom
whose weakness is mightier than all the powerful empires of this
evil age. So instead of simply talking about Christ’s
humiliating death and glorious resurrection, we should recognize
also the cross itself as the beginning of the Son’s exaltation
in glory, as he presented his own sacrificial blood to the
Father not in the earthly copy of the heavenly sanctuary but in
the Holy of Holies itself.
None of this is to diminish the significance of the
resurrection, by which Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God
with power” (Ro 1:4). However, it is to disturb that neat
compartmentalization of Jesus’ humiliation and exaltation, so
that we can begin to see the cruciform shape of the kingdom of
God itself, in its very nature, as the commonwealth of the
Father’s eternal love.
Telling this story is what we are all about at Westminster
Seminary California, because that is what the church is
privileged to share with the world. Whether in the general
office as Christians or in the special office as ministers of
word and sacrament, our graduates are in churches, mission
stations, schools, and other places around the world proclaiming
the King on a Cross, “Christ crucified.” As word of his
sacrificial death and his resurrection for our justification
reaches the ends of the earth, the kingdom is established. And
this kingdom is preserved not by further sacrifices or by the
spiritual “patriotism” and valor of its subjects, but by
continuously “placarding” Christ publicly before its members through
word and sacrament. In the process, we can only hope that
despite our unfaithfulness, the church will itself reflect this
cruciform shape, bearing its cross and shame in this age,
surrendering its own ambitions for power and prestige in the
greater expectation of the creation’s participation in
resurrection glory. May the rays from the age to come cheer our
hearts again so that we can see God’s glory even when and where
it seems least apparent, contradicting the wisdom of the world
with God’s foolishness. And now that there is no longer any need
for sacrifices of atonement, may we freely offer ourselves to
each other and to the world, but ultimately to God, as “living
sacrifices” of thanksgiving.
Michael S. Horton
J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics
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