John 19:31-37 Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. 32 So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. 35 He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe. 36 For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken.” 37 And again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.”
INTRODUCTION
Once again, I want to welcome the Rueters. I’m glad you are here and I’m glad you’re here on a “normal Sunday.” This is who we are. This is how we study God’s Word together. This is how we gather and greet one another. This is how we pray. This is how we sing. This is how we preach. Afterward, you’ll see that this is how we laugh and eat. Other than you being here, this is ordinary Grace Church. I hope you all find it as encouraging and honoring to God as we do.
At the same time, Grace, I’m eager for you all to get to know this family so you can see the things we (the search committee) have been seeing for some time. They love God and one another well. And we’re confident they will love us well too. Welcome them. Get to know them. Encourage them. Pray for them.
With that, let’s consider Jesus’ death yet again (with one more sermon coming).
The big idea of this passage is that Jesus was knowingly, willingly, lovingly, and graciously crucified for the sins of the world, so that by believing in Him we will be saved. John explained this through irony and defended it through prophecy. The main takeaway is to believe in Jesus and live in light of the full measure of the salvation He brings.
SAVED THROUGH THE DEATH OF JESUS
There are two main parts to this sermon. In the first, we will look directly at our text to see that we are saved through the death of Jesus. In the second part, we will look to the whole of John’s Gospel to see the nature of the salvation that Jesus purchased with His death.
In case you’ve missed it, or in case I haven’t done a good enough job pointing it out, for the last several chapters John has followed a consistent pattern. He has stated facts about Jesus, explained them through irony, and defended them through prophecy. He keeps that pattern in our passage. Let’s consider each, starting with the facts about Jesus.
Facts About Jesus (35)
John is explicit about the fact that he’s dealing in facts about Jesus. He wasn’t making up stories or speaking in parables or allegory. He was telling the truth about real, historical events. Look at v.35.
35 He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth…
For reasons that are never made clear, John often refers to himself in the third person. He was doing that here. John is “He who saw it” and the one whose “testimony is true” and the “he” who “is telling the truth.”
In other words, the author of this Gospel was an eye witness to the events described in our passage and he was adamant about the truthfulness of the things he was writing. He wasn’t fabricating, exaggerating, or mischaracterizing any of it. Every legitimate fact-checker would confirm his reports.
We’ll come back to the content of John’s report shortly, but for now we must recognize that John was stating facts about Jesus’ death and the events surrounding it.
What’s more, in addition to being explicit about the veracity of his reports, he was also explicit about his motivation for dealing in facts about Jesus. In other words, he doesn’t leave his readers wondering why he took all this time to write down these true stories.
He did so (again in v.35), “that you also may believe.” He accurately wrote what he wrote, so that his readers would believe what he wrote.
There are two keys to this. First, in using the word “also,” John was making clear that he was not indifferent to these facts. He wanted his readers to believe too. That is, John believed. He wasn’t an outside observer or an unbiased historian. He was a believing believer himself.
That’s a significant lesson for all of us Grace, and maybe especially the kids of parents who believe. Knowing true things about Jesus is not the same thing as truly believing them. You need to know them in order to truly believe them, but knowledge by itself means very little.
The second key concerns the content of the belief John was after. John wrote that his readers might believe. But what, exactly did he want them to believe? Ultimately, as he tells us in chapter 20, he wanted his readers to believe that Jesus is the Christ and that His death was a part of the saving plan of God. John was not merely accurately recording the tragic death of someone he cared for. Instead, he wanted his readers to believe that Jesus was knowingly, willingly, lovingly, and graciously crucified for the sins of the world.
Even on the most basic level, that’s a lot to take in. We’re right to wonder what all of that really means and why we should believe it. Again, to explain his meaning, John chose to use the tool of irony. And to help convince his readers that it’s true, he used the tool of fulfilled prophecy. Let’s look at each of those now.
Explained through Irony (31)
Irony, in the sense that I mean it here, is “Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs” (American Heritage Dictionary). John has consistently made use of irony throughout his Gospel. He did so primarily in highlighting the vast chasm between what the religious leaders of that time claimed to believe and how they functioned.
We would expect those most studied in, charged by God to teach and lead out of, and claiming to be zealous for the Scriptures to be filled with awe, wonder, gratitude, worship, and obedience to Jesus. For He is the fulfillment of the Scriptures. Instead, however, they constantly acted in ways that were the exact opposite of that.
We have another example of that in v.31.
31 Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.
Deuteronomy 21:22-23 says, “22 “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, 23 his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.”
As was the case when the Jews wouldn’t go into Caiaphas’s house so as not to defile themselves before the Sabbath, there was a rightness to their thinking here. It was right to obey the law of God. Added to that is the fact that the next day was the Passover Sabbath, which meant that if the bodies remained overnight, they would either need to leave the bodies up even longer or not be able to celebrate on the special day. Again, there is a significant measure of legitimacy to their thinking.
However, the thick irony here is that in their effort to avoid the defilement of the land and participate in the Passover Sabbath, they were, ironically, heaping defilement upon themselves by seeking to break the bones of the Passover Lamb (which was prohibited in Exodus 12:46; Jesus is the true Lamb) and murdering the Sabbath (Jesus is our true rest).
Once again, John’s point in making use of irony was to help his readers understand how they ought to understand and respond to the facts concerning Jesus. By consistently highlighting the ridiculousness of the Jews’ response, John made it crystal clear what was at stake and how they should have responded. By painting such a clear picture of what Jesus’ death didn’t mean, we’re given a clear picture of what it did mean: Jesus was knowingly, willingly, lovingly, and graciously crucified for the sins of the world and so they should have believed in Jesus.
Grace, we are right to be appalled by the sinful irony that marked the lives of the Jews. But we are also right to ask what areas of our lives are similarly ironic in light of our profession of faith in Jesus?
In the incongruity of the Jews response to Jesus we can see more clearly what John meant and that there’s a lot at stake in it. But big claims require big evidence. What evidence is there for the truthfulness of John’s claims? Again, that’s where John turned to the familiar tool of fulfilled prophecy.
Defended through Prophecy (32-37)
Interestingly, you remember, Jesus is now dead. It makes sense that while He was alive He could fulfill prophecy, but how in the world does a dead guy do so? The answer to that question is yet another display of the awesome grace of the King of the upside-down kingdom. God is not bound by ordinary means or conventional wisdom. His plan of redemption even went so far as to include Jesus fulfilling prophecy from the grave. For me, part of the believability of the gospel has always been its audacity. A story this bizarre has to be true, right? No one can make up something so unusual.
What, then, is the prophecy that Jesus fulfilled from the dead and which serves as evidence that John’s facts, explained in irony, are true? Look at v.32.
32 So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.
Here’s where (v.35) John interjects by emphasizing that he’s simply recounting the facts that we must believe to be saved. He continues…
36 For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken.” 37 And again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.”
The fact that Jesus’ bones weren’t broken in death (even when the bones of the two others crucified with Him were), is the fulfillment of Psalm 34:20, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. 20 He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.”
And the fact that Jesus was pierced is a fulfillment of Zechariah 12:10, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him…”.
As we’ve repeatedly seen in John’s Gospel, throughout history God had hidden pieces of evidence concerning the true nature of the Christ and the means by which He would save the world. He did so knowing that the Christ and His salvation would come in a thoroughly unexpected manner. He did it so those with eyes to see and ears to hear might praise Him for the fulfillment and all the more for the unexpected way He went about it.
Imagine playing golf with someone. You’re on a par three surrounded by water. He steps up, takes a normal swing, and skips the ball across the water, only to have it end up three feet from the hole. Your first though, of course, is to be amazed by his luck. You’d probably even start teasing him. Now imagine that he turns to you and tells you he planned it. There’s no way you’d believe him, right? But what if he were to pull a note out of his pocket calling the shot? That changes things. This is a cosmic version of that. God called His shot over and over and over and John is helping us see that as a means of helping us believe.
Again, John was explaining facts about Jesus’ death in order that his readers would believe and be saved. He then used the twin tools of irony and prophecy to help his readers understand and believe. With the Spirit’s help, that will strengthen the faith of those who believe and serve as a powerful invitation to those who do not.
Having considered the fact that we are saved through believing in the sacrificial death of Jesus, we’ll now turn our attention to the nature of the salvation that comes through belief in Jesus’ death.
THE NATURE OF THE SAVING THAT COMES THROUGH BELIEF
Grace, let me ask you, what does it really mean to be saved? What is included in Jesus’ saving work?
I’ve found that most people, whether consciously or not, understand salvation to refer merely to an initial decision to trust in Jesus and then a future, heavenly destination. You get saved in the sense that you punch your ticket to heaven when you first believe and then wait for it to come to pass.
The salvation purchased by Jesus’ death definitely involves those two things, but John’s Gospel, as well as the Bible as a whole, paints a much bigger picture of salvation than just conversion and heaven. In fact, there are ten, not two, aspects of salvation.
Back to our question, then, what did Jesus accomplish for us in His death? Or, what does it mean to be saved?
Election – God’s choice of people to save (John 6:35-37, 10:26-28, 15:16, 17:12, Acts 13:48; Rom 9:11-13; Eph 1:4-6; 1 Thess. 1:4-5)
The first aspect of the salvation that Jesus accomplished for us on the cross is the most controversial and also the clearest in all of Scripture. It is the idea that God has chosen a people to save.
The main hangup, or the source of the controversy, is found in the idea that the doctrine of election seems to suggest that we don’t really have a choice. If God chooses people to be saved, then some people cannot choose God, and that isn’t fair, the argument goes.
Let me quickly say a few things about that. First, the way things seem to us cannot be our final standard for anything. God’s Word must be. It is a central truth of the Christian faith that we must calibrate our sensibilities to God’s Word, not the other way around. Either the Bible teaches the doctrine of election or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, we should reject it. If it does, and I think you’ll see clearly that it does, then we need to accept it and rethink everything in us that pushes back on it.
Second, the Bible repeatedly puts the doctrine of election right next to the reality of real human choices without blushing. In other words, the biblical writers, under the Spirit’s inspiration, don’t see a problem with God’s sovereign choices and our real choices coexisting. Therefore, neither should we.
Third, without God’s help, no one would choose God. We’ll come back to this passage in a bit, but in John 6:44 we read Jesus’ words, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Sin is so sinful that it makes us unwilling and unable to choose God apart from the electing grace of God.
And forth, the Bible never presents the doctrine of election as something to be embarrassed about or frustrated with or in need of philosophical propping-up. Instead, it presents the doctrine as a matter of fact and the source of great hope. It is because of God’s sovereign choice that He always keeps His promises and our choice to believe in Him will always end in our salvation.
We see God’s sovereign choice, his election of a people in passages like John 6:37, “All that the Father gives me will come to me…”.
In 10:26-28 Jesus said of those who are among the elect, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life…”.
One more clear example is John 17:12, in Jesus’ prayer to the Father, “While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me…”.
The salvation Jesus purchased on the cross begins with God’s sovereign, electing grace.
Hearing the Gospel – Receiving the message of the gospel (John 20:31, Rom 8:30; 1 Pet 2:9; 1 Cor 1:9; 1 Thes 2:12)
The fact that election is a part of God’s saving plan, does not bypass the need to hear and believe the gospel; the good news of Jesus’ perfect life, sacrificial death, and victorious resurrection bringing salvation to all who believe. The next aspect of our salvation is that the gospel will come to all of God’s people. Salvation never comes apart from hearing the gospel, but the gospel always comes to God’s elect. This is the main point of John’s whole Gospel, “these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
John wrote his Gospel in order to share the gospel, explain it, and call all people everywhere to believe it. Because of that, this second aspect of salvation is everywhere in John’s Gospel. In fact, I hope you’re already imagining the many times Jesus presented the good news of Himself to those He encountered and called them to believe in Him.
Regeneration – Being made spiritually alive/born again (John 1:12-13, 3:1-8, 6:44, 8:47; 1 Pet 1:3; Acts 16:14)
At the same time, not everyone who hears the gospel believes it. John describes far more people rejecting the good news of Jesus than those who believe. How is it that some believe and some don’t. Or, what is it that allows God’s elect to believe?
The answer, again found everywhere in John, is the third aspect of the salvation won by Jesus on the cross: Regeneration. The good news of Jesus is a spiritual truth. However, since Adam’s sin, all mankind is born physically alive and spiritually dead. In other words, one of the effects of the Fall is that we are born unwilling and unable to believe in God because the mechanism we need to do so is dead within us. Therefore, we need to be born again. Our spirits need to be made alive in order that we might hear and believe the gospel when it comes.
John 3:3 “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
John 1:12-13 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 6:44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.
Why do some hear the gospel and respond with indifference or even anger while some are cut to the heart by it? Or, why do some hear the gospel dozens of times before they believe it? The answer is regeneration. Until this aspect of the salvation, won on the cross comes to us, until we receive this particular saving grace of God, we will not and cannot believe.
But once it does come to us we are able to see things as they truly are. We are able to feel the holiness of God in our bones, we will be overwhelmed by our sin, and we will know that there is no other way to be saved than to throw ourselves upon Jesus. This is not because God makes us believe, but because regeneration allows us to truly see, and with our new spiritual sight, the choice couldn’t be more obvious.
Conversion – Responding in faith and repentance (John 1:12, 3:16, 6:37, 7:37, Matt 11:28-30)
The fourth aspect of salvation is the one most people are most familiar with: Conversion. This is when we choose to believe the gospel that’s been shared with us. At some point the elect will hear the gospel and through it our spirits are made alive that we might see things as they are, but we must still choose to believe. We must decide. We must make a real decision to trust in Jesus.
Two clear examples of this are found in John 1:11-12 and John 3:16.
John 1:11-12 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
John 3:16 God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Let me give one quick pastoral encouragement. Too many people spend too much time worrying about whether or not they are among the elect or if they’ve been truly born again. The Bible never really talks like that. The charge is simply to believe the gospel when it comes to us. In John’s Gospel and throughout the NT, we find examples of those who hear for the first time and instantly believe. But we also find examples of long delays between hearing and believing and of those who hear many times before believing. We simply don’t find language like, “Here’s the gospel…you’d better hope you are among the elect so you can believe it.” Instead, the gospel is shared, the offer is made, and the expectation is that the person hearing should choose to believe.
Justification – Declared not-guilty (John 3:15, 16, 36; 5:24; 6:35, 40, 47; 11:25; 20:31 Rom 3:26-28; 5:1; 8:30; Gal 2:16)
The fifth aspect of our salvation is justification. Justification is God’s declaration that sinners have been made right before Him. It is a one-time, final decree that because we have been united to Jesus (in His suffering, His death, and His resurrection) through faith, we have also been united to Him in His perfect righteousness. And because of that, because of Jesus’ righteousness given to us, we are declared by God to be not guilty; justified.
Justification is the only aspect of salvation not explicitly taught in John’s Gospel. But that is not to say it isn’t taught in John’s Gospel. One theologian (Thomas Schriner, Justification: An Introduction) says it like this, “John in his Gospel doesn’t use the language of justification. The idiom, the metaphors, the images differ, but the reality is the same.”
The primary way that justification shows up implicitly in John’s Gospel, is in the constant connection John makes between believing and life. When anyone believes in Jesus, he or she is immediately given life. That is, he or she is immediately justified before God. For John, to have life through belief in Jesus is to have God’s condemnation lifted and to be declared righteous.
Our biggest problem in life is that we are guilty of sin before God. That makes justification one of the sweetest aspects of our salvation, for in it we are filled with Jesus’ righteousness and on that basis, declared innocent.
Adoption – Brought into God’s family (John 1:12; Rom 8:14-17; 9:7-8; Gal 3:23-26; 4:28)
The sixth aspect of our salvation is that we are not merely freed from condemnation, declared innocent and then dismissed. We are also brought into the family of God. God does not merely expunge our record and then leave us to ourselves. He adopts us as His beloved sons and daughters.
John 1:11-12 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
What a gift it is in our salvation to be given the name of God.
Sanctification – growing in holiness (John 17:17, 15:5; Titus 3:5; 1 John 3:9; Rom 6:11, 14, 18; Col 3:10; Heb 12:23)
Our salvation means that we are justified according to Jesus’ righteousness, not our own. However, to be saved also means that from the moment of our conversion, God is making us righteous. The process by which God makes His people righteous is called sanctification. A literal translation would be “holification.” Part of being saved means being made holy. By God’s saving grace, our appetite for sin will shrivels and die.
The clearest example of this in John is found in 17:17 where Jesus prays that the Father would, “Sanctify [His followers] in the truth…” He went on in v.19 to state, “…for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth…”. Jesus died on the cross in order that we would be sanctified.
This same idea is found in John 15 where Jesus explains that His people will bear good fruit if they remain in Him.
Grace, Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins. And part of being saved means being brought into the gracious process of being made holy by God; sometimes slowly and gently and other times rapidly and violently, sometimes it’s two steps forward and one step back, but to be saved always means that we are being sanctified.
Perseverance – God keeping us faithful to Himself (John 6:38-40; 10:27-29; Rom 8:30; Eph 1:13-14; Phil 1:6)
As remarkable as all of this is, Jesus’ salvation gets better still. God elects, calls, regenerates, converts, justifies, adopts, sanctifies, and perseveres. God will not let us go. He will not let us ultimately fall away. Those who truly believe in Jesus, will be preserved in Jesus.
John 6:39 …this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.
John 10:27-28 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
God doesn’t just call us to Jesus. He also keeps us in Jesus. Awesome!
Death – Final sanctification of our souls (John 14:1-3; Rom 8:17; Phil 3:10; 1 Pet 2:21, 4:3)
As strange as it sounds, the ninth aspect of the salvation accomplished by Jesus in His death is our death. For at our death our souls are finally sanctified and go immediately into God’s presence, fully cleansed. Grace, the good news of our salvation is that the moment our bodies die, we will never again have a single ungodly desire.
John 14:1-3 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”
Jesus, through death, rose from the dead to the Father’s house and to make a place for us to join Him there. When we die, once again, the God’s final sanctifying work is done on our souls and we join Him in His house.
Glorification – Final sanctification of our bodies (John 5:24-29, 6:38-40; 1 Cor 15:12-58; 1 Thess 4:14-17; Rom 8:19-23)
Finally, at death, our souls are fully and finally sanctified, but our bodies go into the ground to decay. This might not sound like a big deal, but it is. We were made to be whole persons—body and soul. Therefore, it is good news indeed that the salvation accomplished by Jesus on the cross includes not only the sanctification of our souls, but our bodies as well.
When Jesus returns, our bodies will be raised from the dead, sanctified entirely (no more weakness, tears, disease, deformities, fatigue, or imperfection) and reunited with our souls. This is the final aspect of our salvation. Once this happens, we will be fully saved. This is called glorification.
John 5:25-29 “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live… 28 … for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life…
John 6:40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Oh, what a glorious day! What a glorious salvation! What a glorious sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf.
All ten of these are part of the salvation God works in everyone who trusts in Him. If any of them are true of a person, all of them will be, forever! And that’s the key to really understanding what Jesus accomplished on the cross, what John means by life through believing that Jesus is the Christ, and what it means to be saved.
CONCLUSION
Jesus was knowingly, willingly, lovingly, and graciously crucified for the sins of the world so that by believing in Him we will be saved. Believe in Jesus, therefore, Grace Church and live in light of the full measure of the salvation He brings.