Good Friday Sermon: the Love of Christ

What Are We Supposed to See at the Cross of Christ?

If you’re visiting with us tonight, for our Good Friday service, I’m glad you can join us. Tonight we’ll continue to consider the death of Jesus Christ, and his love, as we turn to a place you might not expect – to the book of John, Chapter 13. If you’re using one of our church Bibles, you can find the text on page 846.

God gave us this part of the Bible through one of Jesus’s closest followers – a man named John. And up until this point, John’s been explaining that Jesus is both truly man and truly God, and he’s been reporting the remarkable things Jesus said and did with his followers. But now, in John, Chapter 13, Jesus is near the end of his life, and he knows it. He knows he’s about to go to the cross to die there. And he takes this opportunity to teach his disciples what he’s about to do for them at the cross. So look with me at John 13, and keep your Bibles open, because I’ll be referring a lot to what Jesus does and says. I’ll be reading verses 1 through 17. But before I read our text tonight, please pray with me:

[Pray and Read Text]

The Lovelessness of Pride

One of the most common marketing strategies today, is for companies to show you their product – whether it’s a can of carbonated water, or an advertisement for a tropical cruise – and to say, “You deserve this.” And one of the reasons this form of marketing is so effective, is because the human heart has an inclination toward pride – when we’ve worked hard, when we’ve gotten a promotion, when we’ve accomplished something – we buy into the idea that we now deserve something great – we deserve some sort of special treatment. We imagine that the greater a person is, the more entitled they are to get what they want. And being proud and self-focused like this is evidence that our hearts are corrupt – that the human heart is sinful and at odds with God.

But in our text tonight, Jesus demonstrates his greatness, his perfect manhood, and his worthiness – not by seeking privileged treatment – not by asserting his dominance – not by insisting on his rights. Instead, Jesus demonstrates his majesty in his modesty. He proves his strength by becoming weak. He displays his highness by making himself low. He expresses his supreme authority through selfless love. And in doing this he shows both how he loves us, and how we’re called to love one another.

Before we jump in, it’s important to point out that the Greek word for love, agape – it seldom, if ever, is talking about feminine pink hearts, romantic ambitions, or transient feelings. Instead it’s talking about a self-forgetful, earnest affection and determination to do good to others, regardless of whether they deserve it, regardless of whether it’s easy, regardless of whether you feel like you want to in the moment.

And in light of this, this text confronts us with the love of Christ. There are three aspects of his love we’ll look at from the text tonight. First, the constancy of Christ’s Love. Second, the Condescension of Christ’s Love – which refers to how Christ comes down and humbles himself in his love – that’s what condescension means. And third, the Call of Christ’s Love.

The Constancy of the Love of Christ

So first, the constancy of Christ’s love. Look again with me at verse 1: “Now before the Feast of the Passover (that was an important festival celebrated by the Jews)” – before that feast, “when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

The Feast of the Passover mentioned here – it commemorated a major event in the history of the Jewish people. Hundreds and hundreds of years before this, the people of Israel – the Jews – had been slaves in Egypt, and were crying out to God for deliverance. And God saved them. He brought a number of plagues on Egypt to compel Pharaoh to let his people go. And as the very last of these plagues, God sent an angel to kill the firstborn son of every family in Egypt. But for the people of Israel, God told them how they could be protected. If they took the blood of a spotless lamb, and painted it above the doorpost of their homes, the Lord would look upon the blood, and would pass over them. Hence, the Passover.

But it’s important to note – God planned the Passover to foreshadow a greater rescue plan that was yet to come. God would send a spotless lamb, to die in the place of the people, so that everyone taking refuge under the blood of that lamb would be saved from their sin, and from death. But instead of God literally sending a lamb – a four-legged, fluffy, wool-covered animal – God sent His own Son to be the lamb. That’s why, earlier in the book of John, here, in John Chapter 1, verse 29, the messenger sent from God, John the Baptist, points to Jesus and says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

And as Jesus is with his disciples, here in Chapter 13, he knows, here, that he’s on a mission to be the Passover Lamb – on a mission to die. His blood is going to be painted on the cross, so that when God’s wrath comes against the evils of this world, those who are seeking refuge under the lamb will be saved. And verse 1 makes it clear that Jesus knows this. He knows that his hour has come to depart out of this world. He knows he’s about to suffer.

If you were in this situation, what would be going through your mind? If you knew that you were on the threshold of entering into unbelievable trauma and torture and death – wouldn’t you have strong inclinations toward fear? Wouldn’t you be tempted to feel self-pity? Wouldn’t you feel irritableness and resentment toward the self-centered, oblivious disciples at the table with you? But in Jesus’s attitude, there’s not even a hint of these things. Instead, what we see in our text – what we see in Jesus is his constant love for his people. “When Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

So the love that Christ shows here – it isn’t a love that’s dependent on what’s convenient. It isn’t a love that varies, depending on the pleasantness of his life circumstances. His love doesn’t depend on how great or deserving the disciples are – it doesn’t depend on their performance – and we know this, because before the end comes, Jesus’s disciples fail him – they abandon him, they deny him. And yet we’re told that Jesus loved them to the end.

The love of Christ is a love that lasts. In his living, in all his sufferings, even in his dying, the love of Christ remains true. His love is a constant love.

The Condescension of the Love of Christ

But there’s another unique feature of Christ’s love that’s featured here in the text. The condescension of Christ’s love. As I said before – this refers to the way that Christ humbles himself in his love.

In verse 4, you’ll see that Jesus rose from his seat at the table – probably the seat of honor at the table, since he was the Rabbi that his disciples were following. And the text tells us that “he laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.”

Foot washing might sound like an odd activity to us, but in those days it was a common, because most people wore sandals or walked around barefoot. And streets were filled with animals and manure and dust and mud. So by the end of the day, feet were usually the filthiest part of someone’s body. And because foot-washing was such a dirty job, the person who did it was usually the lowest servant in the house. It was maybe the modern-day equivalent of cleaning gas station bathrooms. The job was viewed as humiliating and unattractive.

And yet the Bible tells us that Jesus is the one who does it. The greatest person at the table – Jesus himself – gets up, and starts washing feet.

And it makes the disciples uncomfortable. We’re not told what the other disciples said, or if they said anything at all – but we do see the disciple Simon Peter responded here, in verse 6. Peter defiantly asks, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus doesn’t come out directly and say yes – even though that’s implied. Instead, Jesus says something really interesting in verse 7: “Jesus answered him, “What I am doing now, you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” I’m going to come back to this comment, because it’s significant. But Peter immediately contradicts Jesus and says, “You shall never wash my feet.” And when Peter responds this way, I don’t think that he’s denying the fact that he has dirty feet. The issue isn’t that Peter doesn’t want to be clean. But instead, Peter seems unwilling to let Jesus be the one to clean him. In Peter’s mind, it’s a disgrace for Jesus to do this. Perhaps Peter believes he can wash himself – or just go without.

But then Jesus answers: “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” And it’s at this point that Peter seems to realize – this foot-washing thing isn’t just about getting mud off of stinky feet. Jesus is communicating a spiritual meaning here. Peter seems to pick up on this, and asks for extra washing, but that’s beside the point that Jesus is trying to make here – so that doesn’t happen. Instead, Jesus proceeds to wash Peter’s feet, and the feet of the other disciples. And in verse 12 we see, “When [Jesus] had washed their feet, and put on his outer garment and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you?”

And that’s a question that we need to wrestle with a bit, too. Do you understand what Jesus is doing here? I think it’s clear from verses 14 through 17, that Jesus is setting an example for what our love should look like – and we’ll get there in a minute.

But even before we get to that, you need to understand – the love we see displayed here isn’t just the love of a Jewish Rabbi getting his hands dirty for his disciples. But more than this, Jesus is showing us the love of the Son of God, who rose from his throne in heaven, and who set aside his outer garments of glory and majesty. We’re seeing the love of the One, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but he humbled himself, taking on the form of a servant. The Divine Son dressed himself in the towel of a lowly human nature. And he stooped down – all the way down to death on the cross – in order to rub away the mud and muck of our sins. This is why Jesus tells Peter, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” We cannot clean ourselves of our sin. We cannot bring ourselves to God. But Jesus did what we could not do, by humbling himself in radical love, to come down and wash us.

Jesus left behind all his rights – all his privileges – and he committed himself to us in love, to carry away our dirt. Friends, consider again Jesus’s question: “Do you understand what I have done to you?”

Jesus’s actions after the meal, here, are symbolically significant, too. After this profound demonstration of humble love, the text says he put on his outer garment and resumed his place. And in the same way, Jesus later rose from death, and ascended to take his place in heaven, once again clothed in glory.

And I hope you can see from this – Christ, the King, wasn’t obligated by some other power to descend from his throne, to come and save us. But his Lordship was expressed in his love. His splendor was manifested through service. And even now, from Jesus’s throne in glory, he continues to associate himself with his lowly people. Jesus continues to care for us with love that’s constant – with love that condescends, and reaches down to touch even us.

The Call of the Love of Christ

And this stunning love, that reaches down to us all the way down from heaven and back – it means that our lives can no longer be the same. This brings me to my third and final point: The Call of Christ’s Love.

Jesus says in verse 14, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” Verse 15: “For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done for you.”

Some people have misunderstood Christ’s words here, and they assume that foot-washing itself is a ceremony that should be continued in the church. But Jesus is commanding something much deeper, here, that reaches much further into how we live. He’s pointing at this example that he has given them – how he willingly took the lowest job, that had the lowest status, in order to serve his lowly servants – and Jesus is saying this is love. This service is what you and I have been commanded by God to give to our brothers and sisters in the faith. Our love shouldn’t be something that’s reluctant, or extracted – because the love of Christ wasn’t. Instead, we should serve with a love that’s humble, and earnest, and true. Jesus’s followers are commanded to serve one another, just as He freely gave himself for us.

Certainly, Christian love should reach beyond the Church, as well. Jesus says in other places that we should love our neighbor – that we should deal kindly with outsiders. He even says we should love our enemies – just as Christ showed us his love while we were yet enemies.

But the Christian community – where Christians are around other Christians, the Church – that’s where Christlike love and service should be particularly evident. The followers of Christ should be distinct from the world, in that they shouldn’t be gossiping or complaining about each other behind closed doors. They shouldn’t be mocking or crudely criticizing each other on social media. They shouldn’t be turning a blind eye to the needs of brothers and sisters in the church. But the people of Christ are called to embody the love of Christ – even when the people we’re called to love are unlovely. Even when we’ve been hurt by them. Even when we’re in the midst of affliction. And I can say confidently that this is how we’re supposed to love, because this is how Christ loved us, at the cross.

And just a few verses later on, in John 13:34, Jesus makes this calling on our lives very clear. He says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

It’s necessary for us to love, if we have encountered the love of Christ. If you aren’t putting aside your pride, and your sense of self-worth, in order to submit to Christ’s Word – if you aren’t serving those that he, himself, laid down his life for – then, friends, you aren’t walking as a follower of Christ. If you and I really care about God’s truth – about true doctrine, and the true teachings of Christ, we must live in love.

Jesus didn’t live for comfort and self-indulgence. He didn’t live for entertainment and games. He didn’t live for career aspirations, and educational advancement. Jesus lived – and he died – in order to love. Do you know something, of the love of Christ? Has your guilty conscience been washed? Have you found refuge under Passover lamb, who bled for your sins on the cross?

If so, then you’ll learn from his selfless humility and service. The greatest person isn’t the one who subjugates, but the one who serves. The greatest one isn’t the one who domineers, but the one who dies for his friend. And there is no one greater than Jesus – no greater authority – no greater cleansing – no greater love. So as we go from here, as a church in Mt Pleasant, MI, let’s walk in this love together. Please pray with me: