27. Christ’s View of His Mission

Christ’s View of His Mission

Second, I want you to notice Christ’s own vision of His mission. The cross sheds light upon that in the very words of Christ. Here are a number of passages: “I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:13). “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40); “From that time forth began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day” (Matthew 16:21); “And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: and they shall kill Him, and the third day He shall be raised again …” (Matthew 17:22-23); “And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify Him: and the third day He shall rise again” (Matthew 20:17-19); “Ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified” (Matthew 26:2); “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10); “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up …” (John 3:14-21); “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself …” (John 10:18).

All these words from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ were simply the fulfillment of prophecy. I want you to turn for an illustration to Psalms 22, written by David, and David expresses here some tremendous grief of his own life, and you cannot read without hearing the sob of a broken heart, David’s broken heart, sobbing out the great grief through which he was passing. But in sobbing out the grief for his own experience, he was sobbing out prophetically the deeper grief of the greater heart that also was to break, and as our Lord hung upon that cross He began this sob: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me [left me destitute]?” (Matthew 27:46).

I want you to notice Psalms 22:6 where He says, “I am a worm.” The literal meaning of the word is maggot, “I am a maggot, and no man: a reproach of men, and despised of the people.” It was that maggot that had to be killed in order to give the scarlet color with which the curtains of the tabernacle were dyed. Our Lord is likening Himself, in His hour of death, to that, and there in His death our sins have been dealt with. The Lord had to die in order to make it possible for us to be washed whiter than snow, just as that maggot had to die in order that those curtains of the tabernacle that were to speak of the Lord Jesus Christ should receive the color that was there. All these things the cross speaks of in the Gospels are just a fulfillment of those Old Testament prophecies concerning Himself.

You will notice this as you read these passages, that in Christ’s own thought He did not come to found a new religious order, although His disciples are called “Christ ones,” “Christians.” He did not come as a propagandist with a new ethical code, although the world’s highest and best ethics have their foundation in the principles laid down by the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ came as a Savior from sin. He came to die. His only purpose in taking on the likeness of human flesh, of human nature, was that He might die, and through His death bring about the great purpose that God the Father had in His heart in relation to the world. And that death has effected a victory which cannot be limited. The work of Christ on the cross has brought about the experience of a marvelous victory which can have no limits put to it.

Think of it for a moment. It means victory for God in the vindication of His character, victory for Himself in the great act of self-abasement and self-surrender; victory for the human race in the fullest possible redemption; victory for the earth in the cleansing of it and in the deliverance of it from the curse pronounced on it at the fall; victory for the animal creation in its perfect freedom from brutal passions; victory for the heavens in the clearing out of all the hosts of evil spirits and the sending of them into the abyss; victory over Satan in the dislodgment of him from heaven, in the dislodgment of him from the heavenly places where he is today; in the dislodgment of him from the earth hereafter; in the dislodgment of him from the abyss into the lake of fire; and victory for the whole universe of God when the dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ shall stretch from shore to shore. And that is only a very small view of the victory of Calvary. We shall never know, until we enter into the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and have all eternity to understand it, the fullness of the meaning of the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Calvary means Victory, and that is the message we want to send throughout the world today; it is the message of deliverance and the message of hope and the message of power for the Church of God. If she will only enter into the meaning of the cross and appropriate all the cross has done for her in that perfect finished work, Calvary spells Victory. So the teaching of Christ and the Holy Spirit through the Gospels is that the cross is to be the supreme force in life for holiness—not only for salvation, but for holiness, and the supreme power for us over everything that is evil.