THE CROSS
COMMUNION SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
SEPTEMBER 4, 2005
1 JOHN 2:1-2
Helena was the empress of Rome and the mother of Constantine the Great. It was Constantine the Great who legalized Christianity and gave Christians religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire. Today, many historians debate whether Constantine the Great ever really believed in Jesus Christ. But no one doubts that his mother did. No one doubts that Helena believed in Jesus Christ and the year was 326 AD and she was 71 years old when Helena made her famous pilgrimage to the holy land. She wanted to walk where Jesus walked. She wanted to find holy relics from the holy sites. So Helena came to the city of Jerusalem and she asked the same question of everyone: where was Jesus buried? Where was the garden tomb of Joseph of Arimathea? And they all gave her the same answer. They pointed to the same spot. It was a place where a Roman temple had been built.
In fact, they had built the Roman temple on that site because that site was considered holy since Jesus was once buried there. So, by the command of Helena, the mother of the Roman emperor, they tore that Roman temple down and they began a kind of archeological dig. They dug down and they found what once was a garden. Within the region of that garden, they found a sepulcher, a tomb that was empty—a tomb in which no body had ever decayed. Now, now all of this we learn from Eusebius, the great historian, but there are other historians who add more details. Cyro of Jerusalem and Ambrose of Milan tell us that when Helena went into the sepulcher that day, it was not really empty. Cyro of Jerusalem and Ambrose of Milan tell us that when she went into the tomb, she found the cross. Christians had placed the cross within the empty tomb and also the trilingual inscription of Pontius Pilate.
Of course, the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Christian churches have all embraced the testimony of Cyro of Jerusalem and Ambrose of Milan. They received their testimonies as true. Other historians are not so sure, but it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t really matter whether that cross was in the empty tomb. Through the centuries, alleged sections of the cross have been exhibited in cathedrals all over Europe. Through the centuries, fragments and pieces of the cross have been sold all over the world, enough fragments to build Noah’s Ark. It really doesn’t matter because what’s important is not the wood of the cross. What’s important is what happened on the cross. What’s important is Jesus.
On that cross, Jesus died. This morning, on this communion Sunday, I want us to take a look at the meaning of the cross, and I want us to take a look at two Greek words that are associated with the cross in the Bible. These are two Greek words which as a congregation we have never examined before.
Now, the first Greek word is the word “hilasmos.” This word “hilasmos” means expiation. The Bible tells us the cross is an expiation. The Bible tells us that on the cross, Jesus expiated our sin. I know that many of us today are deeply troubled by what we have seen this past week and by the devastation on the Gulf Coast, the devastation that has come to so many people because of the impact of Hurricane Katrina. We’ve looked at the television and we’ve read the newspapers and we’ve seen how so many people in Mississippi and Louisiana. From Biloxi to New Orleans, we’ve seen tragedy. The city of New Orleans is almost underwater. It looks apocalyptic. In the midst of our compassion and our concern, we want to help. This morning, as you retire from this place, we want you to know that the retiring offering, which always goes to help the emergency needs of members of our congregation needs, which are real, half of what we give today as we leave will go directly to help those who have been impacted by Hurricane Katrina.
Also, there will be a prayer service sponsored by our student ministries department right after this service, so those of you who want to pray and have that in your heart can do so. I think in times like this, we kind of see the worst of people and the best of people. Is that not true? So we’ve seen people respond all over our country. And even all over the world we’ve seen people respond with compassion and people wanting and willing to help. We’ve seen incredible courage from so many people who have been impacted by the storm itself. But in the midst of all this, we’ve also seen kind of the worst of human behavior as we’ve looked in on the news and we’ve seen in the city of New Orleans such incredible looting violence, and criminal activity.
And it wouldn’t be so bad if they were just looting food and water, but it’s whatever they can get their hands on. In the midst of the violence, there are people who have shot at rescue helicopters and it just feels like this can’t be happening. You kind of think of Golding’s book Lord of the Flies, where restraint is removed and people fall back into almost animal-like behavior. I think it reminds us that deep within all of us there is a sin nature. And you know, most of us would find some kind of a circumstance, at least over some period of time, that would bring us to behavior that was less human than we would normally think of ourselves as. as We all have sin in our lives.
The Bible takes sin very, very seriously, which is why in the Bible there are five different words for sin. There’s the word “parabasis,” which is translated sin, but parabasis literally means to cross the line. The lines are drawn by God. But we cross those lines.
There’s the word “anomia,” another word in the Bible for sin. This word means without law. It means lawlessness. It’s often rendered sin. The word anomia is used in the Bible to describe the Antichrist who is to come. He will be the man of lawlessness. He will be the man of sin.
Then there’s the word “paraptoma,” a word which means trespass or trespasses. Of course, we all at times in our life trespass and it is sin.
Another word for sin in the Bible is the word “hamartia.” In fact, this is the word that is the most common word in the Bible for sin. Hamartia means literally to miss the mark, to miss the target, to miss the standard. God sets the standard of holiness and we all miss it. The Bible says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There’s none righteous, no, not one.” There are sins of omission and sins of commission. There are things we should not have done that we have done, and things we should have done we have not done. Those are sins of omission and commission.
Finally, there’s one more sin word in the Bible, and it’s the word “opheilema.” This word is translated oftentimes sin, but it literally means debt. This is the word Jesus used in the Lord’s prayer, or at least it’s the Greek equivalent of the Aramaic word He would’ve used this word. Opheilema means debt. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
For all of these words for sin in the Bible, the answer is the cross. The answer is what Jesus did on the cross. This word hilasmos means He expiated our sin. The word hilasmos means “to cover.” It means to cover up. It means to wipe away. It means to make clean, and that’s what Jesus did for us on the cross.
I know you’ve all heard of Black Friday. I don’t know what you think of when you think of the words Black Friday. Maybe you work weekends and Fridays seem kind of black to you. Maybe you were divorced on a Friday, maybe you were married on a Friday. That might be kind of sad and seemed black. But historians look back on the words Black Friday and they have specific meaning having to do with economic disaster. When some people think of Black Friday, they think of October 24th, 1929, when the stock market crashed and we entered into the Great Depression. But October 24th, 1929, was a Thursday, not a Friday.
So when historians look back on Black Friday, they really think of two dates. First of all, September 24th, 1869; that’s when Jay Gold and James Fisk tried to corner the gold market in New York City, plunging our nation into economic chaos and driving countless people into debt and ruin. The other Black Friday was September 19th, 1873, when we had the first stock market crash and we had the panic of 1873.
But when you think of Black Friday, you think of millions and millions of people going into debt, financial ruin. What do you think of when you think of Good Friday? When you think of Good Friday, I think most of us think of the cross. I mean, every time we celebrate communion, we remember Good Friday. When you think of Good Friday, you think of what Jesus did on that cross and how He expiated the sin of the world. You think of people coming out of debt. You think of people having their debt forgiven, their slate wiped clean, because the Bible says Jesus is the expiation for our sins.
He is not the expiation for our sins only, but also for the sin of the whole world. Incredible. Of course, we have to appropriate through faith and repentance what Jesus did on the cross. But when we come to the cross and we come to Jesus, our debt is forgiven us and our sin is covered up. In fact, the slate is wiped clean. We are given life. It’s an amazing thing. If you look at the Jewish world, the most holy day of all on the Jewish calendar is the Day of Atonement. It was called Yom Kippur. Kippur comes from the Hebrew “kaphar,” which means “to cover up.” It was the Day of Atonement, the day of covering, the day of covering up.
On that day, the high priest would vest the sin of the people upon the scapegoat and send the goat out into the wilderness, symbolically removing the sin of the people from them. And on that day, the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies where no one else could go, and he would be tied with a rope so that if he died in there, they could pull him out without going in. There in the Holy of Holies, he would sprinkle the blood of animals upon the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant, hoping to atone for the sin of the people, hoping to cover the sin of the people. The Mercy Seat was a gold lid covered by two gold cherubim, and they considered it the throne of God. it was called the Mercy Seat Kaporet—the seat of mercy, the seat of atonement, the seat of covering, the seat of expiation. So in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Testament, the Mercy Seat, the Kaporet, is called hilasterion, from hilasmos, this word which means “to expiate.”
We understand that the real day of atonement took place on the cross, and the whole Jewish sacrificial system pointed to the cross the day when Jesus would expiate the sin of the world. As you come to the table today, you celebrate this. You who have faith, you have come to Him in faith and repentance. You’ve come to the cross and you’ve received Him as Savior and Lord. You take the bread and you take the cup and you celebrate the fact that your sin is covered.
I should say before we leave that on rare occasions the word hilasmos can also mean “to propitiate.” Certainly the word propitiate, which means to pacify someone’s anger, can be applied to the cross. God has righteous indignation and His righteous indignation was placated or pacified by what Jesus did on the cross. That’s propitiation, another meaning of hilasmos.
Well, there’s a second word I want us to look at this morning in conjunction with the cross. That word is “katallasso.” The Bible tells us that when Jesus died on the cross, it provided what the Greeks called katallasso, or katallage. This word means reconciliation. The cross has to do with reconciliation. So on the cross, God through His Son reconciled us to Himself.
Now, we who are Christians have been given through the cross the ministry of reconciliation. The word reconcile, the word katallasso, means “to exchange enmity for peace,” to make of an enemy a friend. So what this tells us is that on the cross and through the cross God wants to be our friend. Did you know that? Did you know that God desperately wants to be your friend? I know many of you have traveled to New York City and you’ve gone to Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, and you’ve seen the Empire State Building that was built in 1931. Many of you’ve gone up in the Empire State building, 102 stories high. You’ve gone up there because you wanted to see the view from the top. You’ve gone up there because you’ve wanted to be able to say that you’ve gone up there. So you went to the top of the Empire State Building.
You might remember, just a few years ago, how two men who worked in the Empire State Building on the 44th floor got into the elevator, and they pushed the button and it would be like no experience they’d ever had before. It was covered in all the newspapers and over the news. They pushed that button on the 44th floor of the Empire State Building, and the elevator malfunctioned and just went into a free fall. Those two guys fell in that elevator fell 400 feet in a free fall, and the emergency system engaged four floors from the bottom and they stopped two floors from the bottom. Yes, they were alive. They said that they both thought, they both knew, they were going to die. When they were in the midst of that 400-foot free-fall, they just knew they were going to die. But they did not.
I mean, you think of the Tower of Terror in Disneyland at Orlando. Nothing compared to a 400-foot free-fall. How scary would that be? And there are a lot of people in the world—I think maybe millions, maybe billions—who are a little bit afraid of the day they die. Judgment day. They’re afraid God’s going to push the button and they’re just going to drop in a free-fall and when they hit the bottom, they’re going to experience something worse than death. A lot of people have that fear. They’re just not sure, but they have that fear. But you understand, God doesn’t want you to feel like that. God doesn’t want you to go through life afraid. God doesn’t want you to feel like that. That’s why we have the cross. That’s why Jesus came into the world. God wants to be your friend. He wants reconciliation. It’s not God who needs to be reconciled. The Bible says we’re the ones who need to be reconciled. We’re the ones who’ve left home. God wants us to come home. God wants to be our friend.
I was reading recently, just a few months ago, about a couple down in Florida. They lived in Orlando. The couple’s name was Larry and Maryanne. And after 17 years of marriage, they separated. I don’t know why. I mean, I know it just happened recently. I know that they were having financial trouble. I don’t know whether that was the sole explanation, but Maryanne left Larry and went to Jacksonville to be with her parents, and she changed her cell phone number. She didn’t want Larry to even be able to reach her. Larry loved her and was longing for reconciliation. So he did something amazing. He took out a full-page ad in a Florida newspaper. Did you read about that full-page ad? It cost him $17,000. He didn’t really have the money, but he was desperate. He said, my life is empty and meaningless without you. Please come home. I want to serve you with an endless love, a love that never dies.
Well, to this day, Marianne has not come back. I don’t know why. But don’t we live in a world like that? Don’t we live in a world where somebody’s seeking reconciliation and somebody didn’t want to give it? Don’t we live in a world where somebody wants to be a friend and another person’s not buying it? It’s kind of a sad world, but understand, nobody wants to be your friend more than God. This is the amazing message of the cross. Nobody wants to be a friend more than God. So He sent His Son into the world that He might reconcile us to Himself. It’s really what the story of the prodigal son is all about, a father who longs for reconciliation. A son who’s run away from home and finally in repentance is reconciled as he comes back. God feels that kind of father’s love for us.
Of course, the word for reconciliation, this word katallasso, like all the family of words associated with it, is based on that root meaning of “to change or exchange.” We understand that on the cross that’s what’s taking place. There’s the great exchange, and our sin is imputed to Christ on the cross. He dies in our place. His righteousness is imputed to us so that we are declared, by His grace, holy. It’s incredible. It’s the message of the gospel and it’s the meaning of the cross. Thereby God offers friendship to the world.
But we who believe and we who have come to Christ, we’ve also been called now to a ministry of reconciliation. I mean, we see this in Romans five. We see this in 2 Corinthians five. We see this in Ephesians chapter two and Colossians chapter one. This is always the word katallasso, and it’s the ministry of reconciliation we’ve been called to.
Before we come to the table this morning, I want to tell you a story about Paul Cho. I think many of you have heard of Paul Cho. He’s the pastor of the largest church in the world, a church in South Korea. You might think, well how large is the largest church in the world? Maybe you think it’s 20,000 people. Maybe you think it’s 50,000 people, and that would be huge. But we’re told that Paul Cho’s church (and it’s really not his church. I mean, it really belongs to Jesus Christ and Paul Cho serves Christ in this church) is 500,000 people. That’s unbelievable.
As Paul Cho’s ministry began to grow and he began to be international, he would travel to nations all over the world. But there was one nation he never went to, and that nation was Japan. Paul Cho never went there because he hated the Japanese. He hated the Japanese for what they had done in World War II to the Chinese, to his people. He thought of the Japanese as those who murdered and raped and plundered his people, and he could not forgive them. He could not go to Japan. I mean, for him, Japan was Nineveh. He didn’t want to go there. One day in a prayer time, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, convicted Paul Cho that he was to forgive the Japanese. He knew this was so; he knew that the cross demanded it. He knew Christ demanded it. So he agreed to do a ministry in Japan and to do a conference for Japanese pastors. He also agreed to do this because so many of his Christian brothers and sisters had strongly exhorted him to repent of his lack of willingness to forgive the Japanese people.
So Paul Cho went to Japan. He went to Tokyo, to a conference for Christian pastors there, and a thousand Japanese pastors came to the conference. Maybe you didn’t know there were a thousand Christian pastors in Japan. They came to Tokyo to hear Paul Cho. He got up front of them to speak to them. He had things he had intended to say. But he got up there and all the hurt, all the anger, surfaced. As he stood in front of these thousand pastors, all he could say was, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” He began to cry. As he began to cry, an amazing thing happened as the Spirit of God moved in the room. These thousand Japanese Christian pastors came forward to the altar area, and they, one by one, knelt down in front of Paul Cho and they asked his forgiveness for what their people had done to his people.
Then as they did this humble thing, Paul Cho began to cry all the more, and the Holy Spirit just did this incredible transformation in his heart. Paul Cho began to say, “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.” That’s reconciliation. If you’ve been to the cross, that’s the ministry you’ve been called to. We’ve been called to forgive, and we’ve been called to seek forgiveness. We’ve been called to make friends of our enemies. We’ve been called to move enmity to peace. We’ve been called to this ministry of reconciliation. So we come to the table today thinking of the meaning of the cross and these two words, halismos and katallasso. We remember that Jesus is the expiation for our sins, and He has reconciled us with the Father. We are friends of God. We are reminded as we take the bread and the cup that we’ve been called now to a ministry of reconciliation. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.