Good Friday + Chief Service
Text: John 18-19
“What is man?”
In the beginning, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26)
What is this image and likeness?
A child is an image of their parent – their appearance, receding hairlines, how they walk, and how they talk.
But, the likeness and image of the Creator reside deeper than flesh. Man, like Adam, receives God's character – God's law, His will written upon the heart.
Genesis goes on to say, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it." (Genesis 2:15). The man carries out the will of God as a manager and steward of creation. His labors are not punishment, nor are they toilsome.
Yet, the question is often asked, what if Adam didn't sin? Or, why didn’t God prevent Adam from being led into the Serpent's temptation?
God did not create Adam to be some sort of mechanized being.
Rather, as we confess in the meaning of the Creed, we learn how he was given as you have been given - body and soul, eyes, ears, and all your members, reason and senses, and the promise that God will continue to care for them – Adam was given the ability to reason, to think, and to speak.
Thus the first temptation of Scripture began with the ancient Serpent leading Eve, Adam’s wife, into doubting God's Word before turning both of them to reject it and ending with Adam and Eve as their own arbiters of right and wrong.
Here it is said, “[The devil] turned Adam and Eve into enthusiasts. He led them away from God’s external Word to spiritualizing and self-pride.” (SA III VIII 5) He led them to seek a word outside of God.
From this moment in time and throughout the ages, philosophers and worldviews have struggled to answer the question, “What is man?”
Is he the product of a god that creates and then walks away from his creation? Or was Adam created as a single substance mutating in time? Or is man a free and responsible agent, determining his development through the acts of his own free will?
These philosophies and worldviews rely upon the mind and will of man separated from God. They revolve around the created, answering the question of creation while becoming lords over the Creator.
All the worldviews and philosophies of our time reveal the brokenness of a world no longer connected to its Creator and His love. Love that did not abandon His fallen creation but continued to care for it by sending His only begotten Son into it to become Man through His incarnation.
The incarnation – meaning the enfleshment of Jesus Christ, the God-Man.
Jesus becomes the Second Adam, "By the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary," He becomes, as Daniel prophecies, the Son of Man, “because He was born of a human mother and assumed all the properties of a true, natural man, yet without sin.”
But, when Pilate announces to the crowd, "Behold the Man!" He reveals to you this night your Lord and your God, He who was handed over to death for the many ways you, like Adam, failed to be a steward of the greatest gifts God entrusts to your care – your fellow man.
So by saying, "Behold the Man!" Pilate uncovers how your evil thoughts of neighbor are the crown of thorns that pricked and stuck the head of Christ.
"Behold the Man!" Confesses how your sinful words toward God and man alike are the spit which splattered upon the face of Christ.
"Behold the Man!" Reveals how your evil deeds and misgivings have whipped and scourged your Christ.
For all of you this night, Pilate announces, “Behold the Man!”
As Isaiah foretells,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. (Isaiah 53:2b-3)
But, for you, the cross becomes the instrument in which “God demonstrates His own love toward [you], in that while [you] were still sinners, Christ died for [you].” (Romans 5:8). In this way, the Creator reveals His compassion and continual care for you, His creation.
Yet, as you depart this night, there is another brief sermon to take with you…
After Jesus’ death, Joseph of Arimathea petitioned Pilate for the body of the Lord so that he and Nicodemus could place it in a tomb within a garden.
As in so many instances, names matter; if you examine the name of Nicodemus, it is a compound of two words. The first is Nikos (or, as many of you would say, Nike), meaning "Victory." And the second demos, meaning "People."
Do you hear that? Into the ground, into the tomb, Nicodemus is placing God’s Son – the Son of Man, He who is the victor of the very men and people who have persecuted Him and caused His Passion – you!
Through the use of Nicodemus, God's victory over sin, the devil, and the world is already being proclaimed.
As you depart this night, take this joy with you, treasure it in your heart, and return with it as we prepare to sing our praises for the resurrection and victory of the Son of Man. +INJ+
Rev. Noah J. Rogness
Associate Pastor, Immanuel Evangelical-Lutheran Church
Alexandria, VA
