The Cross of the King | Mark 15
Brian Hedges | April 18, 2025
I love celebrating Holy Week and coming together each year for Good Friday and for Easter Sunday, because they remind me and remind us together of the very heart of the Christian faith. We are Christians because we believe in the crucified and the risen Lord. We believe that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, suffered in that way on the cross for our sins, and we believe that he rose again on the third day.
As I’ve reflected personally on why I am a Christian, the reasons go much deeper than the home in which I was raised or the background that I’ve had. I think I’m a Christian because I have found Christianity to be historically compelling, especially the fact of the resurrection, which we’ll talk about in a couple of days. But also, I have found Christianity to be psychologically compelling and nourishing, and this especially: the power of the cross to heal the wounded heart, the power of the cross to bring peace to the conscience that has been afflicted and tormented with sin, the power of the cross to bring transformation and restoration into the heart and renewal in the relationship with God. I don’t know how I would live without the cross.
Tonight, as we continue in this short series we’ve been in together, “The King and His Cross,” I want us to go to the Gospel of Mark, Mark 15, and I want us to do two things together. I want us to enter into the drama of the cross, the drama of the story, to try to experience, to see, and to hear what those first witnesses saw and heard; and then also learn the truth of the cross.
I want to begin by reading verses Mark 15:1-15. In the course of the sermon tonight we’ll look at some of the other parts of this great chapter as well. So, Mark 15, beginning in verse 1.
“And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. And Pilate asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ And he answered him, ‘You have said so.’ And the chief priests accused him of many things. And Pilate again asked him, ‘Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you.’ But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed.
“Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them, saying, ‘Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?’ For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, ‘Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?’ And they cried out again, ‘Crucify him.’ And Pilate said to them, ‘Why? What evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more, ‘Crucify him.’ So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.”
This is God’s word.
So, as I said, I want us to enter into the drama of the passage by noticing three things, and then with each one of these movements in the narrative of Mark 15 I want to focus on a key truth about the cross, a key truth about the gospel; and I’ll give you a key word for each one of these points.
1. We Witness a Great Exchange: Substitution
So first of all, I want us to witness here a great exchange, which we see in the passage that I’ve just read, Mark 15:1-15. A great exchange, and it teaches us in a narrative form, in a dramatic form, in the form of a story, the story of what actually happened when Jesus took the place of Barabbas. Barabbas was set free while Jesus was crucified. It teaches us the doctrine of substitution.
We know from this text that Barabbas was a criminal—perhaps a robber, certainly a murderer, but many scholars believe he was something like a political revolutionary and someone who had been arrested because of his dangerous revolutionary ideas. Maybe he was a Zealot or something of that nature. But he was someone who had committed a crime, certainly in the eyes of Rome. He was a murderer. He was someone who deserved to die.
When you read the passage, what becomes really clear is that Jesus was clearly innocent. Even Pilate knew that Jesus was innocent. Even Pilate says, “What has he done that he deserves to be crucified? Shouldn’t I release to you Jesus, the King of the Jews?”
But instead, stirred up by the Sanhedrin, the people cry out, “Give us Barabbas, and let Jesus be crucified.”
I think in light of the early Christian reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ death, this story clearly invites us to identify ourselves with Barabbas and to see Jesus as the substitute for sinners. This is right at the heart of Christianity, that Christ took our place. I could give you a dozen passages that teach this, but here are just two.
1 Peter 3:18: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”
Or that great passage by Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:21, when he says that “for our sake he [that is, God] made him [that is, Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
God treated Jesus as if he was a sinner so that he could treat you and me as if we were righteous. It has been called this wonderful exchange, this great or sweet exchange.
Hear these words of Luther. This is what transformed Luther, believing this doctrine. He says,
“This is that mystery which is rich in divine grace to sinners, wherein by a wonderful exchange our sins are no longer ours, but Christ’s, and the righteousness of Christ not Christ’s, but ours. He has emptied himself of his righteousness that he might clothe us with it and fill us with it, and he has taken our evils upon himself that he might deliver us from them.”
Then, in a letter, he gives this exhortation. He says,
“Learn Christ and Him crucified. Learn to pray to him, and despairing of yourself, say, ‘Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, but I am thy sin. Thou hast taken upon thyself what is mine, and has given to me what is thine. Thou has taken upon thyself what thou was not and has given to me what I was not.’”
I want to ask you tonight, have you learned to think on Christ and Him crucified in that way? Have you learned, in those moments when your conscience is convicted with the memory of your sins, when you have come face to face with the evil of your heart, when maybe you have hurt someone deeply in your family, a loved one that you have disappointed or betrayed or sinned against, when you and maybe you alone know the dark thoughts that you harbor towards others, and you feel convicted of that, and you begin to face your brokenness as a human being—have you learned in those moments not to just wallow in self-pity, but instead, despairing of yourself, to look to Christ and say, “Jesus, you’re my righteousness, and you’ve taken my sin, and therefore I can be at peace.” Have you recognized that Christ is your substitute? That he traded places with you? That this exchange is an exchange he made with you?
One of the greatest painters in all of history was Rembrandt, that great seventeenth-century Dutchman. He painted many wonderful biblical scenes, including this one called Raising the Cross, completed sometime around 1633. One of the interesting things about this painting is how Rembrandt painted himself into the picture. He’s that figure standing between the Roman centurion and Christ. It’s as if he understood that he was complicit in the death of the Son of God, that he helped nail him there, that his sins were the reason why Jesus had to be crucified.
We sang it together this evening, didn’t we, with these words:
“What thou, my Lord, hast suffered
Was all for sinners gain.
Mine, mine was the transgression,
But thine the deadly pain.”
We see this as we enter into the drama of this passage, and how Barabbas goes free while Jesus, the righteous one, is crucified. It teaches us the great truth that the cross is a substitution, where Christ took our place.
2. We Hear a Cry in the Wilderness: Propitiation
Secondly, I want you tonight to hear a cry, a cry in the darkness, in Mark 15:33-34.
“And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”
Why the darkness? Why was there darkness covering the land for these three hours as Jesus hung on the cross?
I think there are several biblical answers to that. There are places in Scripture where darkness is symbolic of the judgment of God. You might think of how even Jesus sometimes speaks of judgment in terms of being cast into the outer darkness, where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. You have that several times in the Gospel of Matthew. Or think of one of the plagues of Egypt, when God was going to redeem his people from slavery in Egypt, and he sent these plagues of judgment on Egypt. Do you remember that one of them was this plague of darkness? Exodus tells us it was a darkness to be felt, pitch darkness in all the land for three days. Or think about the prophets, who would sometimes speak of the day of the Lord. And the prophet Amos says, “Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness and not light. Is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light, with gloom and no brightness in it?”
I think passages like that suggest to us that when darkness descended on the land as Jesus was being crucified, it was symbolic of the judgment of God, the day of the Lord that was happening right here in the middle of history, as Jesus hung on the cross, and divine judgments took place in those moments.
It’s really the only explanation for the cry in the darkness, this cry of Jesus, perhaps more like a scream, as Jesus, in not only physical agony but in absolute spiritual desolation in that moment, cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
What is this cry in the darkness? It is the cry of one who is bearing all the weight of divine justice and wrath against sin. That’s what we mean by this theological word “propitiation.” When we say that Christ was the propitiation for our sins, we mean that he bore the wrath of God for us on the cross. Galatians 3:13 says that “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’”
Are you grasping how the Bible just stretches language? He became sin for us. He became a curse for us. He was cursed in our place. It’s just as if these New Testament writers are reaching for language and categories to explain for us this event and the significance of this event.
Or listen to these words from Paul, Romans 3. He says God presented Christ as a “sacrifice of atonement,” or as the ESV says, “a propitiation,” but it means a sacrifice of atonement. “...through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time.”
Stop right there. I think for many people when they think about the cross, they find it difficult to understand why Jesus would need to die in order to cover our sins. But the biblical answer to that question, whatever the modern sensibilities of it may be, the biblical answer to that question is that the righteousness of God demanded it. That’s what Paul is saying here. Jesus died to demonstrate the righteousness of God at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. He became the propitiation for our sins. He took the judgment of God and bore the wrath that we deserved.
Ray Pritchard tells a story of a young man named Charles Murray who in 1967 was training at the University of Cincinnati for the Summer Olympics of ’68. He was a high diver, and a Christian friend had spent hours sharing the gospel with him. Charles was not raised in a Christian home, and while the story of Jesus fascinated him and he was even asking questions about the forgiveness of sins, when his Christian friend asked him if he wanted to place his trust in Christ as Savior, his reply was a definite no.
He’d been training for the Olympic games, and because of that he had special privileges at the university pool facilities. One evening, between 10:30 and 11:00, he decided to go swim and practice a few dives.
It was a clear night in October. The moon was big and bright. The university pool was housed under a ceiling of glass panes, so that the moon shone bright across the top of the wall in the pool area. He didn’t turn the lights on; he was just going to swim in the dark. He climbed to the highest platform to take his first dive, and at that moment, something began to happen in his heart, as God’s Spirit convicted him of his sin. All the Scripture that he had read, the questions, the conversations, all this flooded his mind. He stood on that platform backwards, about to make his dive. He spread out his arms to gather his balance, and he looked at the wall, and there was his own shadow, and it was the shadow of a cross.
At that moment, his heart broke. He sat down on the platform. He asked God to forgive him of his sins and to save him, and he trusted in Christ, twenty feet in the air.
Then suddenly, the lights came on, and the attendant, a janitor, had come in to check the pool. As Charles looked down from the platform, he saw that the pool was empty of water. It had been drained for repairs, and he had almost plummeted to his death, and the cross had literally saved his life.
In an even greater way, the cross is what rescues us. It’s what saves us from that final leap into eternity where we would face the judgment of a just and a holy God without any kind of covering. The cross reveals to us the depth of both God’s love for us, that through Christ he would make such a sacrifice, and it assures us that his justice has been fully answered and completely satisfied, because when Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” it was to assure us that if we are in Christ, we can never be forsaken by God, because the judgment has been satisfied.
“This, the power of the cross;
Christ became sin for us,
Took the blame, bore the wrath,
We stand forgiven at the cross.”
It’s why we can pray and do pray when we confess our sins, we pray 1 John 1:9. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Just, why? Because the justice has already been satisfied. The sin is paid for. It’s all because of the propitiation, that aspect of the work of the cross, as Jesus bore the darkness of the judgment of God for our sins.
3. We See the Welcome of the Outsiders: Reconciliation
There’s one more movement in this story. In the final paragraph, we see the welcome of the outsiders. It all happens right after Jesus dies, and there’s this mysterious thing that happens in the temple. Look at Mark 15:37-39.
“And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!’”
It’s very significant that the curtain in the temple was ripped in two. Matthew records it as well; we read that earlier in our service. I think it probably had a double meaning.
It was to show that the way to God was open. There was a curtain that separated the rest of the temple from the Holy of Holies, that most holy place where the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement was made. Only the high priest could go in, and he could only go in once a year. The book of Hebrews makes much of this, that the way has been opened through what Christ has done for us, so that we have access to God.
But perhaps also it’s important to recognize that there was a veil that separated the Court of Israel from the Court of Women and the Court of the Gentiles, and that the women and the Gentiles had even more limited access in the temple than Jewish males did. What’s so interesting in this passage is that the curtain is ripped in two, and the very first thing that happens after that is that a Gentile centurion—in fact, one of the centurions who was overseeing the execution of Jesus—makes a confession of faith and says, “Truly, this man was the Son of God.”
Now, in the Gospel of Mark this is the first human being to make that confession. He’s been called the Son of David, he’s been called the Christ, he’s been called the Messiah; but only the demons up to this point have recognized that he is the Son of God. And the first human figure in Mark’s Gospel to recognize Jesus as the divine Son is this Roman centurion. It’s something like a confession of faith.
Then, immediately following that, you have the women. Look at verses 40-41.
“There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.”
Then verse 47 says that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where he was laid.
These women, of course, become the first eyewitnesses to the resurrection of Christ. Women weren’t actually allowed to be legal eyewitnesses in Roman or in Jewish legal practice, but this is the way it really happened, and so the Gospel writers aren’t fudging the facts, they’re just recording what happened. These are the women who are witnessing. The other disciples had all forsaken and fled, except for John, but the women are there. Just as they had ministered to Jesus through their life, here they are with Jesus at his death, attending to his body and burial, and will be the first eyewitnesses of his resurrection.
I think it’s showing us something about the inclusion of women and the equality of men and women in the kingdom of God.
Then you have one more outsider who gets welcomed in. You have a centurion—a Roman, Gentile—you have the women, and you have a Pharisee.
The Pharisees were the avowed enemies of Jesus. But in verse 42:
“When evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.”
Here’s a Pharisee. Here’s a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council. Here’s someone who perhaps had never really believed in Jesus or had never had the courage to do so, but now in this moment, he is courageous, and he attends to the body of Jesus.
I think all three of these accounts show us how outsiders can be welcomed in, how the Gentiles can be incorporated into the kingdom of God, how women are on equal footing with men, and how even the enemies of Jesus, whether it’s the Roman centurion or the religious Pharisee, they can all be reconciled to God.
This is the key word: the word reconciliation. What is reconciliation? It’s when there has been some kind of estrangement or hostility between two parties, when that is removed, so that there is now friendship, there is restored relationship. The Scriptures talk often about the reconciliation that happens through the cross.
Earlier I showed you this painting of Rembrandt’s Raising the Cross. Here’s another one—a year later—The Descent from the Cross. Once again, Rembrandt painted himself into the picture, placing himself among those who cared for the body of Jesus as it was removed from the cross. Perhaps what Rembrandt meant was not only was he complicit in the death of Christ, but he also was reconciled through the death of Christ.
Friends, this is the good news tonight for every single one of us. Good news if you’re already a Christian; it means that you are reconciled to God. And good news if you’re not a Christian; it means that you can be reconciled to God.
Why believe the gospel? Why trust in a crucified King? We’ll look at some of the reasons historically to believe this message of the crucifixion and resurrection. We’ll look at that Sunday. But here’s a reason: because if true, this is the best news in the world; because it means that Christ trades places with us, taking our sin and giving us his righteousness. It means that he faced the darkness of judgment that we deserved, fully answered the demands of God’s justice against our sins, and it means that we, the outsiders, can be reconciled to God and welcomed into the kingdom of God through the death of God’s Son.
I want to end by reading this passage to you, and I want us to hear this tonight as both an exhortation and as a commission. It is an exhortation to be reconciled to God, and it is a commission to share this message of reconciliation with others. Paul is writing; 2 Corinthians 5:18-21.
“All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Let’s pray.
Our gracious and merciful Father, we thank you tonight for the message of the cross. We thank you that Christ, our substitute, has taken the judgment that we deserve so that we could be clothed in his righteousness and could be reconciled to you and welcomed into your family and into your kingdom, to be your sons and daughters, to be reconciled to one another as brothers and sisters, and to know that we are at peace with God because of what Christ has done. We are so thankful for this grace that you have shown us. We give you thanks for it tonight.
Once again, we pray that by your Spirit you would work these truths so deeply into our hearts that they would soften the hard places, that they would heal that which is broken, they would bring transformation to our hearts in a deeper love, a deeper gratitude, a deeper joy in you.
As we come now to the Lord’s table, we pray that you would use the table also as a means of grace in our hearts and lives as we reflect on what Christ has done and do so in a tangible, visible way. We pray that you would be glorified in it. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
