At the Heart of It All

1 Corinthians 2:1-5
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
March 29, 2026 – Palm/Passion Sunday

On Palm Sunday Jesus rode on in majesty to die five days later in an execution of appalling humiliation and ghastly brutality.  The crucifixion would render the most beautiful Person ever to walk this earth a gray, stiff, stone-cold, decomposing, malodorous corpse sealed in an airless tomb; but, even worse, would plunge Him into the darkest depths of the hell of utter God-forsakenness.

We might want to avert our eyes from the horror of it all, but the Apostle Paul in his messaging put it front and center as the crucial, core action of God’s love.  That’s why, Paul told the Corinthians, he “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified”.  To Paul the crucified Christ is at the heart of God’s work of grace for the whole human race.

The idea of a crucified God is ridiculous to many.  Richard Dawkins, Oxford professor and evangelist for atheism, mocked the idea that the Creator of this immense and intricate universe “could not think of a better way to rid the world of sin than to come to this little speck of cosmic dust and have himself tortured and executed”.  Dawkins deemed the idea offensive to the grandeur of existence.

Many a Muslim too has found the idea of God’s subjecting Himself to the degradation of crucifixion as preposterous and blasphemous.

The sophisticated Greeks in Corinth would have appreciated such objections; and Paul admitted he didn’t have the dazzling rhetoric, the refined discourse or the impressive powers of persuasion to dislodge them from their rejection of the idea of a crucified God. Paul knew he lacked the art in his communication to convince them at least to doubt their doubts, but he put his whole heart into telling the story of the cross straight and true – in the faith that the power of God’s Spirit might kick in and open eyes to the reality that on that cross God was showing He was good enough and strong enough to take on evil at its worst and to save us from it.

We who see this as great good news to share with everyone would do well to follow Paul’s example and not trust in our art at presenting it – but to believe that, though we cannot explain it all that well, the reality of “Christ and him crucified” can speak for itself and make sense to those willing to look at it anew.

In his book The Reason for God, Tim Keller notes how, throughout life, loving others with significant need involves self-sacrifice.  For example, imagine you come into contact with an innocent man hunted by bad guys bent on killing him.  If you don’t help him, he will almost certainly die; but if you do help him, you – who had been perfectly safe and secure before – will be putting yourself in mortal danger.  You can only give him some safety by sacrificing your own.  You give him a chance of survival at the cost of risking your own life.

Or consider raising children, Keller says. They come into this world helpless, and have no chance of gaining independence and freedom in future years if no one gives up their independence and freedom for them for many years.  If no one sacrifices and suffers deprivation for their sake, they’ll be stunted in their maturation and end up unhappy adults unable to cope with life.  Keller asserts, “All life-changing love of those in serious need is a substitutional sacrifice.”  “A” takes to heart “B”’s lack of something important and, having it, shares it with B.  In other words, A sacrifices what A has in order to give B what B doesn’t.

At the cross, Jesus sacrificed His strong life bright with the light of righteousness to give hope to those lost in the darkness of their sin and weakness.

Now, by necessity, loving sinners involves forgiving them.  But why does the Bible say there is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood?  Why can’t God be big enough to let bygones be bygones and just sweep our wrongs under the rug?  Why does anyone have to suffer in forgiving? Because that’s how life works!

Sin always costs, and someone always has to eat its cost.  If you decide to forgive someone, you absorb the cost of the evil they’ve done to you.

J.D. Greear invites this reflection.  Imagine I have a Ferrari that I never got around to insuring.  You steal it and wreck it in a total loss.  Imagine you have neither the insurance nor the money to replace the Ferrari of which you’ve now deprived me.  I could drag you into court and have you put on a mandated payment plan on which you’d be paying your debt to me the rest of your life.  Or I could decide to free you who made things wrong for me from any obligation to make things right for me.  I could choose to absorb the whole cost of what you’ve brought down on me.

Of course, in stealing and wrecking my car, you’ve not only diminished my material well-being but also my emotional well-being.  Your theft has inflicted want and pain upon me. Your lack of consideration for my rights and happiness has hurt me and disrespected me.  If, however, I forgive you, I absorb the cost of that pain rather than inflict pain on you.  I refrain from insisting you pay for any restoration but instead bear all by myself the burden of the repercussions you brought about all by yourself.  Why, even though you deserve the opposite, I might even offer possible friendship between us.  To forgive is to cover all the guilty costs the wrong-doer incurred.

That’s what Jesus the God-Man was doing when He sacrificed His life on the cross. But did the price have to be that high?  It did because Jesus was paying the penalty, not just for a single person, but for everyone (including the most egregiously evil people).  The price also had to be high because Jesus was paying, not just for the wrong done human beings, but for the wrong done the divine Being whose heart is on the line with how it goes with others. David, in Psalm 51, his psalm of repentance for having slept with Bathsheba and arranged for the death of Uriah, was correct in recognizing he’d not just wronged those two, but ultimately God Himself.  He’d brought unjust pain and dishonor upon the One who merits nothing but praise and blessing.

The degree to which an act is evil depends, not just on what was done, but to whom it was done.  Stick needles into a moth, and you’ve done something evil; stick them into a cat, and you’re done something worse; stick them into a baby, and you’ve done something very, very bad.

How bad is it then to do evil to an infinitely good and holy God?  Who could absorb the cost of that huge sin but God Himself?

It took a big God miniaturizing Himself in human form and suffering as Jesus suffered to absorb the huge cost of all our evil.  Even if we can’t figure out the spiritual math of the Atonement or figure out how an immortal Person could die, we can take in Christ’s self-sacrifice on that cross and let it stun us with awe and wonder.  We can marvel that, at the heart of it all, there is a suffering God overflowing with love for us!

May God’s Spirit lead us to Calvary, and move us to glorify Him and to share His love with others!