Matthew 27: How the Cross Became a Sign of Love

Introduction

That Sunday, Chitose Gospel Christ Church (千歳福音キリスト教会) in Hokkaido was celebrating its 60th anniversary. For the occasion, it had invited Pastor Kida (木田仁逸), pastor of Shalom Evangelical Church. He knows this house well: he came here at 17, was baptized here, and was a member for ten years, the time it took to work four years on a farm, three years in a laundry and three years at the Hokkaido Bible Institute. He is now in his 37th year of pastoral ministry.

He first gives thanks for the missionaries, the Japanese pastors and the members who served during these sixty years, pointing out that if the church has been able to walk this far, it is not only thanks to human effort: it is first of all by the grace of the Lord, who kept it, led it and sustained it. He prays that it will keep proclaiming the gospel in its region and passing the faith on to the next generation.

Then he asks a question. In the past the cross was used to execute condemned people, and it was the cruelest instrument of death of its time. Today, when we see a cross, we think of salvation, hope and love. "What changed the cross?" With this question he opens Matthew 27:32-54, the account of the crucifixion.

Outline of the Message

1. A Cross on a Hospital

• The pastor tells how, when he had been living in Hokkaido for about eight years and knew the large churches of Sapporo, he noticed a building marked with a cross and wondered whether there was a beautiful church there that he did not know. He turns it into a quiz for the congregation: it was a hospital.
• On maps too, hospitals are marked with a cross. The Red Cross emblem is the Swiss flag with its colors reversed, a tribute to its founder Henri Dunant, who was Swiss.
• The place that saves, protects and heals lives carries the sign of an instrument of death. Even people who are not Christians wear the cross as jewelry.
• "How did an instrument of execution become the symbol of salvation?" The whole sermon answers this question.

2. Simon of Cyrene: The Cross That Should Have Been Ours

• In verse 32, the soldiers meet Simon, a man from Cyrene, and force him to carry Jesus' cross. After the night's flogging, Jesus had no strength left on the road to Golgotha.
• At first we think Simon was very unlucky: suddenly having to carry the cross of a stranger condemned to death. But the deeper meaning is the opposite. We are the ones who should have carried the cross of our own sins.
• Sin, according to the Bible, is not first of all breaking a law. It is failing to acknowledge as God the one who gives life, turning our back on him and living centered on ourselves, becoming our own god. A life that misses the target. In this sense, no one is without sin before God.
• "Jesus Christ became our substitute. This is the heart of the cross." Though he was without sin, he did not say he had nothing to do with us: he came down from heaven to us. That is the meaning of Christmas.

3. A Chosen Silence Before Pilate

• Pilate, the Roman governor who also served as judge, asks Jesus whether he is the King of the Jews. Jesus answers: "So you say" (Matthew 27:11). He is the true King, but he wisely avoids calling himself king in the political sense, which would have been understood as rebellion against Rome.
• Accused by the Jewish leaders, he stays silent. Verse 14 says that "he gave him no answer, not even one word, so that the governor marveled greatly." He could have defended himself and proved his innocence. He did not.
• For Jesus, the cross was neither an accident nor a mere tragedy. At the last supper, which the pastor evokes through Leonardo da Vinci's painting, he had already said: "for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the remission of sins" (Matthew 26:28).
• He knew what was going to happen, and he accepted the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.

4. Barabbas Set Free, Jesus Crucified

• Barabbas was a prisoner. Reading the four Gospels together, we learn that he was linked to rioting, murder and banditry. Jesus, for his part, had committed no crime deserving the cross.
• Pilate knew it: "For he knew that because of envy they had delivered him up" (verse 18). Yet the crowd shouts to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus, and Pilate gives in. Sentencing to death a man you know is innocent should never have happened.
• From Barabbas' point of view: he was supposed to be executed, another man dies in his place, and he walks away free. "That is the meaning of the cross of Jesus Christ. That is the gospel, the good news."
• We do not know what Barabbas understood that day. But in the light of the whole Bible, he represents each one of us: Christ took our place, and that is why there is a path of forgiveness and return to God.
• The pastor also mentions Rembrandt's painting The Raising of the Cross. Among those raising the cross, we see a man wearing a blue beret, often identified as Rembrandt himself. If that is true, it is a confession of faith: "It is my sin that put Christ on the cross." The pastor hopes that each person can stand like this at the foot of the cross and say: "Lord, your cross is not unrelated to me."

5. "My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"

• In verse 46, Jesus lets out this cry: "About the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' That is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" In 37 years of ministry, the pastor has often heard the question: if Jesus knew he was going to die on the cross, why did he cry out like that? Did the cross take him by surprise?
• No. Jesus knew the cross, without desiring to die. He accepted it in obedience to the Father's will, to receive in our place the just punishment for sin, and he walked toward it step by step. This cry also fulfills Psalm 22.
• This cry shows that Christ truly suffered and truly bore our sins. "It was not a game, nor a performance, nor a staged production." It is a historical fact.
• Why go that far? Romans 5:8 answers: "But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Not after we became better, but while we were turning our back on God. A love that does not depend on what we do: God came near to us first, unilaterally.

6. The Father's Silence and the Torn Veil

• The Bible describes the sufferings of Christ, but it is silent about the suffering of the Father. The Father hears his Son cry out and does not deliver him. It is not that he cannot: if he had saved him, the path to forgiveness and eternal life would have closed for us.
• The pastor has three daughters, the two older ones in their thirties and the youngest in her late twenties. "Handing over my daughter in place of a criminal who deserves to die, I would be unable to do it." And you, could you do it for your child or your grandchild?
• "We probably cannot understand the Father's love." But we understand this: God loves us so much that he gave up his Son. As if he were saying: the value of my Son's life and the value of your life are the same.
• In verse 51, the veil of the temple is torn in two, from top to bottom. Between the holy, pure and righteous God and us sinners, there was a wall. The veil was not torn from the bottom up, by human effort, but from the top down: it is God who opened the way.
• The message is clear: "Come back to me. If you believe in Christ, just as you are, with your sin, you are forgiven and you receive eternal life." All that remains is to believe with all your heart and to receive.

7. Receiving, Not Earning

• The pastor offers a simple prayer: "Christ, my God, your cross was the substitute for my sin. Thank you for loving me this far. I believe, I receive." Just as Barabbas was released and set free, we can receive salvation.
• Many Japanese people think they must first do good, practice asceticism or give alms in order to be forgiven. The pastor answers that we are not good enough for that, and that our sins are not light enough: they are so heavy that the only Son of God, without sin, had to bear their punishment.
• Good works are not the condition of forgiveness. They are the response of gratitude and faith from those who have been forgiven. "The order is never reversed."
• In verse 54, the Roman centurion who was guarding Jesus declares: "Truly this was the Son of God." A career soldier, a respected man, a foreigner in the eyes of the Jews. The pastor remarks in passing that Chitose also has many men of this profession.
• Through this confession, Matthew wants to show that Jesus is not the Savior of the Jews alone: he is the true Savior of all the peoples of the world.

8. The Toya Maru: Two Missionaries and Their Life Jackets

• On September 26, 1954, in the middle of Typhoon No. 15, the ferry Toya Maru, which ran between Hakodate and Aomori, left port during a lull with, according to the pastor, 1,314 passengers and crew. Barely out of the harbor, it was caught in a violent storm: water flooded the engine room and the engine stopped. The captain tried to run the ship aground on Nanae beach, but the vessel rolled over and sank. It is one of the worst maritime disasters in postwar Japan.
• On board were two foreign missionaries, the American Dean Leeper and the Canadian Alfred Stone. According to witnesses, they reassured the terrified Japanese passengers and handed out life jackets.
• When the life jackets ran short, they took off their own and put them on Japanese passengers who had none. Then they went to be with the Lord.
• "A person has only one life. If it is spent for others, that is the greatest love." Jesus said it: "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). These two men showed the love of Christ to the Japanese, and Christ himself gave his life on the cross.

9. The Response: A Gift to Receive Every Day

• In sixty years, many things have changed, and the next sixty years will change many more. "But however much the world changes, the love of Christ does not change."
• God says to us: "You are precious in my eyes. The proof is the cross. My child, come back to me." That is why the instrument of death became the symbol of salvation: it is the sign of the love of Christ, who received in our place the punishment for our sins.
• To finish, the pastor takes out a bottle of tea bought that very day and offers to give it away: how does it become yours? A person in the congregation steps forward, trusts and takes it. "Receiving the salvation of Christ is exactly what you just did." Everything is already prepared. We cannot add anything to it. All that remains is to take the gift.
• And this remains true decades later. He himself was baptized in this church more than forty years ago. Faith is not a memory from the past: it means receiving, every day and anew, the love of the cross, with your whole being and not only with your head.
• In Japan, 99% of people still do not know Jesus, among them our friends and loved ones. Those who were saved first are called to pray for them and to tell them, in words or otherwise: "You too are loved at the cross."

Key Takeaways

• The cross became a symbol of salvation because Christ, without sin, received there in our place the punishment we deserved.
• Like Barabbas, you are the one who should have died and who walks away free because another took your place.
• The cry "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" shows a real suffering, accepted out of love for you.
• The veil was torn from top to bottom: it is God who opened the way to himself.
• Salvation is received as a gift. Good works are a response of gratitude, not a condition.

Personal Application

• Can you say, like Rembrandt in his painting, that it is your own sin that led Christ to the cross?
• Are you still trying to earn God's forgiveness by your efforts, instead of receiving it?
• What does it change for you that God loved you while you were still a sinner, before any change on your part?
• Is the love of the cross a distant memory for you, or a reality you receive anew every day?
• Which loved one who does not yet know Jesus can you carry in prayer this week, and how can you show them that they are loved?

Bible Passages Cited

• Matthew 27:32-54 (the passage of the message)
• Matthew 27:11
• Matthew 27:14
• Matthew 27:18
• Matthew 26:28
• Psalm 22:1
• Romans 5:8
• John 15:13

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did the cross, an instrument of death, become a symbol of salvation?

For Pastor Kida, the cross was the cruelest instrument of execution of its time. It became the symbol of salvation because Christ, who was without sin, received there in our place the just punishment for our sins. The cross thus became the sign of God's love.

Why did Jesus cry out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

The cross did not take Jesus by surprise: he had announced it at the last supper. This cry, which fulfills Psalm 22, shows that he truly bore our sins and truly suffered the punishment that was ours. It was neither a game nor a staged production, but a historical fact.

Do you have to do good works to be forgiven by God?

No. Pastor Kida explains that our sins are too heavy to be erased by our efforts. It is enough to believe and to receive the forgiveness prepared at the cross, the way you receive a gift. Good works come afterward, as a response of gratitude, and not as a condition of salvation.