Dying to Tell You: The Sermon on the Cross: Seeking to Know Christ in His Crucifixion and the Gospel Contained in the Seven Sayings of Jesus from Calvary

By Michael Hunter

Jesus tells us that if one desires to be his disciple, they must "deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mark 8:34). But what does it mean to take up your cross, and how can we do this? The apostle Paul said that he "desired to know nothing...except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2) and elsewhere even claimed to "have been crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:20). How can one join Paul and know Jesus in his Crucifixion?

The answer is to take Jesus at his word. From the cross, Jesus spoke seven times. These sayings summarize the gospel and explain how we can know him in his Crucifixion. On the cross, Jesus was literally Dying to Tell You how his death fulfilled God's eternal plan for our redemption.

Unlike other studies of the "last sayings" of Jesus from the cross, Dying to Tell You takes a new approach and views the sayings together as a whole, revealing how together they form the foundation to understanding the gospel of Jesus. Originally motivated to seek a resolution to the dilemma of which saying is the last (both Luke and John appear to report the last saying), Dying to Tell You establishes a new order for the sayings based on a detailed examination and integration of the four Crucifixion narratives contained in the Gospels. While each saying is individually examined, rather than handling them as isolated statements, Dying to Tell You demonstrates how these sayings comprise the final message of Jesus, his sermon on the cross.

Along the way, Dying to Tell You also provides assurance that the Bible can be trusted and is a historically accurate resource; demonstrates that the cross is the centerpiece of redemptive history; and illustrates how Jesus and the Crucifixion serve to fulfill the scriptures and provide for the salvation of mankind.

Dying to Tell You is nothing less than one disciple's spiritual awakening and quest to know "Jesus Christ and him crucified" through the sayings he made from the cross and gospel they proclaim.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638443476

Book preview

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DYING TO TELL YOU

THE SERMON ON THE CROSS

Seeking to Know Christ in His Crucifixion and the Gospel Contained in the Seven Sayings of Jesus from Calvary

Michael Hunter

ISBN 978-1-63844-346-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63844-347-6 (digital)

Copyright © 2021 by Michael Hunter

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Scripture quotations are from the ESV Bible (the Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Seven Sayings from the Cross

A Closer Look at the Order of the Sayings

The First Saying

The Second Saying

The Third Saying

The Fourth Saying

The Fifth Saying

The Sixth Saying

The Seventh Saying

Beyond the Sayings

Epilogue

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Suggested Readings

To my wife and children and grandchildren

That they may know the reasons for the hope I have and to serve as an explanation of where I have placed my faith. It is intended as my expression of love for God and reliance on him with all my heart and with all my soul and all my might.

Introduction

For I have decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

—1 Corinthians 2:2 (ESV)

I am writing because I have run out of reasons not to. Don’t get me wrong. Those who know me would tell you how much the topic of this study has long been the focus of my Bible study and that I have never been shy about sharing it with others. I have taught it in Sunday school classes and even been asked to present it as a sermon series during the evening services where we worshiped. So they may be a little surprised to learn of my hesitation to actually get on with the process of putting the study down in written form. At its heart, this study is nothing less than the story of my own spiritual awakening and ceding to what I have come to believe is a call to share what God has and continues to teach me about who he is with others.

If I were to be completely honest, the reason I have delayed writing was simply fear. Not fear of sharing—as I mentioned, I have shared it over the years with others in various ways—but fear that in finally writing it down would somehow mean the study was finished. This study is always with me. Whenever the rush of my daily activities slows down and my mind settles, concepts from this study invade my thoughts and stir me to my core. Even now as I have begun the process of formally writing, God is still revealing new truths to me from his word. I pray the central truths from this study will continue to undergird my understanding of the gospel and guide my quest to know Jesus better through his sayings from the cross.

Starting Out with a Good Foundation

It might be a good idea if I were to explain a little about how and why these sayings from the cross have taken such a central role in my life by first providing some background concerning myself and the circumstances that led me to begin a study of the sayings.

When you speak with many believers, they seem to have dramatic stories of how they came to become a Christian. They will often tell you how their life (one often filled with difficulties and struggles) was changed by an encounter with the forgiveness of God. To be truthful, I’ve always been a little jealous of them because my story is very different. I grew up in a Christian home and was raised attending church. I have been a Christian as long as I can remember, placing my faith in Christ at a very early age. I grew up hearing that my parents took me to church the first Sunday after being born, and most of my earliest memories have to do with being in church or church-related functions. We were a very religious family; and there was never a question about what we would do on Sunday—we attended church, all services, including Sunday school and morning and evening services. We also went to the midweek and youth services and would even find a church service to attend when on vacation. And even though I attended public schools and played community sports (mostly baseball), church and the people there were the center of our social world. I think I could count the times I missed a church service, until I joined the Army, on both hands.

Being raised in a Christian home, attending church, and going to Sunday school, I learned the usual Bible stories and knew what I believed because I had been taught it from birth. I was content with simply going to church and listening to the sermons and attending Sunday school. The King James Version of the Bible we used in my church was difficult at times for me to understand, especially when I was young, with its archaic language and vocabulary. This limitation was compounded by the fact that I was not much of a reader when I was a child but would rather be outside playing sports. Therefore, for me it was easy not to read (much less study) the Bible on my own. After all, I didn’t need to; every Sunday, I would be back at church again, where I would learn more from the Bible. So when I was young, even up into early adulthood, my relationship with God and his Word was easy; I just went to church where I was told what the Bible says and what I needed to know.

My belief in God and trust in his Word had always remained important to me even if I didn’t have much of a personal devotional life. As I grew older and got married, we always remained faithful to attending church, even as the Army assigned us around the country and overseas as we moved from one post to another. My faith was essentially a continuation of when I was young, attending church with my Bible in hand, but I did not read it much outside of church. When I did read the Bible during the week, it was done dutifully rather than devotionally, according to one of those through-the-Bible-in-a-year plans. I viewed the Bible more as a byproduct of being a Christian rather than something foundational to my faith.

I was confident that I knew my Bible. After all, I had been raised in a Bible-believing church and had been a Christian my whole life; and that was enough—until it no longer was.

Where Does the Bible Say?

The first step that started me down the path to the sayings of Jesus from the cross came as a missed phone call. One day while I was out my sister-in-law, Tara, called and spoke to my wife, Kim. She asked if I would be willing to give her away in marriage, as she was estranged from her father. The problem from my perspective was that she was engaged to a Mormon. I knew from my own past experience with a high school sweetheart who was a Mormon that their beliefs were not compatible with Christianity, an understanding only obtained after a lot of prayer during youth camp in the mountains of northern Arizona during my senior year in high school and returning home to talk with her about my faith. I quickly discovered that Mormons didn’t believe the same about God and who Jesus is or even the Bible as Christians. While this was a hard lesson for me given the whole young love thing, it did prepare me to relate to Tara. I felt strongly that to participate in a wedding ceremony would be tantamount to condoning it and giving her over to a non-Christian belief system. This was something I believed after prayer that I could not or should do.

So with a little trepidation, I returned her call and told her that I couldn’t participate in the wedding. She didn’t get angry as anticipate but asked me why. I explained that Mormons didn’t believe the same gospel, as Christians, and that for her to marry into it would result in her moving away from the true faith. At the time, I did not know exactly how Mormons differed. I just knew what she was telling me about what they were teaching her was not what I had learned in Sunday school or church. I even shared with her my experience from high school, explaining that I understood how hard it was especially when you have feelings for the person. But in the end, I couldn’t participate in a service that would set her on a path against biblical Christianity. She asked me several questions that included Where does the Bible say…? So I was forced to provide her the biblical support for what I was telling her about Christianity.

She had a list of the things they were teaching her leading up to the wedding (apparently, one must convert to be married into a Mormon family), so we took them one by one. To my shame, I struggled to find various texts I could remember from Sunday school and a lifetime of growing up in the church but did not know where to find them within the Bible. But with the help for the concordance in the back of my Bible and the assistance of the Holy Spirit, I was able to provide her with some answers to each question. A couple of times when I couldn’t find the passage I was searching for in the concordance, in frustration and with her still on the phone, I turned and randomly opened my Bible directly to the desired passage, and my eyes were focused to the exact verse on the page. Even now as I recount this conversation with Tara, I am still awed to have witnessed (even participated in) how the Bible is able to address questions of faith.

For me, being questioned by someone close to me for an honest reason I believed what I did shook me far more than any previous challenges. In college, I had encountered all the usual arguments for the nonexistence of God and how he is not necessary because our existence was simply the results of natural processes. I had even debated with non-Christian friends before; but their arguments never appealed to me or caused me to question anything I had been taught concerning my faith. The alternative explanations they offered always sounded a little contrived, sometimes even denying common sense and the rules of logic in order to force their preconceived point, which seemed to simply parrot the same old attacks against Christianity. But now coming face-to-face with my real lack of understanding of what I had been taught and thought I knew and my complete lack of depth concerning the Bible in spite of being raised in church and even participating on the Bible Quiz team when I was young set my mind reeling.

For the first time, I saw how as a faithful church-attending Christian I was more able to recite various statistics of my favorite sports stars or the storyline from a popular television show or movie than I was the foundations of my faith. I realized that I was unable to even recall the order of the Ten Commandments, much less quote them, or even tell you where in the Old Testament to find them. And then now being questioned about something as basic as what I believed and why I believed it, I struggled to find an answer other than repeating something I had heard growing up in church. It became obvious to me that my knowledge of God was limited to those things I had been taught in Sunday school and church (while this was not bad, it clearly was not enough). My beliefs were not based on anything I had learned from my own studies and relationship with God but only on those things I had been taught and accepted as true. I realized that I could no longer simply say, That’s what I learned in Sunday school or church. I needed to know for myself what the Bible said about the things I believed, and those beliefs needed to be founded on the Word and not my limited understanding of what someone else told me.

Becoming a Disciple and Not Just a Christian

So I purchased one the new modern translations of the Bible,¹ which was easier for me to read and understand and began to really read the Bible for myself. I was both encouraged to read those familiar passages I had known of from Sunday school and church and surprised to find that the Bible had so much more to teach me than I previously thought. As I read it more, I was finding that it was beginning to affect the way I viewed things and altered my ideas and responses to various day-to-day situations that come up in life as well as my idea of being a Christian.

The second step toward the sayings from the cross came one day when my personal Bible reading took me to the Gospel of Luke. Even though I had read this chapter before multiple times over the years, I was surprised and a little shocked to see something for the first time this time I didn’t remember from before.² This time the words I was reading seemed to challenge my perception of what it really means to be a Christian. Jesus was teaching and said, If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple (14:26). According to the fifth commandment honoring one’s parents is important, even necessary, so obviously this verse cannot mean what it appears to say. Besides, elsewhere in the New Testament, it says that If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Timothy 5:8). Jesus could not mean what this verse seems to be saying—that one must literally dislike their parents and other family members in order to be follow him. Then I read the next verse.

Jesus continues the thought, saying, Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple (14:27). Wait a minute! What does it mean to bear our own cross? Surely crucifixion is not required of all Christians. Whatever it might mean, it must be important since it is something Jesus says more than once. The same saying is recorded in more than one Gospel and in more than one teaching; that is not the same teaching recorded by the different Gospel authors but an altogether separate teaching—it is something Jesus repeated, so it must be important!

For example, Luke tells of another time when Jesus said something similar when he said, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me (9:23). Even adding a rhetorical question complete with its own answer, For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels (9:25–26). And then there is a parallel passage in Matthew³ that adds, Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me (10:38). Whoa! Not worthy? How are we supposed to take up our cross? I get goose bumps even now as I contemplate the implications of not doing this. If we don’t do this, according to Christ himself, we are not worthy of him, so then can we even be reckoned to be a Christian if we don’t take up our cross? Clearly, this was something requiring more study.

So I started to look a little deeper into this concept and found that the apostle Paul also speaks of the importance of the cross to his faith. Writing to the Corinthians, he says, For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). And again, to the Galatians, he says, I have been crucified with Christ who lives in me. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me (2:20). The cross and its significance were central not only to his teaching, but it seems to be the one thing Paul valued most.

Everyone knows that the cross is the symbol of Christianity. So while this may sound a little like something Captain Obvious might say, the cross signifies so much more than just being the Roman instrument of Crucifixion upon which Jesus died. Paul said that "he had been crucified" while he was still living and teaching. So it seems when he speaks of the cross and having been crucified, he is thinking about his (and our) calling by Jesus to follow him and deny everything else and make him the most important thing in our lives. Paul says that it was the cross that brought him new life, and this is not only true of Paul; it is true for all believers.

This concept of taking up one’s cross had grabbed hold of me and wasn’t letting go. The cross is at the very heart of Christianity, and taking up our cross means so much more than simply wearing it around our neck. So then the essential question to me is this, how can one really know Jesus in his Crucifixion? I wanted to be able to join with Paul and say that I only desired to know Christ and him crucified. But how can we do this?

Knowing Jesus in His Crucifixion through His Sayings from the Cross

My aha moment concerning how to know Christ in his crucifixion and the final step that led me directly to the sayings on the cross did not come while I was in a church service or even during my personal time of Bible study. It wasn’t even a moment. No, my aha moment came during early morning runs before I went in to work over a couple of days many years ago now. Rather than listening to music, I would tune in to the local Christian radio station, which at that hour played different teaching ministries. It was the beginning of spring, and Easter was approaching. The first morning on the radio at that hour was Insight for Living with Charles Swindoll, who was teaching from the Gospel of Luke about the last saying Jesus spoke from the cross. Then the next day at the same hour, the program was Truth for Life, and the topic for the day was also the last saying of Jesus from the cross, which this morning Alistair Begg was using as his reference the Gospel of John. As you might imagine, I had heard dozens of sermons concerning the Crucifixion of Jesus (especially during the Easter season), but they never impacted me quite like those two radio sermons did during my early morning runs. For some reason that year, I was struck by the realization that there could only be one last saying, and I began to wonder which one was it—the one recorded in Luke or the one in John.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it (some might say, including my wife, that I still can’t)—which saying was the actual last saying? For the first time in my Christian life, I could see how someone not raised in the church, as I had been, and taught to believe and trust the Bible could claim this question represents a contradiction between the two Gospels. Logically, there can only be one last saying. After reading and rereading the sayings recorded in both Luke and John and digging a little into the issue, I found the answer to this apparent contradiction is that neither Luke nor John claim to record the last saying Jesus spoke from the cross but rather each saying is only the last one they include in their gospel. While this may answer the question about an apparent contradiction in the Bible, it does nothing concerning the question, Which one is actually the last one? This question began to haunt me. No matter what other topics of study I undertook, the question of the last saying was never far away.

So Why This Study and Why Now?

I mentioned earlier, I am writing now because I couldn’t find a reason not to. But that is only half true. The rest of the story is that now I also have a reason to finally get on with it. We have two children, both raised going to church, who, now that they are adults, do not share our beliefs. This is further compounded by the fact that our daughter’s husband claims to be an atheist or at best an agnostic. It pains me greatly to say this, and I cannot help but wonder if I may have failed them as a father. I pray not. Their unbelief and questions concerning the reasons for my faith is one of the main reasons I decided to finally get on with writing. My desire is for them to come to know the peace and fulfillment I have because of Christ and his work on my behalf. I pray that they would learn a faith founded on Christ and the cross has real value. I also want them to experience the peace and assurance this faith provides in an ever-changing world. My hope is to finally be able to lay out all the details from my search of the scriptures in one place in order to provide the answers that numerous short and often-interrupted conversations have been unable to communicate.

It is my honest hope, desire, and prayer that this study will in some small way be useful to those who read it and add to your understanding of Jesus and motivate you to know him better through his sayings from the cross and in so doing be the disciples we are called to be. Now I invite you to share in my quest to know Christ better through his sayings spoken from the cross.

Chapter 1

The Seven Sayings from the Cross

Collecting the Sayings from Scripture

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you have learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

—2 Timothy 3:14–15 (ESV)

Usually, when one considers the sayings of Jesus, they think of the parables he used when teaching. Even non-Christians will reference them, sometimes not even knowing the saying they are using comes from the Bible. Take for example the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–37), which is used as an illustration of how we are to treat those in need and was even the inspiration for the name of an RV and camping club. Then, too, Christians and non-Christians alike will also point of some of the teachings of Jesus such as the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12–14) as guidance of how we are to relate to others, or we might refer to a wayward child sowing their wild oats as a Prodigal child (Luke 15:11–32). But to me, the sayings Jesus spoke from the cross overshadowed even the parables of Jesus and dominated my thoughts and Bible study.

As I previously mentioned, these sayings initially came to my interest after listening to a couple of teaching ministries on the radio during my early morning runs, but what I didn’t tell you was that this happened at a time when I was preparing to be assigned overseas. Looking back now, this does not seem to have been coincidental. This assignment was going to be very different from my other overseas assignments; this time I was not going to a US military base (complete with its own chapel, which would ensure a place to worship), but rather I was going to be one of the military attachés to Chile, the culmination of a career-long goal and years of academic and language training.

I have come to realize that this very fact—not having ready access to English language resources—is the single largest factor that forced me out of comfort zone of prepared and structured Bible studies to begin really exploring the Bible for myself rather than allowing others to tell me what it says. And this newly surfaced question of the sayings from the cross and which one was the last seemed well suited as a topic of study during this time with limited access to commercial study resources.

Seeking an Answer of the Order for Myself

So we went to Chile, and as anticipated the question of where to attend church was an issue. Initially, we met and worshipped with some missionaries who were in country serving at the local seminary and associated Spanish language churches. We met with them in a small group before finding another missionary church established for the expatriate community, which services were presented in English. After many discussions with one of the missionaries who taught at the seminary about how God had been using the sayings from the cross in my devotional life and the question as to which was the last, Richard encouraged me to study hard and reminded me that I already had a master’s degree, albeit in international relations, and therefore the necessary skills to research. He told me all that seemed to be missing was for me to start using the skills God had provided me for his glory, and he reminded me that it is God who uses his word to grow us and likely this consuming desire to study the sayings from the cross was placed in my heart by him.

So I decided to use some of the investigative skills I had learned over the years in my career—first as a police officer and finally as an intelligence officer in the military—and in graduate school to examine the issue myself. Similar to the other sayings of Jesus recorded in the Bible, the sayings from the cross are found in the Gospels—the first four books of the New Testament. In those cases, when Jesus’s teachings or actions are recorded in more than one of the Gospels, we can often gain a fuller appreciation of what he said or did when we compare the multiple accounts as sometimes the other writers of the Gospels will add extra details. In fact, this is exactly how we arrive at seven sayings from the cross, by reading all of the Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion because no one of them records all of the sayings.

So then the seven sayings are found in the four Gospels. The sayings in order of the Gospel reporting them and not as they were spoken are Matthew and Mark, both record the same saying My God, my God, why have you forsaken me (27:46 and 15:34)?