The Wisdom of God in the Cross
Series: John
Speaker: Chris Oswald
Sunday Morning
Date: 27th April 2025
Passage: John 19:1-42
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Title: The Wisdom of God on Display in the Cross // The Cross: God’s Most Painful Proverb
Text John 19
In 1 Corinthians 1:22-24 Paul says, “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
The cross is both the power and the wisdom of God. Earlier in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul says that the cross is the power of salvation to those being saved. We tend to think of the cross mostly as a means of salvation. But Paul says the cross is also the wisdom of God.
That’s what I want to lock in on this morning. The wisdom of God displayed in the cross. I think the cross is a basically God’s greatest and most painful proverb.
A proverb is a very condensed saying, a very dense collection of words, that yields innumerable moral lessons as you meditate on it. A single proverb is something like a chunk of coal. Highly compressed carbon that contains a massive amount of energy in a small package. You can take a proverb and put it in the furnace of your heart/mind and get a large amount of light and heat from that little dense nugget.
That is why I think of the cross as God’s greatest proverb. On the one hand, it is a very compressed moment in time, all taking place on a Friday morning/early afternoon. But there is unlimited light and heat to be gained from this single event. And the more you meditate on the cross, the more light and heat it bears.
Here’s something I just noticed this year as I studied John 18-19
The Cross and Your Career
Jesus was crucified by a group of people who were “just doing their job.”
As chief priest, it was Ciaphas’ job to keep the religious purity of Israel. And to generally look out for her welfare. In John 11, he sets the arrest, accusation, and crucifixion of Jesus in motion by saying,
“If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” (John 11:48-50)
So Jesus is arrested and handed over to Pontus Pilate who again just did his job. It was Pilate’s job to keep the peace in Jerusalem – to prevent and or put down riots. So even though he said three times that he found no guilt in Jesus – he nonetheless crucified him because he was just doing his job.
And finally, it was the Roman soldiers who crucified him. These soldiers had nothing against Jesus. They simply had a job to do. They reported to Pilate. Questions of guilt were above their paygrade. So when Pilate ordered that Jesus be flogged, they flogged him. And when Pilate ordered Jesus to be crucified, they nailed him to the cross. They too were just doing their job.
And you could apply this in all sorts of ways. It is possible to be vocationally fruitful and spiritual faithless. It is possible both to do a good job in the eyes of man and do an evil thing in the eyes of God.
And then you could compare the work of these men with the work of Jesus. Jesus’ work looked absolutely foolish, fruitless, a total and complete waste.
My point is that the cross seems to have something to say about everything. Even the evils of mindless professionalism. And that whenever a big question about life and conduct emerged in the early church, the first Christians could look to the cross for wisdom.
The Cross and the Sovereignty of God
So let’s read some of the text for today. Let’s look at John 19, beginning with the end of vs. 16
So they took Jesus, 17 and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them. 19 Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”
23 When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, 24 so they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.” This was to fulfill the Scripture which says,
“They divided my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots.”
28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” 29 A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
31 Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. 32 So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.
The Sovereignty of God
In terms of wisdom, one of the greatest bits of insight we can gain from meditating on the cross is that God is perfectly in control. While the book of Proverbs carries a wide variety of lessons, the central matter is the sovereignty of God.
Proverbs 16:9
“The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.”
Proverbs 19:21
“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.”
Proverbs 16:33
“The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.”
Proverbs 20:24
“A man’s steps are from the LORD; how then can man understand his way?”
The cross offered early Christians undeniable evidence that this is true. Whatever man is up to, no matter how rebellious or evil or misguided… whatever man is doing of his own free will, the God of the universe orders his steps.
The sovereignty of God is a central lesson of the cross.
In Acts 2:22-24, Peter says – ““Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”
One example of this has to do with the way the rulers of that time and place both acted freely in their own self-interest while simultaneously serving God’s sovereign purposes.
Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.”
So when Ciaphas says, ““If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” (John 11:48-50)
John offers the following commentary.
He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. – John 11:51-52
And when three times, Pilate declared Jesus to be guiltless, he was saying more than he meant to say. Likewise, when Pilate orders a sign be hastily painted in Greek, Aramaic, and Latin – saying ““Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” – he is saying more than he knew.
Psalm 2 talks about the nations raging, and the kings of the earth conspiring against the Lord’s anointed – to which the Lord laughs and holds them in derision. Let them rage. Let them conspire. All of their flailing will serve to accomplish the definite plan of God.
And speaking of the Psalms, we see the sovereignty of God displayed in the fulfillment of scriptures written hundreds and thousands of years prior.
Look at vs. 23-24
23 When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, 24 so they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.” This was to fulfill the Scripture which says,
“They divided my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots.”
That’s from Psalm 22.
And in vs. 28 we read,
After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.
That was to fulfill Psalm 69:34-35
You know my reproach, and my shame and my dishonor; my foes are all known to you. Reproaches have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.
And again in vs. 31
31 Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. 32 So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. – John 19:31–34.
Here two sets of Scripture converge: Psalms 34:20, depicting God’s care for the righteous man: “He protects all his bones; not one of them will be broken” and Exodus 12:46 and Numbers 9:12, specifying that no bone of the Passover lamb may be broken.
And then you have all of the typological fulfillments. In addition to being the obvious fulfillment of the scape goat, driven outside the camp, Jesus is the passover lamb. God had providentially guided all these events so that Jesus would die in Jerusalem during the passover.
So whenever the early Christians got into a situation where they had to wonder if God was really in control, they could look to the cross and see the fundamental building block of all wisdom – God is sovereign over everything at all times. Only a sovereign God could orchestrate the innumerable factors that led to the crucifixion of his son.
Turn in your bibles to Galatians 4:4-5
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
The fullness of time – the idea here is that God had been working from the beginning to bring about this event.
When God promises an avenger to Eve – he is thinking of the cross.
When God commands Abraham to sacrifice Issac – he is thinking of the cross.
When Joseph is betrayed by his brothers only to bring them into his bless – God is thinking about the cross.
When God ordains that the blood of the lamb will cause death to pass over the Jews – he is thinking about the cross.
When he initiates the sacrificial system - he is thinking of the cross.
When God brings king David to power through suffering – he is thinking of the cross.
I could keep going…
As the early Christians mined the cross for wisdom, they found that even the materials used for the cross spoke of the sovereignty of God.
NAILS:
The nails that pierced His hands were forged from hematite and magnetite that Jesus deposited into the earth’s crust in creation. The forge that melted the steel was burning with the oxygen molecules. Each O₂ molecule, with its double-bonded structure and reactive electrons, played a role in fueling the forge’s fire.
WOOD:
The wood of the cross grew from seeds that fell from the original trees He spoke into existence. The seed itself contained the exquisitely designed DNA, a library of information. Compared to modern technology, DNA is orders of magnitude denser than the best hard drives or flash storage. For example, a 2023 study demonstrated that 1 gram of DNA can theoretically store 215 million gigabytes) of data, far surpassing any human-made storage medium.
As that seed grew into a seedling, it began to absorb the radiation of a sun that is 92.96 million miles away from the earth. The sun, which is 864,000 miles in diameter, is a nuclear fusion reactor that, along with the 100–400 billion other stars in our galaxy, is being sustained by the word of Christ’s power.
MANPOWER:
All of this raw material was fashioned into nails and a cross by human beings. And all of the creative energy and physical energy required to mine the ore, forge it and hammer it into nails; to cut down the tree and saw it into timbers – all of that came from Christ who made human beings into the most complex and beautiful pinnacle of all created things.
Take something relatively simple like hammering a nail. Talk to anyone in the robotics field about the mechanical complexity of doing even something simple like standing on uneven ground and hammering a nail into an uneven surface. Even something as simple as hand eye coordination which is enabled by the symphonic give and take of the brain’s visual cortex, motor cortex, and cerebellum.
So the early Christians could meditate on all of this and wind up seeing a God who will not be deterred but works all things according to his divine purpose. They could join along with William Cowper who wrote,
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform:
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour:
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own Interpreter,
And He will make it plain.
Communion:
There is another tie in between the crucifixion (as wisdom) and the book of Proverbs.
Proverbs 10:12, “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.”
Proverbs 19:11, “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.”
Proverbs 17:9, “Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends.”
Proverbs 20:22, “Do not say, ‘I will repay evil’; wait for the LORD, and he will deliver you.”
Proverbs 24:29, “Do not say, ‘I will do to him as he has done to me; I will pay the man back for what he has done.’”
And most importantly, Proverbs 16:6, “By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the LORD one turns away from evil.”
And this brings us back to 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
We have focused primarily on the wisdom of God on display at the cross. But as we prepare for communion, we ought to also be reminded that the cross is the power of God unto salvation.
By steadfast love and faithfulness, iniquity is atoned for.
