When we emphasize that Christ died as a propitiatory sacrifice, a blood sacrifice, we are emphasizing something right at the heart of the gospel. And shrewd evangelists have known for centuries that preaching the cross this way is essential to effective evangelism — a process quite distinct from what passes for evangelism these days, a process more akin to recruiting.
Now that means this kind of declaration of the cross gets souls saved, and the lives of these people are transformed accordingly. This is glorious, and may the process never end, but even those tenacious, conservative evangelicals who insist on a substitutionary atonement are tempted to stop here, which is stopping short of the glory that is involved. Preaching this way is an effective way to get folks headed for heaven, but there is another element of the death of Christ, one largely neglected today in our praying and preaching.
Preaching a propitiatory sacrifice is something that disrupts the way of the world. It unhinges how the world works. It gets in the way; it jams the signal. It cuts off the power that makes all the machinery in Satan’s factories hum so nicely. It does this inside the covenant, and it does this outside the covenant.
The world runs on envy, it runs on striving. The world aches with desire, and this desire is the closest thing to a perpetual motion machine that mankind has ever come up with. Imagine coming across a pyramid of ants in a field, each one constantly striving and clambering for the top. And when an ant gets there, he has his three seconds of antfame as predicted by their warhol, before being tipped abdomen over elbows by his replacement. Think of it — movie stars, idol contestants, champion swimmers, cute starlets, congressmen, lords of Wall Street, authors, poets, leading botanists, and authors of seven volumes of letters in the back corner of a great library, last checked out two and a half centuries ago — all of them, three seconds at the top.
Whenever those who are entrusted with the gospel begin to detect that this worldly ache is settling into their churches, when they see striving and discontent start to look around for something to complain about, what to do? The world is setting up shop in the middle of the church, and how is a faithful pastor to respond? First, he is to mortify that ache in his own heart. And then he is to preach the message of the archtypical death of the ultimate man, the death that overthrew all of this empty hungering forever. He is to preach Jesus Christ, Lord of men, flayed by sinners. He is to preach Jesus stripped naked, and then nailed to a gibbet. He is to portray Jesus before his congregation as crucified, high and lifted up, the way Paul did with the Galatians, and he is to preach an old-time come to Jesus message.
He is to lift Jesus up in his sermon, the way God lifted Him up from the earth, so that the nations of men might turn from their striving and come to rest.