The Mission: The Son’s Sacrifice
Notes prepared by Jessica Lee
John 12:27–33
“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.
Summary
God’s mission is the active work of restoring men and women to a relationship with him and one another. The cross of Christ is at the center of this mission.
Focus:
Jesus’ crucifixion is the turning point of God’s redemptive plan. It is the means by which he draws people back into a relationship with him.
The Problem
The Solution
The Application of the Cross
Intro:
On January 3, 1956, Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian camped on a small sandbar along the Curaray River in Ecuador.
After years of praying, dreaming, and planning, the men were about to contact the Waoroni people, an unreached tribe deep in the jungles of Ecuador.
Five days later, they were all killed in a surprise attack.
They left behind their wives and seven children, whose lives would never be the same after this tragic event.
A few months after Jim’s death, Elisabeth Elliot wrote in her journal:
“Today I am thinking how my short time with Jim was not the End of all things. There are times when it seems so—as if it is all over, and I’ve nothing left now to do but put in time till [Jesus] comes. Not so. Marriage was not in itself the End of Desire — it generated further ones. It was but a segment of the Journey which is Life, and called for obedience. Now, what have I to do? Obey. And my eyes will be opened to the next thing.”
-Elisabeth Elliot, Becoming Elisabeth Elliot
Just as God’s mission didn’t end with Jim’s death, the story of redemption didn’t end with Jesus’ suffering.
In fact, that suffering was the very path by which salvation came.
Last week, we began this series by discussing God’s love and how it drives his mission to restore men and women to a relationship with him and one another.
This week, we will examine the cross of Jesus and how the crucifixion is central to God’s reconciling work.
Let’s first look at the Scripture
Text Exegesis
V. 27—“Now is my soul troubled . . .”
This passage in John starts by Jesus acknowledging that he is deeply troubled by his impending death.
We could also look at Luke 22:44, Mark 14:35, and Hebrews 5:7.
The Gospel of John does not portray Jesus’ struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Instead, we see it here in this verse.
Jesus is deeply troubled in his soul about what is to come.
In this context, the verb used for troubled (Greek, tarassō) means “to cause acute emotional distress or turbulence.”
Jesus, in his emotional distress, then asks the question (paraphrased),
“Should I ask the Father to save me from this hour?”
His answer is an emphatic “no” because it is for this very purpose that he has come—to die on the cross for our sins.
This leads us to ask the question that is as old as Christianity itself: “Why did Jesus have to die?”
The simple answer to this question is, “Jesus died to save us from our sins.”
But for many, the lingering question remains: "Why was his death necessary to save us from our sins?
If God loves us so much, couldn’t he just forgive and forget?
Robert H. Mounce gives us a clue as to why more was required when he said:
“The reason, of course, was to bring salvation to the human race. Unable to save themselves, people are totally dependent on the work of the only One to have emerged victorious over sin and Satan.”
-Robert H. Mounce, Expositor’s Bible Commentary, 10: John, 537.
The Problem
God is more holy than we imagine.
It’s easy to be comfortable with the God described in John 3:16 who loves us so much that he sent his only Son that we may have eternal life.
Even for those who have a hard time believing this could be true, it’s still something most would hope is true.
We all want to believe there is a God who loves us unconditionally.
But while Scripture certainly reveals a God abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, we are also met with a God who is awesome and fearsome in the splendor of his holiness.
Most of us are less comfortable with the God described in Hebrews 12:29 as a “consuming fire.”
So, we often minimize his holiness, which can have no part with sin, and downplay his perfect justice, which must punish sin and make wrong things right.
And that’s what leads us to ask the question, “Why can’t he just forgive and forget?”
But imagine any one of the atrocities of the twentieth century — the Holocaust, Stalin’s Purges, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, or the genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, or Bosnia.
Would God be just and good if he were simply to forgive and forget those sins?
Our sin is worse than we admit.
The problem of sin is far greater than most want to believe.
We are not merely lost, in need of a teacher to guide us back to God.
We are spiritually dead and in need of a new life.
We have inherited a nature corrupted by sin and subject to the law of sin and death.
Every intention of the thoughts of our hearts is only evil continually (Genesis 6:5).
The Solution
God’s justice was satisfied on the cross.
Now when we go back to the Scripture in John, we see that Jesus said in:
V. 31—“Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.”
As the perfect, incorruptible one, Jesus died in our place.
On the cross, he bore the punishment and shame that our sin deserves, ensuring that perfect justice was achieved, and in doing so, set us free from the tyranny of the devil.
Because Jesus paid the price, our sins can be forgiven.
This is reflected in the apostle Paul’s later writings when he said:
Ephesians 1:7
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace . . .
Romans 5:18-19 ESV
“Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.”
And ultimately in Ephesians 2:1–10:
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Death was defeated through the cross.
In the gospel of John, Jesus speaks several times about being lifted up.
Ben expounded last year on:
John 3:14 ESV
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,”
Jesus also said:
John 8:28 ESV
“So Jesus said to them, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.”
But going back to John 12, Jesus said in:
V. 32—“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
The word translated “lifted up” is more frequently used in the New Testament figuratively to mean “exalted.”
John is aware of the double meaning and uses the word intentionally.
While Jesus is about to be lifted on a cross, it is by his humiliating death on the cross that the power of sin and death is defeated.
Therefore, the apex of his humiliation is also the moment of his exaltation, because what appears to be Jesus’ shameful and humiliating defeat, in light of the resurrection, is his glorious victory.
“Look at him there, spread-eagled and skewered on his cross, robbed of all freedom of movement, strung up with nails, pinned there and powerless. It appears to be total defeat . . . [BUT] What looks like (and indeed was) the defeat of goodness by evil is also, and more certainly, the defeat of evil by goodness. Overcome there, he was himself overcoming. Crushed by the ruthless power of Rome, he was himself crushing the serpent’s head. The victim was the victor, and the cross is still the throne from which he rules the world.”
-John Stott, quoted in Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2022), 426-427.
EXAMPLE:
When Harry Potter learns he’s a wizard and has been invited to Hogwarts, he heads to King’s Cross Station to catch the train.
But he can’t find Platform 9¾.
All he sees is a brick wall.
He then discovers the way to this new world is to run headlong into this brick wall.
Once he runs through it, what appears to be a dead end opens up to a new world.
Similarly, the cross is not the dead end or brick wall that it appears to be, but the start of a new, glorious future.
What feels like the end is just the beginning of the story that God is writing, the story of him reconciling us to himself through the sacrifice of his Son.
His humiliation is his exaltation.
His defeat is his victory.
His death is the doorway to new life.
V. 32—“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
Jesus’ humiliating and ignoble death on the cross has an attractive power.
“His glory rises from his humiliation; his adorable conquest from his ignominious death. When he ‘became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,’ shame cast no shame upon his cause, but gilded it with glory. Christ’s death of weakness threw no weakness into Christianity; say rather that it is the right arm of her power. By the sign of suffering unto death the church has conquered, and will conquer still. By a love which is strong as death she has always been victorious, and must for ever remain so. When she has not been ashamed to put the cross in the forefront, she has never had to be ashamed; for God has been with her, and Jesus has drawn all men to himself. The crucified Christ has irresistible attractions: when HE stoops into the utmost suffering and scorn even the brutal must relent: a living Saviour men may love, but a crucified Saviour they must love.”
-Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Marvellous Magnet,” sermon no. 1717, delivered at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, accessed via The Spurgeon Library, Spurgeon.org, July 30, 2025, https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/the-marvellous-magnet/#flipbook/
Through his shameful death on the cross, Jesus opens the way for all people, Jews and Gentiles, to come to know God.
“For it is only on the cross that a man dies with his hands spread out. And so it was fitting for the Lord to bear this also and to spread out his hands, that with the one he might draw the ancient people and with the other those from the Gentiles and unite both in himself. For this is what he himself has said, signifying by what manner of death he was to ransom all: “I, when I am lifted up,” he says, “shall draw all unto me.”
-Athanasius, quoted in Joel C. Elowsky, ed., John 1–10, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, vol. 4A (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007), ebook.
The Application of the Cross
What does this mean for you and me?
It is through the Son’s self-emptying sacrifice that God has provided a solution for the problem of our sin.
The cross is how we are reconciled to the Father.
However, the cross also has implications for our lives as disciples of Jesus because Jesus calls all his disciples to follow him in this death and resurrection pattern.
In John 12:24, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
When a seed is planted in soil and is in the right conditions, that planting that appears to be a burial is what’s needed for the seed to burst forth in new life.
That is what we are called to, and that is what it looks like to embrace the cross-shaped life.
It looks like dying so that new fruit and abundant life can spring up in our lives.
As we join God in his mission, we will face many situations that feel like dead ends.
There will be a lot of dying to self, disappointments, and setbacks.
In those moments, it feels like this is the end of the story.
But what feels like a death, what feels like the end of the story, is often the beginning of the story God is writing for our lives.
Conclusion
For Elisabeth Elliot, Jim’s death felt like the end.
At first, all she could do was get through each day.
But eventually, her eyes began to be open to the “next thing” God had for her.
Two years after her husband’s death, she would step into her “next thing” when she, her two-year-old daughter (Valerie), and Rachel Saint (Nate Saint’s sister), went to live among the Waoroni people, working to translate the Bible into their native language and sharing the love and hope of Jesus with them.
In her book Through Gates of Splendor, Elisabeth included a quote from Jim’s journal:
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
This became a guiding principle for Elisabeth in the years that followed Jim’s death.
Despite what it felt like at the time, his death was not a dead end.
The story was not over.
Instead, as she trusted God, it became the doorway to a beautiful new life God had prepared for her.
In the final page of her journal (the one she was using when Jim died), Elisabeth wrote lines from poet Frederic W. H. Myers:
“‘Yea, thro’ life, death, thro’
Sorrow and thro’ sinning
He shall suffice me, for He hath suffered:
Christ is the end, for Christ
Was the beginning.
Christ the beginning, for the End is Christ.”
-Vaughn, Becoming Elisabeth Elliot, 164.
As you join God in his mission, there will be a lot of dying to self, a lot of dead ends, and apparent defeats.
But as you trust him and follow him in this cross-shaped life, he will show you that just as the cross has the attractive power to draw men to God, your life will have the power to draw people to Jesus.