A Sermon of Genuine Simplicity
This Good Friday sermon, preached by Rev Dr Arthur Keefer at Scot’s Presbyterian Church Melbourne, possesses a welcome simplicity. It stays close to Mark’s account of the soldiers clothing Jesus in purple, twisting together a crown of thorns, acclaiming him as king, striking him, spitting upon him, and bowing in counterfeit homage.
He permits the scene itself to bear the weight of the message rather than resorting to attempted emotional manipulation. This is a considerable strength. Many sermons rush past the biblical narrative in search of relevance; this one begins with the passage and finds its central theme in the soldiers’ mock coronation.
The sermon rightly sees the irony of the mock coronation. The soldiers intend ridicule, but their cruel parody declares more than they know. Jesus truly is King. The purple robe, crown, royal salute, and kneeling all become instruments of derision; yet Mark’s Gospel makes their derision an unwitting testimony to Christ’s identity. The preacher states this clearly when he observes that the crown possesses a meaning the soldiers do not understand.
This is a faithful and fruitful reading of the passage. Christ’s kingship is not disclosed despite his humiliation, as though his suffering were a temporary interruption to his royal glory. Rather, Mark presents the King precisely in his humiliation. The One mocked as King of the Jews is the true King, whose reign is displayed not by avoiding suffering but by willingly enduring it for the salvation of his people.
The sermon also rightly refuses to treat Good Friday as a tragic accident or the victory of evil over God’s purposes. It places the cross within the sovereign counsel of God and identifies redemption as the great divine purpose running through Scripture. This is an important theological strength. The Father does not lose control at Calvary, nor is the Son merely a helpless victim of Roman power, religious hostility, or human injustice. Christ gives himself willingly; he remains upon the cross in obedience to the Father’s will and for the salvation of sinners.
The sermon’s most substantial theological development comes in its reflection upon thorns. It connects the crown of thorns with the curse pronounced after Adam’s sin, when the ground would bring forth thorns and thistles. The preacher then identifies Christ as the new Adam and representative who bears the thorns in order to undo the curse.
This is a rich redemptive-historical instinct. It sees Good Friday within the larger biblical movement from creation and fall to redemption and new creation. Christ does not simply enter a world where people suffer; he enters a fallen world, marked by the consequences of human rebellion against God. The thorns fittingly evoke the curse. The crown pressed upon Christ’s head directs attention to the One who bears the consequences of sin in order to bring his people into restoration.
Yet the sermon would have benefited from greater precision at precisely this point. The curse is not merely the source of pain in a disordered world. It is the consequence of sin before a holy God. Humanity’s fundamental problem is not simply that life hurts, but that all have sinned in Adam and in their own persons, stand guilty before God, and are unable to remedy their condition by their own strength. The new-Adam theme therefore requires more than the promise that Christ will put pain to rest. It requires an explanation of guilt, judgment, representation, and reconciliation.
The sermon’s pastoral concern for sufferers is evident and commendable. It insists that God is not indifferent to grief or evil. It seeks to assure those who suffer that God remains sovereign, righteous, and able to keep his people when tragedy appears overwhelming. Such pastoral confidence is needed. A God who is merely sympathetic but unable to govern history cannot finally comfort his people.
Nevertheless, language about God’s grief or pain requires care. Scripture truly reveals God’s compassion, mercy, displeasure, and holy opposition to evil. He is not cold, remote, or morally detached, but full of love. But God is not subject to suffering or injury in his divine nature as creatures are. The eternal Son truly suffered for sinners in the human nature he assumed. The pain of Christ was real, bodily, spiritual, and redemptive. Yet God in his divine being remains sovereign, holy, and unchanging, never overcome by evil or passively acted upon by his creatures.
The pastoral comfort of Good Friday lies not in the thought that God is overwhelmed by human sorrow, but in the truth that the incarnate Son entered our afflicted condition, bore sin’s judgment, conquered death, and now reigns as the crucified and risen King.
The sermon comes nearest to a full account of the atonement when it says that Christ bears punishment for sinners according to the Father’s will. This is an important statement. It rightly indicates that Christ’s death is not merely an example of love or a display of solidarity with the suffering. He bears punishment for others.
But the sermon does not explain that punishment in relation to human guilt, God’s righteous wrath, penal satisfaction, the imputation of sin to Christ, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to believers, forgiveness, or justification. These are not optional theological refinements. They express the saving logic of the cross.
Imputation means reckoning or accounting. In the gospel, the sins of Christ’s people are reckoned to him: he stands in their place and bears the judgment their guilt deserves. His death satisfies divine justice because he bears the penalty of sin as the obedient substitute. Correspondingly, his perfect righteousness is reckoned to those who receive and rest upon him by faith. They are forgiven, justified, and accepted before God, not because they have become righteous by their own works, but because Christ’s righteousness is counted as theirs.
Without this explanation, the cross may remain emotionally moving while its necessity is left unclear. The hearer may understand that Jesus suffers and that God has a purpose in suffering, yet still fail to see why the Son of God had to die. The answer is not merely that the world contains pain. It is that sinners stand guilty before the holy God, under his righteous judgment, and require a substitute who can reconcile them to God.
The final exhortation calls hearers to see the significance of the crown and behold the Son of God whose body was broken for them. This is a fitting beginning, but it does not create the full existential crisis demanded by the crucifixion.
The death of the Son of God raises a searching question: What does this death reveal about my sin, my guilt, my spiritual death, and my eternal state before the holy God? The cross does not permit detached admiration. If Christ bore judgment, then sinners must reckon with the judgment they deserve apart from him. If Christ died to reconcile people to God, then they must face their alienation from God. If Christ is the new Adam, then those in Adam must recognize their need to be made alive in Christ.
This is where the new birth must be proclaimed. The sinner needs more than insight into Good Friday’s meaning, emotional response to Christ’s suffering, or renewed moral determination. He needs regeneration: the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit by which those dead in sin are given new life. He must repent of sin and receive and rest upon Christ alone for salvation.
The sermon’s simplicity is a genuine virtue wherever it allows Mark’s crucified King to stand before the congregation in his majesty and humiliation. Its limitation is that it stops short of pressing the gospel’s full personal demand. The crown of thorns reveals the King. It also reveals the horror of sin, the righteousness of God, the necessity of substitution, and the only hope of guilty people. The proper response is not merely to see the crown, but to come to the crowned and crucified Christ in repentance and faith, seeking from the Holy Spirit the new birth without which no one can enter the kingdom of God.
