Introduction: The Theological Integration of Good Friday Preaching

What follows is a summary of my findings from reviewing 31 sermons preached on Good Friday, 2026 in Presbyterian Church of Victoria congregations. Those reviews form the primary evidence used in this summary. The Introductory essay to The New Birth in Exile Series may be read here: https://www.thereformedpastor.com.au/new-birth-intro/

Across the Good Friday sermons, one theological concern emerged with considerable consistency: the saving death of Christ was frequently proclaimed more clearly than the fallen condition from which sinners must be delivered from. Closely connected was the missing necessity of the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit by which sinners are brought into the benefits of Christ’s finished work. Many sermons affirmed important biblical truths concerning sin, judgment, substitution, forgiveness, reconciliation, and resurrection. Yet these truths were rarely integrated or consistent with a coherent account of humanity’s ruin in Adam, Christ’s saving work as the last Adam, and the Spirit’s indispensable work of bringing spiritually dead sinners into union with the crucified and risen Lord.

Among the weaknesses I identified therefore was not necessarily the absence of orthodox doctrinal terms, but insufficient theological integration. A sermon might affirm the guilt of sin without explaining the inherited guilt and corruption of humanity in Adam. It might proclaim Christ’s substitutionary death without adequately establishing the judicial and covenantal predicament that makes such a sacrifice necessary. It might call sinners to repentance and faith without explaining that fallen humanity is spiritually unable to come to Christ apart from the regenerating grace of God. In such cases, the doctrines themselves appear to be present, but their relationships were not sufficiently developed to demonstrate the full necessity and significance  of regeneration in the light of the eschatological event of Calvary.

This concern extended beyond the explicit treatment of original sin and regeneration. In several reviews, I found that biblical texts were employed without sufficient attention to their literary, covenantal, or redemptive-historical argument. Elsewhere, therapeutic or relational categories tended to govern the presentation of humanity’s need, while the forensic, mediatorial, and Trinitarian dimensions of redemption remained comparatively muted. These weaknesses were related. When the biblical diagnosis of sin is reduced, the theological necessity of the atonement becomes blurred; when the atonement is insufficiently related to the sinner’s condition, the Spirit’s application of redemption can appear supplementary rather than indispensable.

The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF VI.2–6; IX.3; VII.3; see also X.1).supplied an important doctrinal standard for these judgments. It teaches that, through Adam’s fall, mankind became dead in sin and wholly defiled, inheriting both the guilt of Adam’s first transgression and the corruption of his nature. From this corruption, fallen humanity is rendered “utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good,” being wholly inclined to evil. The human predicament is therefore not merely one of personal wrongdoing, emotional brokenness, alienation, or moral failure. Fallen sinners stand under guilt, wrath, curse, and death, unable to restore themselves to communion with God. The Confession further teaches that God, through the covenant of grace, gives his Holy Spirit to make those whom he saves willing and able to believe in Christ.

These confessional convictions established the theological measure by which I evaluated the sermons. My conclusions arose from the claims, emphasis, omissions, and theological structures identified in the individual sermons. All the sermons were listened to multiple times; one particular sermon was listened to six times. I did not regard every omission as doctrinal denial, or every failure of theological precision as evidence of heresy. I recognize that a sermon may be substantially faithful to Scripture while leaving important doctrinal relationships insufficiently developed. Therefore, my concern was ordinarily functional and theological: what understanding of the sinner, the cross, and the application of the Atonement did the sermon actually establish in the minds and consciences of its hearers?

The Human Predicament: Guilt, Corruption, and Death in Adam

A reoccurring concern throughout the review process was the tendency for sermons to describe sin chiefly in terms of personal acts, moral failure, felt guilt, brokenness, alienation, or spiritual dissatisfaction without adequately tracing these realities to humanity’s fallen condition in Adam. Scripture recognises the misery, disorder, estrangement, and suffering that accompany sin. Yet these are neither the whole of humanity’s predicament nor its deepest explanation. The biblical doctrine of sin reaches beneath individual transgressions to the judicial and moral condition of fallen humanity: and imputed guilt in Adam. 

S

in as Conduct and Sin as Condition

To give some examples, in my Ballarat South review, I argued that sin was treated primarily as a matter of acts rather that tended to ignore the Adamic condition. The sermon identified wrongdoing, but the deeper question of why human beings are sinful remained insufficiently answered. I made similar judgments in the Bundoora, Canterbury, and Sommerville reviews. Bundoora spoke of guilt, shame, pride, anger, lust, and deserved punishment, yet its anthropology did not establish hearers as fallen in Adam, born under guilt and corruption, spiritually dead, and subject to wrath. Canterbury acknowledged personal rebellion but did trace that rebellion to the deeper fallen condition from which it arises. Somerville likewise named sin and rebellion without adequately bringing hearers beneath the reality of their inherited guilt, corrupt nature, and inability to save themselves.

My objections here were not that every Good Friday sermon must provide a formal exposition of federal theology. Rather, the doctrine of humanity’s solidarity with Adam establishes the theological depth of the predicament to which the cross is God’s answer. Personal sins are real and culpable, but they are also the fruit of a corrupt nature. We are doubly guilty and deserving of wrath. If the preacher does not adequately establish the sinner’s condition in Adam, salvation can readily be understood as forgiveness for particular offences or relief from spiritual distress, rather than deliverance from condemnation and death through union with Christ.

This concern appeared in a particularly significant form in the Bendigo East and Chalmers reviews. In Bendigo East, I argued that insufficient attention to Adamic imputed guilt created a serious gap in explaining why all people require both Christ’s atoning sacrifice and the Spirit’s regenerating work. In Chalmers, I found the sermon’s forensic account of the atonement biblically and confessionally sound, while nevertheless noting that it did not explicitly establish Adam’s imputed sin as the ground of universal condemnation. My criticism was not directed against the sermon’s doctrine of Christ’s sacrifice, but against the incomplete account of humanity’s judicial predicament into which that sacrifice was proclaimed.

The Danger of a Therapeutic Diagnoses of Sin 

Other sermons approached the human condition through categories that were pastorally recognisable but theologically inadequate when permitted to become the controlling diagnosis. In Darebin’s sermon, descriptions of failure, rebellion, and corruption did not sufficiently bring hearers beneath God’s judicial verdict against sinners. In Heathmont, the emphasis upon woundedness, loneliness, spiritual drifting, and coldness toward God risked portraying fallen people primarily as estranged or injured rather than spiritually dead in Adam. Wodonga employed discontentment as a significant category for understanding sin, while Eltham approached the human predicament chiefly through spiritual and moral brokenness.

These observations do not require the rejection of such experiential categories. Discontentment, loneliness, alienation, and brokenness are genuine features of our fallen life. The difficulty arises when they become the principal explanation of humanity’s ruin. Scripture does not present sinners merely as dissatisfied people in need of fulfilment, wounded people in need of reassurance, or morally disordered people in need of restoration. They are guilty before a holy God, corrupt in nature, opposed to spiritual good, and unable to deliver themselves from the dominion of sin.

There is a real danger here that the remedy proclaimed in many sermons did not correspond adequately to the disease diagnosed. Where sin is understood chiefly as brokenness, salvation may appear chiefly as healing. Where sin is presented primarily as alienation, the gospel may be heard principally as an invitation into relationship. Where the human problem is dissatisfaction, Christ may be proclaimed primarily as the satisfaction of human longing. Each of these themes can express genuine dimensions of biblical salvation, but none adequately explains why the eternal Son of God had to bear divine judgment or why sinners must be born from above.

The reality of our death in Adam means those of us in church remain damned and under the wrath of God unless we are born again. In the Aspendale review, I therefore expressed concern about the suggestion of a remaining “small bridgehead of good” within fallen humanity. Applying the teaching of the WCF, the preaching of such doctrines weakens the logic of total spiritual inability. Nonetheless, I did not take this as proof that the preacher formally denied total depravity. The expressed concern was that the sermon’s account of humanity risked making regeneration helpful rather than essential.

Conversly, the Bendigo review provides an important qualification. There I acknowledged that the sermon spoke meaningfully of human inability, responsibility, and guilt, and proclaimed God’s rescue of sinners who could not rescue themselves. Nevertheless, from the chosen text of Isa 53 I noted that the sermon did not sufficiently expose the self-righteousness of religious people whom Isaiah was preaching to. It was a case of God’s people seeking to stand before God through their own righteousness and this was not brought out in the sermon. The issue was not merely whether inability had been mentioned, but whether the sermon brought hearers to recognise the impossibility of establishing their righteousness before God through anything arising from themselves.

Sin as conduct and sin as our condition were rarely addressed in the same sermon. Where the latter is inadequately established, the former can become detached from its biblical explanation. The preacher may still announce forgiveness, substitution, and grace, but the hearer is not necessarily brought to understand the radical character of the deliverance required. Where either is missing, the fostering self-righteousness becomes a real possibility.

Redemption Accomplished: The Cross in Its Forensic and Covenantal Fullness

Generally, sermons did not abandoned the doctrine of penal substitution or fail to proclaim the saving significance of Christ’s death. Indeed, I repeatedly acknowledged substantial and sometimes impressive affirmations of the cross. In Darebin, I recognised genuine gospel elements, including divine wrath and substitutionary punishment. Essendon presented sin as transgression against God and Christ as bearing sin’s penalty. Wodonga offered a profoundly forensic account of the cross, dismantling human merit and directing hearers to Christ alone. Camberwell spoke openly of judgment, wrath, hell, substitution, guilt, divine justice, and Christ taking the sinner’s place under judgment. South Yarra likewise employed serious forensic categories, including punishment, righteousness, substitution, reconciliation, and divine decree.

These affirmations are important because they prevent a misleading characterisation of the sermons as uniformly therapeutic, doctrinally shallow, or indifferent to divine justice. The more precise criticism was that the doctrines of the atonement, though frequently affirmed, were not sufficiently related to one another or to the sinner’s fallen condition. The presence of orthodox vocabulary did not necessarily ensure that the theological structure of redemption had been adequately explained or applied.

The Forensic and Covenantal Dimensions of the Atonement

In the Mornington review, I identified a related weakness in the treatment of Christ’s blood. The sermon, from Lev 4, explained blood in terms of death, substitution, wrath, and payment, but did not adequately develop the cleansing and new-covenant dimensions of Christ’s sacrifice. Scripture presents sinners not only as guilty persons requiring pardon but also as polluted worshippers who must be cleansed and made fit to approach God. The blood of Christ therefore does more than secure the remission of guilt considered in isolation. It belongs to the larger saving work through which God brings his people into purified communion with himself.

The Bundoora review raised a comparable concern about sacrificial language that lacked sufficient covenantal and mediatorial depth. The sermon employed the language of blood and rescue, but again, it did not adequately establish the theological gravity of sacrifice or the mediatorial office of Christ. The issue was not simply whether the preacher had spoken of blood, punishment, or forgiveness. It was whether these truths had been connected to the biblical realities of guilt, divine holiness, priestly mediation, covenant, and reconciliation.

The Use of Old Testament Passages.

A concern surfaced in the way some sermons used Old Testament texts without sufficiently following their covenantal and canonical argument. The Old Testament does not merely supply striking images or anticipatory illustrations for Christian preaching. Its sacrificial institutions, prophetic indictments, covenantal history, and messianic promises establish the categories through which God revealed himself to us and the manner in which the cross is to be understood. To proclaim Christ as the fulfilment of Scripture requires more than identifying an Old Testament passage with a New Testament event. It requires attention to the theological movement by which Scripture itself establishes the necessity and meaning of that fulfilment.

As noted above, the Bendigo sermon failed to give the context of Isaiah 53 and its wider prophetic and covenantal setting. The suffering Servant must not be abstracted from Isaiah’s indictment of covenant rebellion, human self-righteousness, and the impossibility of standing before divine judgment upon the ground of personal merit. Christ’s substitutionary suffering is not diminished by attending to this context; rather, its necessity becomes more clearly established.

The Wodonga review identified a related issue in the treatment of Numbers 21 and Genesis 3. The concern there was that the category of dissatisfaction, though not wholly foreign to the fallen experience, did not adequately express the biblical diagnosis of deception, unbelief, transgression, rebellion, condemnation, and divine judgment. When the wilderness rebellion is interpreted principally through dissatisfaction, the saving significance of the divinely provided remedy can be subtly redirected toward the satisfaction of human restlessness rather than deliverance from deserved judgment.

The Use of New Testament Passages was Questionable at Times.

The sermon at Reservoir was from Hebrews 10 and the relationship between Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice and the Old Testament sacrificial order. This particular sermon affirmed the finality and sufficiency of Christ’s offering without adequately tracing the argument through which Hebrews itself establishes those truths. The repeated sacrifices of the law, their inability to perfect worshippers, the obedience of the Son, and the completion of his priestly work are not incidental background details. They form the theological argument by which the finality of Christ’s sacrifice becomes intelligible. Without this movement from shadow to fulfilment, the declaration that Christ died “once for all” risks becoming a familiar assertion whose biblical logic remains insufficiently explained.

The Surrey Hills review raised a somewhat different hermeneutical concern. There the experiential framework of acceptance, rejection, relational longing, and reassurance had begun to govern the exposition of Isaiah 53 before the text itself had established divine holiness, guilt, wrath, and the judicial necessity of the Servant’s suffering. Emotional application is not illegitimate, nor is the love of God a secondary concern in the proclamation of the cross. The question is whether pastoral application arises from the theological argument of Scripture or whether a predetermined experiential framework determines how that argument is presented.

Shepparton had a questionable pastoral movement from Romans 1:16 toward an imperative concerning public Christian boldness. No attention to Paul’s central concern with the revelation of God’s saving righteousness in the gospel was made. I also judged that the treatment of Galatians 5 did not adequately expound its controversy concerning circumcision, justification, and the sufficiency of Christ. The difficulty in such cases is not necessarily that the eventual application is false, but that the sermon may reach a legitimate Christian conclusion without demonstrating how the biblical passage itself establishes that conclusion.

These observations suggest a wider methodological concern. Faithful preaching requires more than correct doctrinal conclusions or compelling applications. The preacher must allow the argument of Scripture to govern the movement from exposition to theological understanding and pastoral exhortation. Otherwise, the sermon may sound orthodox in its assertions without the necessary exegetical foundation.

Christ’s Mediatorial Work

The same principle applies to the presentation of Christ’s mediatorial work. The cross is not an isolated act of divine compassion, nor merely a dramatic demonstration of love. It is the saving work of the incarnate Son, appointed by the Father as covenant mediator, who bears the judgment due to sinners, fulfils the demands of divine righteousness, and secures the blessings of the covenant of grace. Its meaning is established by the holiness and justice of God, the guilt and corruption of fallen humanity, and the covenantal purposes fulfilled in Christ.

Here, the concern running in some reviews was one of doctrinal proportion and theological coherence. Substitution must be related to guilt and judgment; reconciliation to propitiation; pardon to cleansing; sacrifice to priestly mediation; and the accomplishment of redemption to the divine purpose of bringing sinners into new life. When these relationships are insufficiently explained, the cross may be sincerely and faithfully honoured more as a totem than the place of judicial justification.

Redemption Applied: Regeneration, Faith, and Union with Christ

The doctrine of regeneration was the point at which the concerns about anthropology and atonement converged most clearly. If fallen humanity is guilty in Adam, corrupt in nature, spiritually dead, and unable to come to Christ apart from grace, then the application of redemption cannot be explained as the result of an autonomous human decision. The sinner requires not merely information, persuasion, moral encouragement, or an invitation to exercise an undamaged spiritual capacity. He requires the sovereign, life-giving work of the Holy Spirit.

This was the central soteriological concern of The New Birth in Exile series. In several sermons, the new birth had become functionally unnecessary because the human predicament had not been established in terms sufficiently deep to require it. Canterbury presented hearers chiefly as seekers after the right king, but did not adequately confront the inability of the natural person to seek the right King. Heathmont described the human condition through categories of woundedness and estrangement without sufficiently establishing spiritual death and condemnation. Surrey Hills, in my judgment, risked reducing regeneration from the sovereign work of God that brings forth faith to an emotional consequence of responding positively to Christ’s love.

The criticism in these cases was not merely that the word regeneration had been omitted. I understand that a sermon may faithfully teach a doctrine without employing every technical term associated with it. The deeper question was whether the sermon’s theological structure made the new birth necessary. If hearers are portrayed as possessing the natural ability to recognise their spiritual condition, initiate their return to God, and make the decisive saving response through their own will, regeneration can readily become an optional supplement rather than the indispensable work of divine grace necessary for salvation.

Evangelistic Gospel Invitations.

The Westminster Confession of Faith is helpful in evaluating these (rare) gospel invitations. In effectual calling, God brings sinners by his Word and Spirit out of their state of sin and death into grace and salvation by Jesus Christ. He enlightens their minds, renews their wills, and effectually draws them to Christ, so that they come freely, being made willing by his grace. The divine action does not violate the human will, but liberates it from its bondage to sin. Saving faith is therefore not an autonomous contribution by which the sinner initiates salvation, but the Spirit-wrought receiving and resting upon Christ alone.

This confessional understanding governed my evaluation of gospel invitations. In the Ballarat West review, I expressed concern that the manner of the invitation to “pray with me now” could easily imply that salvation begins with human decision. That particular prayer was a redrafted “sinners prayer”. In Bay Church, I raised a similar concern about language inviting hearers to “turn back to God” and “take hold of Jesus.” Scripture commands sinners to repent, believe, and come to Christ, although the Puritan’s “flee to Christ” better expresses the urgency. 

I did make an important pastoral qualification in the Bay Church review though. A summons to turn back to God may be entirely appropriate when addressed to wandering covenant members, depending upon the intended context. The difficulty arises when similar language is directed to unregenerate hearers without clarifying the necessity of the Spirit’s regenerating work. My objection was not to the free offer of the gospel or to the urgency of calling sinners to faith and repentance. It was to any theological implication that unaided human choice supplies the originating cause or decisive power of salvation. The truth is, I was unable to ascertain from the sermon if the preacher was exhorting the whole congregation to turn back to God, or whether it was an erroneous call to the unconverted.

The Reservoir review further clarifies this distinction. In Reservoir, I expressly affirmed the propriety of calling hearers to come, believe, receive salvation, and trust Christ. My criticism concerned the inadequate explanation of the sinner’s deeper condition and the necessity of grace. 

This distinction is essential if the doctrine of human inability is not to be misunderstood. The Reformed doctrine does not deny that sinners are responsible to repent and believe. Nor does it imply that gospel proclamation should withhold the invitation to come to Christ until hearers have discerned evidence of regeneration. Rather, it establishes that the gospel command and the Spirit’s sovereign enabling work belong together. The sinner is genuinely summoned to Christ, and those whom God effectually calls are enabled to embrace him.

Not all the sermons I reviewed obscured this relationship to the same degree. In Hamilton, I positively assessed the sermon’s treatment of original sin and pervasive human corruption as substantially sound and Reformed. My concern there was that regeneration remained largely implied through the presentation of faith rather than being explicitly pressed as the necessary work of God. In Officer, in a sermon of 15 minutes of which 10 minutes was a discussion of church architecture over the centuries, I found the sermon substantially faithful in its central direction, while judging regeneration materially underdeveloped alongside every other doctrine it alluded to. South Yarra employed a serious forensic framework, but gave comparatively little attention to the Spirit’s work applying union with Christ in his death. These were judgments of insufficient theological development, not accusations that the sermons had formally rejected the new birth.

The Chalmers review illustrates the importance of this distinction particularly well. I regarded its forensic structure as sound, yet questioned whether the new birth had been presented too much in terms of a grateful response to Christ’s sacrifice rather than as the indispensable divine work by which sinners are brought into saving union with Christ. The concern was not that gratitude, repentance, or faith are inappropriate responses to the cross. It was that the Spirit’s regenerating action must not be confused with, or reduced to, the human response that flows from it.

Regeneration and Union with Christ and His Sufferings.

The relationship between regeneration and union with Christ also appeared in my treatment of resurrection. In Ballarat South, I commended the sermon for refusing to sever Christ’s death from his resurrection, while judging that our resurrection victory had not been made personally urgent through the necessity of new birth. In North Geelong, I argued that regeneration must be understood as more than moral improvement or emotional renewal. It is the Spirit’s communication of resurrection life to those united to Christ, the last Adam. In Sommerville, I similarly questioned a proclamation that Christ died so that people might have life without sufficiently defining either the death in which sinners lie or the life into which Christ brings his people.

The Series brings the distinction between redemption accomplished and redemption applied into sharper focus. Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice objectively secures the salvation of his people. Yet the benefits of that redemption are not received through a natural human capacity independent of grace. The Spirit effectually brings sinners into union with Christ, renewing their hearts and enabling them to receive him in faith.

In Reservoir, I therefore distinguished the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice from the Spirit’s work of enabling sinners rightly to recognise their sin and embrace Christ. I expressly declined to accuse the preacher of teaching universal regeneration at the moment of Christ’s death, while judging that redemption accomplished and redemption applied had not been sufficiently distinguished. In Camberwell, I acknowledged strong affirmations of grace, judgment, substitution, and human powerlessness. Yet I argued that the absence of a sufficiently developed Adamic framework risked presenting salvation chiefly as personal rescue (the dominant theme) rather than incorporation into a new humanity united to Christ.

The central theological issue here is thus not whether Good Friday sermons should mention regeneration as an additional doctrinal topic. It is whether the proclamation of Christ’s finished work adequately establishes how condemned and spiritually dead sinners come to participate in the salvation he has accomplished. The cross and the new birth are not competing emphases. Christ secures redemption through his obedience, death, and resurrection; the Spirit applies that redemption by bringing sinners into living union with him. The necessity of being born again does not diminish the sufficiency of the atonement. It displays the radical character of the salvation that Christ has secured.

Theological and Exegetical Integration in Good Friday Preaching

The preceding discussion reveals a broader pattern in my reviews. The difficulty was not always the denial of particular doctrines, but the failure to bring biblical exposition, theological structure, and pastoral application into their proper relationship. A sermon might be reverent, emotionally compelling, accessible, and use orthodox terms while nevertheless leaving the hearer without a sufficiently developed understanding of the theological realities that make the cross necessary and saving.

This was especially evident where narrative or rhetorical movement appeared to substitute for theological arrival. In Heathmont, I commended the reverent treatment of the crucifixion narrative and the seriousness with which the events were presented. Yet I concluded that the sermon did not reach the theological destination demanded by the cross itself. The events were narrated, but their deeper significance in relation to human guilt, divine judgment, and the necessity of new life remained insufficiently explored.

In Bundoora, I identified a related danger in the use of rescue imagery, dramatic narrative, emotional coherence, and a concluding appeal. These features can make a sermon engaging and memorable, but they do not themselves establish theological depth. My concern was that the sermon’s rhetorical effectiveness could create an impression of completeness while leaving important doctrinal relationships underdeveloped.

The Vindication of God.

A recurring weakness in the Good Friday sermons was their tendency to proclaim the benefits of Christ’s death more forcefully that its God-ward purpose. Forgiveness, reconciliation, assurance, and salvation were rightly celebrated, but the cross as the vindication of God’s holiness and righteousness against sin was largely missing.

The Camberwell sermon illustrates this imbalance. Although the sermon explicitly address wrath, judgement, substitution, and divine justice, its controlling emphasis remained human rescue rather than God’s vindication of his own character. Essendon similarly proclaimed forgiveness through Christ’s substitutionary death but insufficiently established the sinner’s guilt and condemnation before a holy God. Where this is missing, the necessity and cost of forgiveness lose their force.

Benalla spoke of judgment, punishment, and Christ receiving what sinners deserve, yet the sermon’s emphasis on sinners being “worth dying for”, risked making human value rather than divine holiness and mercy the interpretive centre of Calvary. Chalmers and Somerville successfully pressed the complementary point; the cross must be proclaimed as penal substitution, propitiation, wrath borne, and justice fully satisfied. These examples pointed beyond human benefit. Aspendale, likewise, insisted that the glory of the Lamb becomes clear only against the sinner’s exposure to God’s righteous judgment.

So whilst some of the sermons allowed for the inference of the doctrine of the vindication of God, no sermon positively addressed the doctrine. The finding here was that Good Friday preaching must establish a foundation in the righteousness of God. The cross is not chiefly a declaration of human worth or an answer to human distress. It is the supreme demonstration  before heaven and earth of God’s attributes of love and mercy revealed to all Creation.

The Relational View of Sin

Many sermons used relational categories to govern the presentation of the gospel. In Aspendale, I observed that the sermon moved comparatively quickly from the terror of sacrifice toward love, freedom, invitation, and reassurance. Surrey Hills placed considerable emphasis upon acceptance, rejection, and relational longing, while divine wrath remained comparatively muted. Warrnambool employed language of coming before God and being emotionally honest with him, which I judged insufficiently expressive of the biblical summons to repentance, confession of guilt, and reconciliation through Christ crucified. Bay Church raised a similar concern where reassurance concerning divine love displaced the fear of God, judgment, and the offence of the cross.

These criticisms must be understood carefully though. The love of God is not a secondary truth, and the gospel certainly brings comfort, reconciliation, peace, and assurance. It is also central to Calvary. The issue is one of theological order and controlling emphasis. Divine love must be proclaimed in its biblical relation to holiness, justice, wrath, mercy, and the saving mission of the Son. Pastoral consolation must arise from the reality of reconciliation accomplished through Christ’s judgment-bearing death, not from a presentation of divine acceptance that leaves the sinner’s guilt insufficiently confronted.

Like therapeutic categories, when relational categories become the dominant interpretive framework, the cross may be presented chiefly as God’s reassurance of human worth or as the means by which estranged individuals recover a sense of belonging. Such themes may reflect genuine benefits of salvation, but they cannot adequately explain the necessity of propitiation, the gravity of divine judgment, or the sinner’s need for regeneration. The biblical order must be preserved.

The Trinitarian Structure of Redemption.

Another dimension of theological under-integration concerned the Trinitarian and mediatorial structure of redemption. In Bundoora, I noted the comparatively muted presentation of the Father, the Holy Spirit, union with Christ, and Christ’s office as covenant mediator. Surrey Hills likewise gave insufficient prominence to the Father’s judicial action and the Spirit’s regenerating work. 

Again, these observations are not to imply that every Good Friday sermon must provide an exhaustive exposition of the Trinity or the covenant of redemption. Nevertheless, the saving work of Christ belongs to the united action of the Triune God. The Father appoints and sends the Son; the Son accomplishes redemption through his obedience, sacrifice, and resurrection; and the Holy Spirit effectually applies the benefits of that redemption to those whom God saves. When these divine operations are not adequately related, the cross can appear as an isolated act of Christ’s compassion rather than the fulfilment of the Father’s saving purpose through the Son and by the Spirit. This imbalance was frequently observed across the sermons.

The mediatorial office of Christ is particularly important in this regard. He is not merely an innocent sufferer who demonstrates divine love, nor simply a substitute who bears punishment considered apart from the covenantal purposes of God. He is the appointed mediator whose obedience and sacrifice secure reconciliation, righteousness, and life for his people. His work must therefore be understood in relation to the Father’s justice, the covenant of grace, and the Spirit’s application of salvation.

Necessary Distinctions.

The distinction between explicit doctrinal error and theological insufficiency remained essential throughout this work. In Frankston, I distinguished the underdevelopment of judgment and wrath from their denial. In Mornington, I stated that the sermon approached the reality of fallen nature without fully entering it. In Somerville, I characterised the preaching as formally orthodox but experientially underdeveloped. In Bundoora, I judged the sermon neither heretical nor empty, though shallow in important respects. In Camberwell, I expressly declined to regard the sermon as liberal, shallow, or doctrinally unsound, even while questioning whether its presentation of repentance and faith sufficiently established the necessity of prior divine grace.

These qualifications are not concessions that weaken the analysis. I found them necessary to the Series’ integrity. A sermon can be orthodox without being theologically comprehensive, and a preacher may faithfully expound a particular passage without addressing every related doctrine. My evaluations therefore focused on the chosen biblical text, the sermon’s purpose, its stated claims, and the implications of its theological structure. A failure to mention regeneration was not automatically judged as a denial of regeneration. Just as the use of decision language necessarily established a doctrine of autonomous human willing. However, across the 31 sermons, the necessity of the new birth, as a result of the crucifixion, was strangely absent as though in exile.

That said, the Castlemaine review is instructive here. I restrained from imposing the same new-birth criteria upon a discipleship-focused sermon. Luke 23:26 does not itself demand an explicit treatment of regeneration. Similarly, in Chalmers, I acknowledged that not every sermon must directly preach the necessity of being born again. These judgments establish an important methodological limit I imposed: the doctrine of regeneration should not be inserted mechanically into every sermon as a detached requirement. However, the necessity of the new birth should rest comfortably in a Good Friday sermon.

Conclusion: Christ Crucified and Sinners Made Alive

The principal conclusion arising from my 31 reviews of 31 Good Friday sermons for this Series, is that the theological strength of preaching cannot be measured simply by the presence of orthodox vocabulary or the accuracy of individual doctrinal assertions. Many of the sermons I reviewed proclaimed substantial biblical truths concerning sin, divine judgment, substitution, forgiveness, reconciliation, grace, faith, and resurrection. My reoccurring concern was that these truths were not always sufficiently integrated to establish the full relationship between humanity’s ruin in Adam, Christ’s accomplished redemption, and the Holy Spirit’s sovereign application of the necessity to be born again.

The reviews contained substantial positive judgments, and I repeatedly distinguished theological insufficiency from formal error. Nor do my conclusions require every Good Friday sermon to become an exhaustive treatment of original sin, effectual calling, regeneration, or union with Christ. The demands of faithful exposition must remain governed by the biblical passage and the preacher’s legitimate pastoral purpose.

Nevertheless, sinners require more than information about the crucifixion, sympathy for the sufferings of Christ, or an invitation detached from the divine diagnosis. Sinners must be brought to a realization of their personal predicament before God.

Ultimately, the theological integration I sought was not whether Good Friday preaching merely proclaimed that Christ died for sinners, but why sinners needed him to die in the first place. What did Christ’s death accomplish, vertically and horizontally, and why those dead in the first Adam must be made alive by the Spirit in the Last Adam.