This Good Friday sermon, preached by Rev Brett Peatman, is in many respects, one of the more theologically accessible sermons within the Easter series. Unlike several others, it consciously attempts to grapple with the glory of God in the crucifixion itself. The preacher recognises that the death of Christ is not merely tragic, emotional, or inspirational, but somehow revelatory of divine glory. He traces the Lamb imagery carefully from the Passover, through Isaiah’s suffering servant, into John’s Gospel, and finally into the enthroned Lamb of Book of Revelation.
I do not know this congregation, but if it contains new Christians, this breadth is worthy and well presented.
Indeed, one of the sermon’s strongest moments occurs when it pauses over the strange glory of the Cross itself. The preacher correctly perceives that the crucifixion is not an embarrassing interruption to Christ’s ministry, but the very purpose for which He came: “It was for this very reason I came to this hour.” The sermon also rightly recognises that Revelation’s Lamb reigns precisely as the slain Lamb. This is a substantial theological insight and should not be dismissed lightly.
Yet this very doctrinal awareness makes the sermon’s handling of sin all the more perplexing.
For although the sermon ascends toward profound reflections upon Christ’s sacrifice and the glory of God, it simultaneously undermines the absolute necessity of the new birth through a deeply deficient doctrine of man. The contradiction is difficult to ignore. The Cross is treated as infinitely weighty, but the sinner needing the Cross is not portrayed as infinitely ruined.
After listening to the sermon several times, I became aware that this problem begins to appears almost immediately in the opening illustration. The story of the airline passenger creatively wearing excess clothing to avoid baggage fees is not merely humorous scene-setting. Structurally, it reveals the sermon’s operative anthropology. The man in the story is inconvenienced, burdened, perhaps foolish, but fundamentally capable. He can solve the problem himself if he wishes. He merely discovers that someone else has made payment unnecessary.
The sermon then immediately maps this framework onto salvation: “We don’t need to somehow game God to get ahead. Jesus has already paid.”
That distinction is crucial. The sermon does not present fallen humanity as spiritually dead, helpless beneath divine wrath, and incapable of approaching God apart from sovereign grace. Rather, humanity appears burdened yet still morally functional. Christ graciously removes the burden, but the hearer is never truly brought to the point of recognising that he could never have solved the problem at all.
This becomes explicit later in the sermon’s treatment of sin. After quoting Christ’s devastating diagnosis of the human heart from Gospel of Mark 7, the sermon immediately retreats: “Most of us are a mixture of both.”
Here the sermon moves away from historic Augustinian and Reformed anthropology toward something approaching semi-Pelagian moral dualism. Humanity is no longer presented as radically corrupt in Adam, spiritually dead, hostile to God, and under condemnation. Instead, people become morally conflicted mixtures of good and evil.
The quotation from The Gulag Archipelago intensifies this problem further: “Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.”
Whatever Solzhenitsyn intended sociologically or politically, this statement becomes profoundly dangerous when imported into Good Friday theology without qualification. For if one “small bridgehead of good” genuinely remains within fallen man, then the logic of total spiritual inability begins to collapse. The necessity of sovereign regeneration weakens. The new birth becomes helpful rather than essential.
But Scripture’s diagnosis is far more severe. Fallen man is not merely conflicted. He is dead in trespasses and sins. He does not possess a surviving moral island from which he may cooperate with grace. The Biblical problem is not simply that humanity struggles with evil while retaining an intact moral core. Rather, humanity itself stands condemned in Adam, alienated from God, incapable of submitting to His law, and in desperate need of resurrection life.
This matters because the doctrine of the Cross can never rise higher than the doctrine of sin beneath it.
Where sin is reduced to brokenness, Christ becomes primarily healer. Where sin is reduced to burden, Christ becomes helper. Where sin is reduced to moral conflict, Christ becomes guide and example.
But where sin is rebellion against infinite holiness, spiritual death beneath divine wrath, and covenantal condemnation in Adam, then Christ becomes absolutely necessary as wrath-bearing substitute and life-giving Saviour.
The tragedy of this sermon is that it comes remarkably close to perceiving this. The preacher clearly senses the weight of the Lamb imagery. He understands that bloodshed, sacrifice, and glory are somehow bound together. He even speaks of the unsettling nature of the sacrificial system: “the priest would cut its throat.”
Yet the sermon does not allow the congregation to remain long beneath that terror. The atmosphere quickly returns to love, freedom, invitation, and reassurance. The hearer is comforted before being truly condemned.
This becomes especially significant if the congregation consists largely of younger Christians. Precisely because young believers are impressionable, the necessity of the new birth must be established with utmost clarity. If they leave believing that humanity merely requires assistance, inspiration, or moral adjustment, they may admire the Cross while never understanding why Christ declared: “You must be born again.”
Good Friday preaching must do more than proclaim that Jesus lovingly died for sinners. It must also expose why such a death was absolutely necessary. The Lamb is only glorious when the sinner finally understands that nothing less than the death of the Son of God could rescue him from the righteous judgment of a holy God.
A copy of the full sermon is available at The Reformed Pastor's YouTube channel.
More articles in this series can be found here: The New Birth In Exile
