The Good Friday sermon preached at South Yarra Presbyterian Church by the visiting preacher from Hawthorn Presbyterian Church, the Rev Graham Nicholson, on John 19:30, is likely the most doctrinally substantial sermons examined in this Easter series. That fact alone demands care in assessment. It is easy to criticise contemporary Easter preaching for weak anthropology, therapeutic categories, or shallow notions of sin, but this sermon, however, retains many of the great forensic realities of historic Christian preaching. It speaks openly of guilt, punishment, wrath, righteousness, ransom, substitution, reconciliation, and divine decree. In an age where many sermons instinctively soften such themes, that should not be underestimated.
From the beginning, the sermon is unmistakably Christ-centred. The preacher does not open with anecdotes, cultural observations, emotional vulnerability, or self-help themes. He opens with Christ’s cry from the cross:, his final words before giving up his spirit: “It is finished.” The sermon therefore begins not with man but with the Son of God accomplishing redemption. More importantly, the cross itself is treated judicially rather than sentimentally. Christ bears punishment. He satisfies righteousness. He secures reconciliation through His death. The sermon never reduces Good Friday to an illustration of empathy or suffering. The cross remains objective, covenantal, and substitutionary.
The sermon is also rich in biblical theology. Rather than isolating John 19:30 from the rest of Scripture, the preacher traces Christ’s cry through Isaiah 53, the Lamb imagery of John the Baptist, Christ’s own statements concerning ransom and shepherding, and finally into the eternal counsels of the Triune God.
The hearer is reminded repeatedly that Calvary was not accidental. Pilate, Judas, the chief priests, and the Roman soldiers all operate within the sovereign purposes of God. Christ willingly lays down His life in full agreement with the Father’s eternal plan. This is serious theology.
Likewise, the sermon commendably maintains the objective accomplishment of redemption. Christ’s death does not merely make salvation possible. He pays ransom. He satisfies divine righteousness. He completes the work given Him by the Father. Even the sermon’s conclusion stresses the permanence of Christ’s finished work. Forgiven sins remain forgiven, reconciliation remains secure, and Christ’s kingdom remains without end.
All of this deserves genuine recognition because this sermon preserves categories increasingly absent from modern Easter preaching.
Yet precisely because the sermon is so doctrinally forensic, its remaining weaknesses become more noticeable. The sermon strongly proclaims objective redemption, but it less consistently brings the congregation consciously beneath the weight of the realities being proclaimed.
The central weakness is not doctrinal compromise but experiential restraint.
The sermon explains the cross carefully. It unfolds redemption historically and covenantally. But the hearer is rarely made to feel existentially cornered beneath the truth being proclaimed. The sermon teaches guilt more than it presses the congregation into conscious guilt before God.
Again and again, the sermon speaks of punishment, wrath, condemnation, debt, and righteousness. Yet the overall atmosphere remains measured, contemplative, and comparatively comfortable. The rom temperature remains comfortable.
This is what makes the sermon difficult to assess. The problem is not what is said. The problem is the sermonic temperature at which those truths are delivered.
One can see this clearly in the sermon’s strongest experiential moment, the quotation from John Flavel:
“You and your penny must perish together.”
That sentence could be explosive. The words destroy self-righteousness. It strips away religious contribution. It exposes the sinner’s instinct to supplement Christ. In the older experiential preaching of Flavel, such a statement would land like a hammer blow upon the conscience.
Yet here even this moment is delivered gently, almost contemplatively. The sermon never quite rises to match the existential severity of the realities it proclaims.
This restraint affects nearly every major doctrine within the sermon.
For example, the sermon clearly teaches substitutionary atonement through Isaiah 53:
“The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
Christ’s sinlessness is also repeatedly affirmed. Pilate recognizes His innocence. Christ willingly obeys the Father. He is the spotless Lamb.
But the congregation is rarely brought consciously beneath the horror of the great exchange itself. The sermon does not linger over “My guilt laid upon Him,” “My condemnation transferred,” or “The sinless One standing where I deserved to stand.” The doctrine is present. The experiential weight is thinner.
Similarly, the sermon contains many judicial categories but comparatively little explicit use of the Law of God as an experiential instrument exposing the conscience. The hearer is told repeatedly that Christ paid the debt. But the sermon spends much less time establishing why the congregation themselves stand condemned beneath divine law.
This distinction matters greatly. Biblically, Christ’s payment is anchored in judgment. The sinner stands condemned beneath God’s holy law. Christ bears that condemnation in the sinner’s place. Yet here the debt can remain slightly abstract because the congregation is not deeply brought beneath the condemning sentence itself.
The sermon says:
“Outside of Him, you are reckoned as unrighteous, deserving of punishment because of your sins.”
That is true and serious. Yet the sermon does not substantially linger over the eternal consequences of remaining outside Christ. Final judgment, everlasting wrath, eternal exclusion from God, and the terror of appearing unforgiven before divine holiness remain comparatively distant. The categories of condemnation are present doctrinally, but the atmosphere of eternity surrounding them is muted.
And this perhaps explains why the necessity of the new birth remains underdeveloped throughout the sermon. It certainly is not pressed, not even a whimper. The listener is greatly informed through this sermon but the eternal realities preached do not question the conscience.
The resurrection is certainly affirmed. Christ has authority to take His life again. The resurrection functions as triumph, vindication, and completion. But the sermon never substantially presses the corresponding necessity that sinners themselves must be raised spiritually.
“This omission is significant. It is one of the central concerns behind the New Birth in Exile series. When the truths of God are proclaimed without being pressed deeply upon the conscience, the hearer may remain strangely at ease in Adam while admiring the theology of redemption. Yet the intent of preaching reaches far beyond the transfer of doctrinal information. Epistle to the Ephesians 3:10 declares: “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.” The manifold wisdom of God is displayed supremely at Calvary, where divine holiness, justice, wrath, mercy, righteousness, and triumph meet in the crucified and risen Christ. But that wisdom is not fully displayed where sinners remain comfortable in spiritual death. The Cross not only declares that Christ has died. It declares that those dead in Adam must be raised to new life through union with the risen Christ. To preach Calvary without pressing the necessity of the new birth is to leave unfinished the very transformation the resurrection proclaims.”
There is little emphasis here upon regeneration, union with Christ, resurrection life, or the Spirit’s work in making dead sinners alive.
The hearer is urged to believe in Christ, but not deeply confronted with the necessity of becoming a new creation.
Likewise, the resurrection is not strongly pressed as the Father’s public declaration that the believer’s sin debt has truly been paid in full. The preacher speaks beautifully of “no outstanding debt.” But the resurrection does not substantially become heaven’s receipt, the vindication of justification, or the declaration that condemnation has truly been exhausted.
This same experiential restraint appears in the sermon’s treatment of congregational complicity. Pilate’s weakness, the priests’ hatred, Judas’ betrayal, and the crowd’s blindness are all carefully described. Yet the sermon rarely collapses the historical distance and says: “You are not merely observing these people. You are seeing your own heart.”
As a result, the congregation can remain somewhat observational. One may admire the architecture of redemption without ever feeling personally arraigned before God.
This becomes particularly important because the sermon’s applications remain largely covenantal. The hearer is told that there are those who are in Christ and those who remain outside Him. Those are true distinctions. Yet the sermon spends comparatively little time helping the hearer discern whether they have actually passed from death to life. The danger of false assurance is therefore not strongly explored.
None of these criticisms erase the sermon’s genuine strengths. In fact, among the sermons likely to be examined in this Easter series, this may well prove the strongest doctrinally forensic treatment of the cross. Unlike many modern sermons, it retains wrath, guilt, substitution, righteousness, judgment, and objective atonement.
Yet even here, the hearer is more often taught about redemption than existentially undone by it.
And perhaps that is precisely the tension this series focusing on Easter sermons is seeking to uncover within much contemporary Presbyterian preaching. The forensic structure of the gospel may frequently remain partially intact, while the experiential weight of eternal judgment that necessitated the crucifixion, and the consequent necessity of the new birth quietly recede into the background.
A copy of the full sermon is available at The Reformed Pastor's YouTube channel
More articles in this series are at The New Birth in Exile
