The Darkness on the Earth
It’s not hard to see that something is deeply wrong with the world. But it wasn’t always this way. When God created the world, he said it was good. So what happened to God’s good creation? The tragedy started in a garden. Adam and Eve listened to the lies of Satan and rebelled. From there, sin went viral, passed down from generation to generation. We’ve all contracted this sickness unto death. It darkens all we do, even the good things we take part in. The Puritan William Beveridge put it this way.
I cannot pray, but I sin. I cannot hear or preach a sermon, but I sin. I cannot give an alms or receive the sacrament, but I sin. Nay, I cannot so much as confess my sins, but my confessions are still aggravations of them. My repentance needs to be repented of, my tears want washing, and the very washing of my tears need still to be washed over again with the blood of my Redeemer.
Sin is pervasive in us and, therefore, in the world. We are not good people who occasionally do bad things. We are evil people proving it all the time. Sin separates us from God. Sin separates us from other people. Sin separates us from creation. Sin separates us from ourselves. The shadow of sin stands over this world because we have rejected God. As a result, here is Jesus on the cross.
We read in Mark 15:33-47 about Jesus, who had been on the cross for three hours. At noon, the sixth hour, the very heart of the day, darkness covered the whole land until 3 PM, the ninth hour. Some scholars try to write this off as just a solar eclipse—nothing special. But solar eclipses don’t last three hours. They last about seven minutes. This was an act of God. He was showing us the darkness of sin that placed Christ on the cross. The physical darkness represented our spiritual darkness.
The Old Testament prophets talked about the darkness of the “Day of the Lord” or Judgment Day. For example, Jeremiah said, “I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light” (Jeremiah 4:23). The prophet Isaiah said, “We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like dead men” (Isaiah 59:10). God told Isaiah that no one could lead themselves out of their own darkness, so God will strap on the armor himself and save them. The Redeemer will come to Jerusalem (Isaiah 59:15-20). Here is the fulfillment of that prophecy: their Redeemer, hanging on a cross, going under the darkness for his people.
Amid the darkness all around, the spotlight is on the cross. There, our savior hangs, mangled and marred. It’s messy, and it’s bloody because it must be. This is the only way to forgiveness. The Bible says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22) and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). But the blood of goats and bulls isn’t enough. Man’s sin requires man’s blood. And our sins are so great, nothing less than Christ’s cross can save us. The only hope of any light at all is by the Light himself going under the darkness for us, dying in the darkness for our darkness, letting the darkness engulf him and take him down.
