At the Right Time Christ Died / Romans 5:6-9 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Friday April 18th 2025 / Good Friday / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Good Friday April 18th 2025: Season of Lent, Holy Week / Romans 5:6-9 “At the Right Time Christ Died”

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God.

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Good Christian Friends “time shall teach thee all things.”[1] Saint John tells us how when “Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to Him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about Me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered You over to me. What have You done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But My kingdom is not from the world.” Then Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?”[2] The truth is that Jesus was crowned King in a strange place and at a strange time and men like Saint Peter had a hard time accepting and grasping the way this all took place:[3] “the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on [Jesus’] head and arrayed Him in a purple robe. They came up to Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck Him with their hands.”[4] And when “Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” [But] when the chief priests and the officers saw Him, they cried out, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!”[5] This is an unusual way to great your king.

So not with gold and precious stones and gems but with twisted thorns they crowned Jesus that day and as we, now in our time, stand at the foot of the cross we ask: “Is it important that Jesus was crowned the way He was?” “Is it important that Jesus died the way He died?” “Is it important that Jesus died exactly when He did? The time He did, the year He did, the day He did, the hour He did?” “Was the cross part of the plan all along?” We often talk about how Jesus lived a perfect life; a life without sin and that this is an important part of our salvation because He was able to do what we could not. But if Jesus lived a perfect life from conception to birth, to adulthood: would it have mattered if Jesus had died in the womb or as a child or at any time during His life – He would have died perfect without sin no matter when He died, Right? Yet Saint Paul says that, “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God.” At the right time Christ died for the ungodly. How do you feel about time?

Lot’s of people wanted Jesus dead:

When Jesus was yet an infant Herod the Great, King of Judah, sought to kill Jesus because of jealousy. He expected Jesus to make an attempt on the throne.[6] While some children did die at the hands of Herod’s men, Jesus avoided death. Warned by an Angel, Joseph, Jesus’ earthly guardian and the husband of the Virgin Mary, Jesus’ mother whisked his family away to Egypt. “His hour had not yet come”[7]

Later when Jesus was a grown man “He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as was His custom, He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and He stood up to read.”[8] Afterward Jesus spoke to them and they desired that Jesus would do in Nazareth what He had done in Capernaum (Healing the sick and casting out demons) But Jesus responded saying, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.” Explaining with scripture that there is a place and a time for everything and it is God’s to determine such things, the people became exceedingly angry and “were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove Him out of the town and brought Him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw Him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, He went away.”[9] The people of His own hometown wanted Jesus dead but, “His hour had not yet come”    

At the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, Jesus healed a sick man on the Sabbath Day and when the authorities heard about it they confronted Jesus. And in this confrontation Jesus called God His Father and because of this His own people were determined “to kill

Him, because not only was [Jesus] breaking the Sabbath (as they saw it), but [Jesus] was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”[10]

Even some of the religious leaders, the Pharisees, on another occasion held a council with the Herodians, government officials, to discuss destroying Jesus because He healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath day.[11] In fact, “The plot [these men made] to arrest Jesus with intent to kill Him for claiming He was from God,”[12] was so commonly known that everyone seemed to know about it.[13] Jesus seemed to be in mortal peril during His whole roughly three year public ministry, but, “His hour had not yet come.”

At the Temple in Jerusalem Jesus proclaimed His eternal nature and the people “picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.”[14] For, “His hour had not yet come”

A Second time the people picked up stone to stone Jesus because Jesus said to them that He and the Father are one,[15] “again they sought to arrest Him, but [Jesus] escaped from their hands,”[16] because “His hour had not yet come.”

So, with Jesus over and over again evading death, we start to see what the answer to the question is when we ask, “Is it important that Jesus died the way He died?” “Is it important that Jesus died exactly when He did?” Yes. In His crucifixion prophecy handed down from Moses to King David to Isaiah and others was fulfilled.

“Was the cross part of the plan?” Again, Yes. On the cross, Jesus’ hour came to Him. The Cup of suffering and sorrow was upon Him: “For our sake [He was made] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”[17] On the Cross Jesus completed His task and became Prophet, Priest and King. In Jesus, upon the cross, the promised Messiah was ultimately revealed in the flesh; in Jesus, upon the cross, the ultimate sacrifice for our sin was made; in Jesus, upon the cross, ultimate Kingship was bestowed upon Him with a title “King of the Jews” and with His painful crown of thorns.  

You see, earlier, after feeding the 5,000 Jesus could also have been made king but, “Perceiving then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by Himself,”[18] “His hour had not yet come.” On the Cross His hour had come. “At the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” Therefore, we know and trust that, “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” because while many sought to kill Jesus, while many plotted His death, while many sought to crown Him King, these things would not take place where and when and how they desired, rather Jesus knew that the time for all these thing was upon the cross of His crucifixion. The 5,000 people Jesus fed in the wilderness would have had a king for the day – Jesus wants you to have a King for all time.

Before Jesus’ death upon the cross “Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, [while plotting to kill Jesus] said to the [priests and the other religious leaders], “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” Saint John in his Gospel tells us that Caiaphas did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.[19]

Upon the Cross Jesus died a death for the ungodly, and as Saint Paul teaches, “there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by [His Son Jesus’] blood, to be received by faith.[20] Jesus therefore gives His life as “a ransom for many.”[21] His blood washes over all sin upon the cross. And in this way Jesus did not die for Himself alone: He died for you. Not because you today as a Christian wanted Him to die but rather because you needed His sacrifice, His blood to cover your sin; the lash, the spit, the mockery, the insults, the nails, the crown of thorns, all of this done at “the right time” for you.

Time is a peculiar thing. When you need it there never seems to be enough of it. When you want it to go by quickly it seems to drag on forever. Of all the things in creation, time causes the most frustration: When you're young you want to be old, when you're old you want to be young. We are impatient with time and we are suspicious of time. We want to control and manage and nail time down. We want to measure time; we want things to happen in the time we want them to happen in. We want to be healed quickly; when we kiss them on the crown of their little heads we want our children to grow up slowly.

But we are not in control of time, time does not come to heal like a dog, time does not snap to attention at our command. Jesus said, “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”[22] We can’t make time run faster or shorter. Jesus is the Lord of Time. As the people picked up stones to stone and kill Him, Jesus had time in His hand: as the religious leaders plotted the hour of His death, Jesus knew the time and place of His crucifixion in advance of them. When the 5,000 planned to crown Him King, Jesus knew when He would receive His real crown; His crown of thorns.

In your life, Jesus knows your coming in and your going out,[23] He knows the length of your days and He knows the hour of your death as well as He knew the hour of His own death.[24] When your life is spinning out of control remember that Jesus is your King and He is the one who created time, yes “all things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made,”[25] even time itself. He gives you your days.[26] Dear ones turn to Him, receive from Jesus, this day, the forgiveness that He won for you upon the cross so long ago that first Good Friday. The forgiveness of Jesus is not stuck in time. The forgiveness Jesus won upon the cross can’t be held back by time. It hits the water like a giant stone causing waves of forgiveness to rush and spill away from it into eternity. The people of the Old Testament, who lived in faith, trusting in the coming of Jesus, were forgiven all their sins while He hung nailed to the cross. When Jesus breathed His last your sins were forgiven.  When the spear entered His side and the blood and the water spilled out your sins were forgiven, for there in that moment you find your baptism and you find each sip and sup of Holy Communion. Jesus is everlasting to everlasting.[27] He is “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”[28] “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”[29] And He is with you yesterday, today and forever more. He is forever in the waters of your baptism, He is forever with the bread and wine of Holy Communion, He is forever the Word of God upon your ears and in your heart; He is forever upon the cross for you and forever risen to new life for you. He is before you and behind you. Jesus is with you now and waiting for you on the other side of your own grave. Dear ones time has a wonderful way of showing us what really matters, yes “time shall teach thee all things.”  

I leave you with words from the Hymn, “Crown Him with Many Crown.” This is my favorite verse of the hymn but for some reason it isn’t in the new hymnal. In it we hear of Jesus.

“Crown Him the Lord of Years, The Potentate of time,

Creator of the rolling Spheres, Ineffably sublime.

All Hail, Redeemer, Hail! For Thou hast died for me;

Thy praise and glory shall not fail Throughout Eternity.”[30]

                                             Amen.       

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.”

[1] Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810 – 1889), Quotations for the Fast Lane, McGill-Queen’s University Press 2013, page 540.
[2] John 18:33–38
[3] Mark 8:33; Luke 22:38; John 18:10-11; Luke 22:54-62
[4] John 19:2–3
[5] John 19:5–6
[6] Matthew 2:16
[7] John 7:30, John 8:20
[8] Luke 4:16
[9] Luke 4:28-30
[10] John 5:18
[11] Matthew 12:14; Mark 3:6
[12] John 7:30-3
[13] John 7:25
[14] John 8:59
[15] John 10:31
[16] John 10:39
[17] 2 Corinthians 5:21
[18] John 6:15
[19] John 11:49–52
[20] Romans 3:22b–25a
[21] Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45
[22] Matthew 6:21
[23] Psalm 121:8
[24] Hebrews 9:27
[25] John 1:3
[26] Psalm 100:5; 139:16
[27] 1 Chronicles 16:36; Nehemiah 9:5; Psalm 41:13; Psalm 90:2; Psalm 103:17; Psalm 106:48
[28] Revelation 1:8; Revelation 21:6; Revelation 22:13
[29] Hebrews 13:8
[30] Crown Him with Many Crowns, Lutheran Worship, Concordia Publishing House, 1982, stanza 5.

Photo Credits: Main photo composite of Jesus crowned with thorns from pixabay and man working on clock from stockcake.