Why Did God Save at All? | Easter Message

Easter is easy to summarize and strangely hard to see. We all know the lines: Jesus died, Jesus rose, sins are forgiven. But I want to slow down and ask the question that keeps pressing underneath the familiar story: why did God choose the cross at all, and why this moment in history?

Starting in John 12, we listen to Jesus name his purpose at the edge of the cross: “For this purpose I have come to this hour… Father, glorify your name.” From there, we follow the Bible’s thread through Romans, Acts, Isaiah, Ephesians, and Corinthians to show that the “why” of Easter is the glory of God. Sin is described as exchanging that glory, so redemption is not just fixing our behavior; it is restoring our orientation. And God doesn’t act because he needs anything from us. He acts to reveal who he is, most clearly in the face of Jesus Christ.

We also talk about what that means for daily life: union with Christ, raised life right now, and why prayer “in Jesus’ name” is aimed at the Father being glorified. Abiding produces fruit, fruit makes God visible, and joy becomes the overflow of living for what we were created for. Even our weakness matters, because we’re “jars of clay” on purpose so God’s power gets the credit.

Subscribe wherever you listen, share this with a friend who has questions about Easter, and leave a review that helps more people find the show.

Transcript

Beyond The Easter Story

SPEAKER_00 0:10

In today's episode, we're taking a break from our series in the Gospel of John to bring you a special message on this resurrection Sunday. Across the world, churches are gathering and a familiar message is being preached. If you spent any time in the church on this day, you've heard it before. Jesus died, he rose, and our sins are forgiven. The story is known. But beneath that story is a question that presses deeper. Why did God do it this way? Why the cross? Why this moment in history? Why this path to redemption? In this message, Pastor Harry Barns turns our attention to that question, opening scripture to uncover the purpose behind the resurrection and what it reveals about God Himself.

John 12 And The Coming Hour

The Purpose Behind The Cross]

Sin As Trading Away Glory

Why God Acts At All

Seeing God In The Face Of Christ

Union With Christ Shapes Prayer

Jars Of Clay And A New Orientation

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Hello and welcome again to the takeaway. I'm your host, Pastor Harry Barns. And today we're going to be doing something a little bit different. Now, if you've been with us through our series in the Gospel of John, you know that we've been working through it verse by verse. And we're going to keep doing that. Next week we pick right back up where we left off. But today I want to do something different. Today is Resurrection Sunday. And I've been thinking about what that means for this episode, because right now, thousands of pastors across the country are preaching Easter messages. And most of them, if we're being honest, are preaching some version of the same message they preached last year and the year before that. Jesus died for your sins, he rose again. Believe in him and be saved. And all of that is true, every word of it. But I want to take a different approach today. Because I don't think the problem most people have with Easter is that they don't know what happened. Most people know what happened. Jesus died and he rose again. That's the story. The question I want to ask today is the one that almost nobody stops to ask. Why? Why did God do it this way? Why the cross at all? Did God need to do this? Was he reacting to something that got out of hand? Did we interrupt some larger plan and force a course correction? Could he have accomplished the same thing another way? And here's the question underneath all of those questions. What if everything happening right now, the cross, the resurrection, this moment, is going exactly according to plan? What does that mean for us? What's our part in it? What's the actual purpose of all of it? That's what today is about. So we're going to let scripture answer that for us. And I think by the time we're done, the cross is going to look different than it did when we started. Not smaller, bigger, clearer, more intentional. So we're going to start in John chapter 12, which is actually right in line with where we've been in our series. And we're going to let Jesus tell us why he came. But before we read these two verses in John chapter 12, verses 27 to 28, I want to place you in the moment because context is everything here. What we have is Jesus is in Jerusalem. It's Passover week, the most sacred week on the Jewish calendar, and the city is packed with pilgrims who have come from across the Roman world. He has just ridden in on a donkey while crowds spread palm branches in the road and shouted, Hosanna. The Pharisees have already made their decision. Judas will betray him within days. The arrest, the trials, the cross, all of it is hours away. And in the middle of all of that, some Greeks, Gentiles, outsiders to the covenant have come to the festival and asked to see Jesus. When that request reaches him, something shifts. He doesn't go to meet them. Instead, he says, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. That phrase, the hour, has been running as an undercurrent through the entire Gospel of John. Every time someone tried to seize Jesus or press him toward confrontation before he was ready, John tells us his hour had not yet come. And now at Passover, surrounded by people who want him dead and people who want to believe it has. What you're about to read is Jesus standing at the exact moment the whole story has been moving toward. But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. Then he asks a real question. And then he answers it himself. And he says, But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Now that word purpose is doing everything here. The cross is not a reaction. It is not a rescue plan assembled under pressure. It is an arrival, the moment the whole story was moving toward. And then he prays, Father, glorify your name. And the Father answers out loud from heaven, and he says, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. That's agreement. It's confirmation. And that is the reason behind everything we call Easter. The glory of God is the why. Everything else we say today builds from that. So if the purpose is the glory of God, what exactly is the problem the cross is solving here? Well, Romans 3 says it in a single line in 323. Paul said, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Fell short of the glory of God. The category here is glory. And Romans 1 shows us how that happened in 121 to 23. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. And here it is. And they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. They exchanged the glory. That's the trade. A deliberate turn away from who God is towards something smaller, something we could manage. The human problem is a direction problem. The whole story bent away from the glory of God. So the cross is restoring something more fundamental than broken behavior. It's restoring a broken orientation. And that's why the purpose behind it has to be the glory of God, because that's exactly what was lost. And now that raises a harder question. If God's purpose is his glory, why structure the world like this to get there? Couldn't he reveal himself without death and suffering? Why does any of it have to look this way? Well, Acts 17 establishes something very important first. Acts 17, 24 to 25 says, The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. Out from God. He is complete in himself. He is not reacting to a crisis, he is not lacking something we supply. So why act at all? Well, Isaiah answers that directly in Isaiah 43, 6 and 7. He says, Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made. Created for his glory, that's the origin point. And it tells us the direction of everything God does. He acts for the display of who he is. And Ephesians 1 tells us how he purposed to do it. In verses 4 and 6 of chapter 1 of Ephesians, he says, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved, to the praise of his glorious grace. The mechanism here is praise, and praise is produced by seeing, not just knowing. That's the thing we're sitting in right here. There is a difference between being told that God can raise the dead and watching God raise the dead. And Jesus illustrates this in John chapter 11. Lazarus here has died. And Jesus says something that stops everyone around. In John chapter 11, verses 14 to 15, we read, Then Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him. And when Martha meets him at the edge of the tomb, he says, in John 11 40, Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? You would see it. Power explained is knowledge, power revealed is glory. And that's what this world is structured for. God is not just informing us about who He is, He is making Himself visible through events that inner history in a way nothing else can explain. The cross, then, is the fullest expression of that logic. So where do we see the glory of God most clearly? Colossians 1 15 says, He, Jesus, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, the image of the invisible God in Christ. What cannot be seen becomes visible. Jesus says it directly to Philip. John 14, 9, Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, Show us the Father? And then Paul brings it together in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6. For God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The same word that called light out of nothing at creation is now shining through a person. God is making himself known fully, visibly in the face of his son. So when Jesus prays at the edge of the cross, Father, glorify your name, he is asking for the fullest display of who God is, his justice, his mercy, his holiness, his love, his power over death, all of it in one moment at one place. That's the tell. The cross is the clearest thing God has ever shown the world about himself. So where does that leave us? If God is revealing himself in Christ, what is our position in all of it? Well, Ephesians chapter 2, verses 5 and 6 says, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated, catch this, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Made alive, raised, seated with him. Paul uses past tense because this is already accomplished. The union is present and real. Romans 6, 4 and 5 says, we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. United with him in death, united with him in his resurrection, we are brought into both movements, not waiting to be brought near, but already positioned in Christ. We have been brought into him, and none of that originates in us, it originates in grace. So if we are united to Christ, already raised and seated with him, what is life from that position look like? Well, Jesus lays it out across three passages in John chapters 14, 15, and 16. And the logic connects. And I want you to follow me here. In John chapter 14, verse 13, he says, Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do. Now catch this next part of this sentence because most people miss this. He says, That the Father may be glorified in the Son. Let me say that one more time because so many people here ask anything in my name and I will do it. But this is the full sentence. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. The purpose clause is the key here, that the Father may be glorified. Prayer in the name of Jesus is prayer-oriented around the glory of God. We have been brought into his purpose. And prayer is how that purpose gets expressed from inside of us. And then in John chapter 15, verses 7 and 8, he says, If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this, my Father is glorified. Hear it out, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. Now asking leads to fruit. Fruit reveals God. The Father is glorified when the life of the disciple makes him visible in the world. Let me say that one more time. The Father is glorified when the life of the disciple that's you and me makes him, the Father, visible in the world. The two passages are one continuous movement. And then in John 16, 24, he says, Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Then he says, Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. Now, joy is the outcome of living in the purpose we were created for. When we are aligned with the reason we exist, something comes back to us that we were always meant to have. We ask to glorify him. We bear fruit that reveals him. And in that our joy is made full. That's the arc that's connecting it all. It holds together because it was always designed to. Now here's the question underneath all of this. Why does God reveal Himself through people like us? People with histories and failures and ongoing weaknesses. Second Corinthians 4 7 says, But we have this treasure, God's glory, his power, that treasure, in jars of clay. We're the jars of clay. To show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. The contrast is the point here. When God reveals himself through an ordinary, insufficient person, there is only one explanation for what you are seeing. The vessel is clay, but the power belongs to God. And that distinction is what makes the glory visible. What better way for God to make Himself known than to make alive that which was dead? The weakness is part of the display. We are jars of clay on purpose. So, what does all this have to do with Easter? Jesus died and rose again to reveal the glory of God, to display his power, to make himself fully known, so that we would believe and enter into life with him. First Corinthians 15 20 says, But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. Now, first fruits means what follows belongs to the same harvest. Jesus didn't only accomplish something for us from a distance, he went first, and the path he took is the path we are on. He showed us the way. Now, Genesis, going all the way back to the beginning here, Genesis 127 said, So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. Created in the image of God. We were created to bear his likeness in the world, to be the visible expression of an invisible God. That's what we were made for. Ephesians 2, 4 and 5 says, But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. We were dead, and God made us alive. The pattern of the cross, death and resurrection, is what restores us to the image we were made to bear. Our sins are forgiven so that we can step back into our created purpose. And that purpose is to reveal Him. The forgiveness is the door back into the calling. God did not act because He needed something from us. He acted to reveal Himself. And in Christ, He brings us into that glory. Now here's the question I want to leave you with today. Do you just believe in what Easter stands for? Or have you seen the glory of God behind it? Because there is a difference between affirming an event and being oriented by a revelation. The cross was designed to do the second thing. It is God saying, Look here. This is who I am. His justice and his mercy at the same place. His power over death visible in history. His image restored in the one who is the image of the invisible God so that everyone united to him would bear it also. When you see it that way, Easter stops being a date on a counter and starts being the hinge of everything. That's the takeaway. Let's pray. Father, let us see the cross for what it is, the fullest display of who you are, your justice and your mercy, your holiness and your love, your power over death given freely to everyone united to your Son. Let that vision reorient us toward the purpose we were created for, the joy that comes with it, and the life that makes you visible in the world. In Jesus' name. Amen. Now I want to thank you for joining us today, and I hope this message has helped you truly take a step closer and knowing just how much God loves you and wants you to know Him. Now, next week, we're going to be back in our series through the Gospel of John, picking up right where we left off. So make sure you subscribe wherever you listen so that you don't miss it. And if today's message in any way resonated with you, if it raised questions, if something landed differently than you expected, if you just want to talk through any of it, please head over to thetaway. God bless, and we'll see you next time on the takeaway.