An evaluation of the sermon “Four Ironies of the Cross” by Dr D.A.

Carson

I have first heard the sermon “Four Ironies of the Cross” preached by Dr. Donald A.

Carson at the Klang Valley Bible Conference in 2007. The conference organizers aimed

to “encourage godliness through expository Bible teaching” by allowing Malaysian

Christians the opportunity to listen to preachers who model the ideals of expository

preaching. The conference theme “Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ” was

especially relevant in view of recent criticisms within evangelical circles that were

leveled against the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. Dr. Carson is a well

known evangelical scholar and research professor of New Testament at Trinity

Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He received the Master of Divinity

from Central Baptist Seminary in Toronto and the Doctor of Philosophy in New

Testament from Cambridge University. His prodigious scholarship is demonstrated by

numerous books and articles he authored on topics such as biblical theology, the

historical Jesus, postmodernism, pluralism, Greek grammar, Johannine theology, Pauline

theology, and questions of suffering and evil.

The sermon was based on the Passion narrative found in Matthew 27:27-50. Carson

started by reading the text and in good Anglican tradition, affirmed that, “This is the

Word of the Lord”. He is a Baptist minister. I have adopted this practice too because the

text establishes our authority and defines the parameters of the message. The

congregation is urged to evaluate the words of the preacher by the Word of God. Then,

Carson expounded on four profound ironies that Matthew weaved into his account of

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Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. He also explained that an irony has the capacity to clarify an

incident and express what is important that is going on in a narrative. As a literary-

rhetorical feature, an irony involves one of the actors in the narrative not knowing what is

going on but the writer and his reader know it. However, we may be so familiar with the

story that the irony is lost on us. Although Carson did not go in detail discussing the

complexities of pinpointing the genre of Matthew’s gospel, he obviously treated it as a

historically reliable account of Jesus’ life written with rich theological insights.

In the sermon introduction, the audience was given an idea of how irony functions with

an Old Testament example of how the prophet Nathan confronted King David’s sins of

adultery and murder. The king was initially roused to moral anger when told a story of

how a wealthy shepherd in Israel forcefully took and slaughtered the sole lamb belonging

to a poor shepherd. But the author and his readers know that the prophet Nathan was

talking about the king himself. The irony is found in King David indignantly (and

unwittingly!) passing judgment on his own moral depravity. In the same way, Carson

explained how Matthew’s passion narrative was couched in terms rich with irony so we

may see truly what the cross was about. In many instances, the jeering crowd and the

soldiers who carried out the execution spoke better than they knew.

I found this sermon to be an excellent example of how an expository sermon could be

raised beyond abstract propositional points to a structure which more closely resembled

the creative literary devices embedded within the narrative itself. In fact, the four ‘points’

in the sermon outline were neatly organized around the four ironies of the cross below:

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- The one who is mocked as king is King.

- The one who is utterly powerless is transcendently powerful.

- The one who can’t save himself saves others.

- The one who cries out in despair trusts God.

According to John Piper, “experience and Scripture teach that the heart is most

powerfully touched, not when the mind is entertaining abstract ideas, but when it is filled

with vivid images of amazing reality.”1 Could there be a more riveting image than the

divine King reigning from the bloodied cross?

Elsewhere, Carson shared how he learnt the importance of context for understanding:

"My father used to tell me that a text without a context becomes a pretext for a proof text,

so when I was still quite young I learned to look at the context." 2 Much attention was

devoted to the historical background at the start of the sermon. Carson summarized the

events which led to the passion narrative by explaining that Jesus was a popular figure

after two or three years of public ministry but by then, he had fallen afoul of the religious

and political authorities in Jerusalem. Fearing a rebellion against Rome, they decided on

the expedient solution to kill him by securing a death sentence by crucifixion from their

Roman governors. The audience was also given some details on what the crucifixion

involved and the social/religious stigma attached to it. I believe this is necessary due to

the historical and cultural distance between the modern hearers who wear crosses as

fashion statements and the ancient readers who would be horrified by the idea. For the
1
John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching, (Kingsway Publications: Eastbourne, East Sussex), page
88
2
D.A. Carson, "One Way (Matthew 7:13-27)", in Richard D. Phillips, editor, Only One Way?: Reaffirming
the Exclusive Truth Claims of Christianity, (Crossway Books, 2007), pages 127-142.

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Jews, a person hanging on the tree is considered to be under the curse of God. The

Romans find the cross so unspeakably odious that they do not even speak of it to children

and a Roman citizen cannot be crucified unless by the emperor’s own edict. Unless we

grasp the horror of the crucifixion, we may not fully appreciate the not-so-seeker-

sensitive call to bear one’s own cross daily.

As a good biblical scholar, Carson also traced how the theme of kingship (for example)

was developed earlier within Matthew’s Gospel itself from the opening genealogy of

Jesus crucial to establishing his royal credentials to the cross-examination by Pilate where

Jesus admitted that he was indeed king. But he had no army and posed no threat to

Caesar. His kingship was to be understood in a manner radically different from how the

world looked at power and royalty. Not only that, Carson traced the theme of Christ’s

kingship to the wider theological context of Old Testament prophecies presupposing the

overaching unity of Scripture. Such a sweeping survey of the biblical text had the effect

of showing how the Matthew and his readers already knew that Jesus is king. Kings ride

out to conquer, dominate and win battles. But ironically, Jesus was beaten and mockingly

hailed as ‘king of the Jews’ by Roman soldiers. He was not the sort of king who ruled

with violent coercion but through self-giving service.

Generally, the tone of this sermon was sober and earnest in keeping with its theme.

Carson’s personality and wood-working interests would come through in instances where

he talked about how modern technology could be used to build a house in a day

(mimicking the sounds of hydraulic drills) and contrasted that to the impossibility of

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building a temple in three days in an age when such technology was not yet available.

Ultimately a lucid understanding of biblical truth should lead us to heartfelt worship. At

the end of this sermon, Carson recited an appropriate poem he composed which exulted

in the redeeming work of the cross:

“Long have I pondered the Christ of the cross.

Gone is the boasting when I’m next to him,

loving the rebel, redeeming the lost.

Jesus’ pure goodness exposes my sin.

Sin is cut down by this triumph of grace.

Christ’s bloody cross is the hope of our race.”

As someone who has been helped and impressed by this sermon, it is hard for me to find

many shortcomings. But a few may deserve a mention. I do not find many illustrations

that seek to apply a lesson to the lives of the congregation. Most illustrations used did a

good job of clarifying textual meanings. For example, Carson discussed how the cross is

not only the foundation of our forgiveness but also the bastion of our ethics. We can see

this in the account of the mother of two disciples asking Jesus to grant her sons the

authority to sit at his right and left hand when he came to power. Then, Jesus called them

together and taught, “Whoever wants to become great among you must serve the rest of

you like a servant” (Matthew 20:20-28). But it may have been more effective if Carson

fleshed out how that servant leadership or bearing the cross in our discipleship may look

like in concrete examples. Sometimes a hearer may be convinced and eager to apply a

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biblical principle but do not know how that could actually be practiced in modern

realities.

Another possible flaw could be the illustration from the movie Titanic used to show how

moral sensibility has degenerated over the years. Apparently the scene depicted in the

movie of rich people forcing their way onto limited life boats as the Titanic sank was

fictional as no one would believe that the rich men selflessly gave priority to women and

children first. According to Dr Mowbray an author alive at the time of the tragedy, there

was much debate about the manner in which J. Bruce Ismay the wealthy managing

director of White Star Line managed to escape alive that day.3 There was at least one

account that testified to Major Archibald W. Butt firing a pistol to stop men from rushing

to remaining life-boats.4 This cautions us to check the facts surrounding quotations or

illustrations used in our sermons to avoid the strength of a valid argument to be

undermined by the circumstantial inaccuracies surrounding them. Overall, the preacher’s

language was clear, accessible and elegant yet free from unnecessary terminologies that a

biblical scholar may be tempted to employ. Except for certain poetic flourishes at the end,

the sermon could be accessibly followed by the primarily Asian Christian audience that

day.

Reflecting on lessons learnt that I could use in my own preaching, I think Carson had an

arresting introduction that kept the congregation’s attention even though it was a familiar

story that even Sunday school children know. He began the narration with these words:

3
http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/titnchx6.htm, Last accessed on 2 October 2008
4
http://www.logoi.com/notes/titanic/women_children_first.html, Last accessed on 2 October 2008

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“He was a good king. Efficient. On the whole, incorruptible. A decent administrator and

militarily strong. He united the tribes. He constituted a nation. He defended the frontiers.”

It took me a while before realizing that he was actually telling the well-known story of

King David’s fall into sins of adultery and murder. The element of surprise grabbed

attention that otherwise may be lost due to the story’s familiarity. In this regard, Haddon

Robinson wrote, “The opening words of a sermon therefore need not be dramatic; they

need not even be plain; but they must go after the minds of the hearers to force them to

listen. If the preacher does not capture attention in the first thirty seconds, he may never

gain it at all”.5 As far as possible, I should constantly think of fresh ways to creatively

retell familiar stories.

The “Four ironies of the Cross” is an excellent model of an expository sermon which

faithfully derived its content and structure from the biblical text itself. We do not get the

impression that the verses are merely salutary launch pads for the preacher’s own

opinions or self-help instructions. At almost every turn, we are closely following

Matthew’s development of themes such as kingship, power and servanthood, salvation

from sin and trust in God. It aroused a desire to read the text again for ourselves with

greater appreciation of the helpful historical and literary background information. The

homiletic presentation closely reproduced the rhetorical dynamics of the text as a result

of painstaking hermeneutical groundwork and the four ironies are helpful memory aids in

themselves. For example, it is precisely because Jesus can’t save himself by internal

moral constraint that He could now save others! There were helpful bridges that

5
Haddon W. Robinson, Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages, (Baker Book
House: Grand Rapids, Michigan), page 160

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connected the “there and then” aspects of the ancient text and the “here and now”

realities of the modern audience. Differences between monarchies found in Britain and

Saudi Arabia illustrated the chasm in our understanding of what kingship meant. This

sermon challenged me to also seek to ground my preaching on sound exegesis and

adequate preparation. There is always a danger of losing the plot in our zeal to extract

sermon points when preaching from a narrative,

There were elements of creative communication such as the use of poems, citation of

popular movies (The Titanic) and illustrations taken from the preacher’s own life

interests. Engaging sermon delivery was enhanced in places where Carson used

expressive verbal ‘acting’ as with the mocking laughter of the Roman soldiers. Non-

verbal communication like eye contact and pauses at critical junctures reinforce the

message. There was no unnatural humor or over-enthusiastic gestures that may have been

inappropriate for the serious nature of its theme. There was also earnest passion as Carson

debunked the popular notion that Christ’s cry of dereliction was an expression of doubt

rather than trust in God. He contended that “Jesus suffers like this so we don’t have to”

because the element of irony was still in force. Overall, the sermon had simplicity and

clarity despite the profound theological themes it delved on although I had some

problems following the poems at the end.

Another lesson learnt is that of letting the exposition of truth overflow into worship.

Theology is for doxology. The sermon was not dry or lifeless. There was heartfelt

devotion without dumbing down. When Carson recited the poems he composed about the

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redeeming work of the cross, it was a fitting conclusion to the sermon. Poems express

more emotion than mere propositional statements. In churches today, we often experience

the “doctrine versus passion” dichotomy – the notion that a doctrinal sermon cannot stir

up emotions or practical sermons cannot be loaded with theology. We need to recover that

“logic on fire” which once characterized Martyn Lloyd Jones. Our hearts should never be

coolly dispassionate when expounding so great a theme as the atoning death of Christ.

With regards to application, there is a great need in sermons today to show the difference

a truth or biblical idea would make. Otherwise it may appear to be irrelevant or lacking

practicality. In this sermon, Carson did not pander to ‘felt needs’ but applied the message

of the cross to universal needs such as the need for the forgiveness of sins. However, I did

not recall hearing any explicit calls for the hearers to respond to the message. As

mentioned earlier, he pointed out how the cross has implications on our ethics in our

discipleship and leadership. Nevertheless, in my opinion, it would have been more

effective if that could be fleshed out further with concrete examples. There was appeal to

the mind and emotion when the church is indicted of ‘pagan triumphalism’. But how does

an alternative community look like when they embrace the cross or self-giving service?

An important lesson here is to always ask myself “So what? What purpose would this

message serve? What difference would it make if a person assents to this truth?” A.W.

Tozer once said, “Theological truth is useless until it is obeyed. The purpose behind all

doctrine is to secure moral action.”6

6
A. W. Tozer, Of God and Men, (Harrisburg, Pa.: Christian, 1960), pages 26-27

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In conclusion, I would consider this sermon to be an excellent model of what expository

preaching should look like. It was faithful to the biblical text, grounded on sound

exegesis and its meaning made sense in the original historical background. Truth was not

merely explained, but preached with passion and clarity. Most importantly, the sermon

was Christ-centered and cross-shaped. Although the debate on penal substitutionary

atonement may not be far from his mind, Carson did not get defensive or adopted an

apologetic stance. Rather, the atoning work of Christ was exulted in, marveled at and

warmly embraced with thanksgiving.

Preaching may have fallen on hard times in a society inundated with information and

obsessed with eye-popping special effects. Many concerns and needs jostle for the

pastors’ limited time and energy. However, we believe in a personal God who

communicates and condescends to speak through human instruments. It is an awesome

privilege and responsibility to not just speak of but speak for God. Who is up to the task?

But as we avail ourselves to the Holy Spirit, His grace would prove to be sufficient in our

weaknesses and may yet use our imperfect words to deliver the Word of Christ to the

glory of God and the gladness of His people.

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