For our sake
Summer Sermon Series 4/7: For our sake
Sermon Preached by The Very Reverend Nicholas Papadopulos, Dean of Salisbury
Readings: Romans 3: 21–26, John 21: 15–19
Sunday 17 August 2025
Due to technical issues, unfortunately there is no video of this Sermon.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures…
‘…He was a man of very inflexible disposition, and very merciless, as well as very obstinate’. The Jewish historian Philo of Alexandria is unsparing in his assessment of history’s best-known Roman. I know: it’s a crowded field. But the names of Marcus Aurelius, Julius Caesar, Cato the Elder and Octavia the Younger are not on the lips of millions every week. The name of Pontius Pilate is. Governor of the province of Judea for ten years until his recall to Rome in the mid-thirties of the first century, his name hauls the Nicene Creed back from its loftier claims (‘God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God’) and roots it firmly in verifiable history. This happened.
Welcome to the fourth sermon in our series on the Creed, when our focus is on the three words with which I began: ‘For our sake…For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate’. It makes perfect sermon series sense to address incarnation one week (‘… he came down from heaven…’) and salvation the next (‘…he suffered death and was buried…’). But the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that words very similar to this week’s focus appeared in the slice of the credal salami to which Ross spoke last week: ‘For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and was made man’. The Creed insists that the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus are all for us and for our salvation (as are, presumably, the teaching, healing, fasting, prayer and transfiguration of Jesus). The whole story is told for our sake; the whole life is lived for our sake; what we might call the whole Christ-event is for our sake.
So what is the meaning of the bizarre claim made in these three cryptic words?
‘When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you”’. The lakeside encounter has a formal character: the evangelist refers to Simon Peter both by his given name and by his nickname; Jesus addresses Peter by reference to his parentage. Something big is coming. ‘Do you love me?’ Jesus asks. ‘You know that I love you’ Peter replies. Yet Jesus repeats the question – he repeats it twice – and only the Greek text reveals why. Jesus uses the verb agapao: pure, selfless, eternal love. Peter uses the verb phileo: the companionable love of siblings or friends. ‘Do you love me purely, selflessly, eternally?’ asks Jesus. ‘Lord, you know I love you as my dear friend’ replies Peter. Jesus repeats the question; Peter repeats his answer.
Perhaps Peter remembers saying he would follow Jesus wherever he goes; perhaps he remembers saying he would die for Jesus. And perhaps he has learned his lesson. There will be no more grandiose promises from Peter: ‘Lord, I love you as my dear friend’. And when Jesus asks the third time, he changes the verb he uses: ‘Do you love me as your dear friend?’ What Peter offers is not the selfless agapao love of the first question. But what he offers is honest, and it seems that it is enough.
Paul writes to the church in Rome that ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’. It’s a pithy interpretation of what it is to be human and what it is to sin. Peter falls short, even when he is confronted by the risen Lord Jesus, even when his denial of him and his desertion of him are fresh in his memory. Peter cannot muster the perfect righteousness of which Paul writes, the righteousness of God disclosed and attested by the Law and the Prophets, the righteousness embodied in Jesus Christ. Peter falls short – we fall short – and because we fall short the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, and the teaching, healing, fasting, prayer and transfiguration of Jesus are given for our sake. The Christ-event makes up the shortfall. It may be that you and I can only love God as Peter loves God. But because of the Christ-event, that is enough.
How so?
Let’s be clear: the Creed does not tell us how so. It confines itself to those three cryptic words: for our sake. For generations they have been debated by the Church, and a host of theories or theologies have attempted to fill the gap that the fathers of Nicaea very deliberately left in their well-spun web. Saint Paul is the earliest writer to explore the meaning of the Christ-event for humanity, and even his exploration does not yield the crystal-clear results that some long for.
In a crucial passage from the Letter to Romans there is scholarly disagreement about the interpretation of two verses. The alternative reading of verse 22, which differs from that in your Order of Service, is as follows: ‘Apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed and is attested by the Law and the Prophets, the righteousness of God through the faith of Jesus Christ’. Apart from the law: righteousness has nothing to do with the group to which we belong (whether by birth or by choice) or the practices that we follow (whether recitation of words or adherence to behavioural codes). And: the righteousness of God is disclosed through the faith of Jesus Christ – of Jesus Christ. In Jesus eternal truth and eternal goodness are given a face and a voice – and, with a ghastly inevitability – in Jesus eternal truth and eternal goodness meet the pent-up rage and fear of human history. The faith of Jesus Christ does not shrink from the rage and fear of empire, defending its power at all costs; from the rage and fear of the Temple cult, defending its systems of control at all costs; from the rage and fear of violent, jealous, unhappy men and women, living disappointing lives and hating what they do not have. The rage and fear of centuries sweep eternal truth and eternal goodness away and nail Jesus to a cross.
And our eyes are opened. We look at the cross and we see the worst of which we are capable – of which each of us is capable. Paul writes of the ‘hilasterion’ which is translated ‘a sacrifice of atonement’. But in Jewish history the hilasterion is the covering of the Ark of the Covenant; it is the place where God dwells. So Paul understands the cross as the place where God dwells, where God is most truly revealed as God. The cross is where we come face to face with the one true God of whom the Creed speaks. It’s why Pontius Pilate is history’s best-known Roman: in a time which cannot be denied, and in a place which cannot be denied, God makes Godself known to the world. The cross is the place where we see God’s righteousness, where we see how far we have fallen short, where we see the blood that is on our hands and the risks to which we are exposed if we do not change our lives, as Rilke puts it.
‘…God justifies the one who has the faith of Jesus’ writes Paul. That’s the alternative reading of verse 26. God justifies the one who has the faith of Jesus. We are not justified by anything we do or by anything we say. We are justified by God when we have the faith of Jesus. And the faith of Jesus is the faith of the one for whom Peter’s honesty, learned at such a cost, is enough. Amen.