- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
THE CENTRALITY OF THE CROSS.
By Bruce R Blackie
“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2 v2).
The apostle Paul in his evangelism amongst Jews and gentiles recognised the centrality of the Cross in his preaching. In the first chapter of his letter to the church at Corinth he declared, “but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1 v23). Paul was not interested in making a new philosophy, but proclaiming the way of salvation and the good news of sins forgiven through the atoning sacrifice of the death of Jesus Christ. Previously at Thessalonica (Acts 17) we read that the essence of the message had been the Cross of Christ. He reasoned with them from the Scriptures, “explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. ‘This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,’ he said. Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women" (Acts 17 v3-4). To Paul the Cross was the measure of his Christian faith and his job as an evangelist. “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6 v14). The same expression should be true for all Christians. Too often we seek to understand what happened at the Cross in terms of our subjective experience, Christ “loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2 v20), and it is right that we should realise that His spiritual blessing “in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 1 v3) comes to us through Christ and the Cross. However, in order for us to understand the Cross of Christ better, and to worship Christ at the memorial of holy communion, we should seek to know what the Cross meant to the Lord Jesus, summed up in the word “identification”, and to know what the Cross meant to the Father, “propitiation”.
What the Cross meant for Christ.
In Matthew chapter 2, when the Magi paid homage to Jesus, one of their gifts was myrrh, an aromatic herb used for burial rituals. This was a strange gift to give a baby, but it was a reminder of His future death. This child had been born in order that He would die. A shadow of Calvary hangs over Bethlehem and the manger.
The Son of God became a man in order to be identified with the human race, “He had to be made like them, fully human in every way” (Hebrews 2 v17). He was different from the rest of humanity in that He was not tainted with original sin, “but we have One who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet He did not sin” (Hebrews 4 v15). The fact that He suffered temptation is proof that He was human. So the baby became a boy, the boy became a youth and the youth became a man. He left Nazareth for Judea to listen to the preaching of John the Baptist, as he shouted out “repent”. Then as others made their way to the water’s edge for baptism in the River Jordan, Jesus joined them, and stood in front of John. He expressed his reluctance to baptise Jesus, saying “I need to be baptised by You” (Matthew 3 v14). Jesus had no sin of which He needed to repent, but replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness” (v15). This moment was the next step towards the Cross. He, the perfect human, had identified Himself with sinful humanity, and His future ministry would be amongst sinners.
After Peter’s confession, at Caesarea Philippi, the teaching of Jesus took a new course. “From that time on Jesus began to explain to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life” (Matthew 16 v21). As hostility to Jesus increased, some of the disciples were afraid, but with calm dedication the Lord told them, “we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn Him to death and will hand Him over to the Gentiles, who will mock Him and spit on Him, flog Him and kill Him. Three days later He will rise” (Mark 10 v32-34). After this prediction James and John sought honour for themselves, but Jesus introduces new symbols of His passion, “can you drink the cup I am going to drink?” (Matthew 20 v22). We have seen the meaning of His baptism, but we must also refer to Jeremiah, “take from My hand this cup filled with the wine of My wrath” (25 v15). He knew He would feel the full force of the Father’s wrath against sin when He was crucified and “was numbered with the transgressors” (Isaiah 53 v12). This would be His complete identification with sinners when their sin was put on Him.
Later, at the Lord’s Supper, Jesus stated plainly the meaning and purpose of “the cup filled with the wine of God’s wrath”. “Then he took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’” (Matthew 26 v27-28). The covenant was not the old Sinaitic Covenant, but the New Covenant of Jeremiah 1 v31-34 by which God will remember one’s sins no more. All the sacrifices of the Old Covenant were only a shadow of the self-sacrifice of Christ when humankind’s approach to God would be through the Holy Son who would lead a new race of the redeemed (Hebrews 9 and 10). At prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, He again referred to the cup, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26 v39). The Son of God had deliberately become human to carry out the Father’s will and establish the New Covenant as the Great High Priest who would make the fully sufficient sacrifice for sin. There in the Garden, under great stress, He accepted all that was involved in fulfilling His Father’s will. The Cross was the great climax of His obedience, who “for the joy set before Him He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12 v2).
Paul understood the endurance of the Cross when he wrote, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5 v21). The Cross is the final great identification of Christ with sinners and to achieve this He reached a great distance from the Father, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27 v46). We can in humility only guess and wonder how awful it was for the Sinless One to become sin and drink the full wine of God’s wrath. In effect Christ suffered, in those few hours on the Cross, all that we sinners would have suffered eternally because of God’s wrath against our sin.
Not only in the Garden, but also on the Cross, Christ fought a fierce battle, especially when the rulers mocked Him with, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One” (Luke 23 v35). This was temptation all over again for our Lord. Yet His final cry “it is finished” was the shout of the Victor, “having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the Cross” (Colossians 2 v15). Calvary is Christ’s moment of victory, it was a sacrifice that Satan did not want to happen. The Son of God had accomplished what He had set out to do when He left the courts of Heaven. He had redeemed humanity by His complete identification with lost sinners.
The Cross and its importance to the Father.
The Father was involved in the Cross of Christ, the Bible says, “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5 v19). First we need to understand the Biblical meaning of “propitiation”, which often means appeasing an angry God, but for Christians let us understand that, “we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, He is the atoning sacrifice [propitiation] for our sins” (1 John 2 v1-2). We cannot be against the substitution of Jesus Christ for ourselves on the Cross. Certainly a verse in a hymn might shock us, “Jehovah lifted up His rod, O Christ it fell on You”. The Lord did not only die to bear our blame for sin, also the cross is an intense example of God’s love, “but God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5 v8). God is not just love, He is holiness and righteousness. The love displayed at Calvary is holy love, He is “just and the One who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Romans 3 v26). We can easily forget the holiness of God and the offensiveness of sin. God could not just ignore our sin and remain consistent with His holy nature. By His own mortality and righteous law sin leads to death and punishment. The death of Christ upheld and satisfied the Divine nature and the Divine law. “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ”. It was God who paid the ransom price of our redemption, He forfeited the One He loved most to set us free. Acts 20 verse 28 speaks of, “the church of God, which He bought with His own blood”.
Hebrews 1 establishes the Deity of Christ to show the value of the sacrifice. Hebrews 2 establishes the Humanity of Christ to guarantee His qualification as High Priest to offer the perfect sacrifice. “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ”.
From an old ‘Overcomer’.