Because the Cross has happened
“Nothing is so well fitted to put the fear of God … into the
heart, as an enlightened view of the cross of Christ. There shine spotless
holiness, inflexible justice, incomprehensible wisdom, omnipotent power, holy
love. None of these excellencies darken or eclipse the other, but every one of
them rather gives a lustre to the rest. They mingle their beams, and shine with
united eternal splendour: the just Judge, the merciful Father, the wise
Governor. Nowhere does justice appear so awful, mercy so amiable, or wisdom so
profound.”
(John Brown, Expository Discourses on I Peter, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1975), 1:472–3, as quoted by Jerry Bridges, The Joy of Fearing God at 76)
“For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who
are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
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| North-South Highway, some way between KL and Ipoh |
Reading the quoted excerpt and Scripture passage above made me think about the infinite wisdom of the Cross where Jesus died. The Cross was a marvelous display of justice and mercy: the provision of a sacrifice to pay for our wrongs, but provided by God Himself so we would be freed from the penalty ourselves. Three thoughts about the Cross came to mind:
The Cross gives us a certain hope.
God keeps his word, so we can trust in his promise of
salvation. But he did not merely pronounce a gratuitous promise not to express
his wrath on us. Instead, he made the promise solid with the death and
resurrection of his Son. This means that salvation is not a hollow promise that we cling to with a hollow hope that God keeps his promises. When I promise someone that I'll reply their message this evening, their hope is hollow because it depends solely on the words I've spoken. They have no other basis on which to hope that I'll reply them, except that I spoke those words. With the Cross, the certainty
that the promise will be kept is achieved by, and displayed in, the Cross. The certainty that we are justified and
delivered from death, is expressed in the Cross.1
When we stand before the throne, we don’t simply hope to be
vindicated because God said he would do it. We don’t simply hope to “faultless
stand before the throne” because God said he would do it… Instead, we point to
the tangible and certain event—the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—and
say, the promise is there expressed. Of course, God’s Word is perfect and will accomplish
its purposes (Isaiah 55:11), and so it is inconceivable that God would speak a
promise and not keep it. But God’s Word isn’t hollow words, like the mini
promises we fallible people make but cannot keep. Instead, God’s Word is
substantial: Jesus is the Word (John 1:1). What was accomplished on the
Cross, is the Word—the promise expressed. When we look at the Cross, we see a
sure and binding hope. This hope is not based on some illusive transcendent “message
from god”, as is the case with other world religions propounded by humans
claiming to have heard from the divine. Instead, my hope is based on the visual,
empirically accomplished, work of the man Jesus Christ on the Cross. Because of
the Cross, which was planted right here on earth before us, my hope stands.
The Cross gives us grounded social justice.
God defines perfect justice. I think the reason
for our instinctive indignance at social injustices, is the fact that we were
created by God who stamped his mark on us: we are created “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27).
Otherwise, the material world alone falls short in explaining the moral
outcomes that our instincts tell us to pursue: the manifestation of this is
seen in Peter Singer’s view of human value in sentience. But that is the
consistent and logical conclusion of his atheistic views.
God demonstrates this perfect justice in the Cross. “If
he really is so loving”, an argument might go, “why can’t he just forgive?” But
if he did “just forgive” without Jesus having to die, that would be at the expense of justice. The wages of sin is
death (Romans 6:23). From the beginning, the declared penalty for
disobedience was death (Genesis 2:17). If this penalty was not carried
through, this flies in the face of justice and the rule of law. And if justice
is so flippantly foregone on the cosmic scale, how elusive is our pursuit of justice
and the rule of law in society today. Instead, Bible-believing Christians can
look at the Cross, which was the universal watershed of all time, and say, “there
I see, woven in the fabric of the Universe, justice and the rule of law perfectly
embodied.” This frees me to pursue social justice in my daily interactions with
people in my community, knowing (1) my pursuit is intrinsically good, not just
instrumental, and (2) my pursuit is honest, for I myself deserve cosmic
punishment, but it has been paid.
The Cross frees us yet constrains us to pursue holiness.
More fundamentally, the Cross displays holiness. Holiness is a tough word to define, but at least one aspect of it is moral perfection. As Christians we pursue righteousness in our daily actions and seek to overcome sinful practices. We are commanded to do so in Romans 8:13, “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live”. At the same time, however, it is said at the very start of that chapter, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). In the Cross, we see that God takes sin very seriously. When he stipulates that the just punishment for sin is death, he means it—so much that, in order to show mercy, he gave his own Son to die (John 3:16).
This means that our pursuit of holiness is not in vain: when we are commanded to pursue holiness, we don't muster up our own motivations to pursue moral virtue. Rather, we look at the Cross, which is a visual presentation of the gravity of sin and the value of holiness. What if the Cross had not happened?—if God had just “forgiven” and let the outstanding penalty for sin just go poof, left unpaid? Then we would have little ground and little motivation to pursue holiness. Holiness would seem to not be that valuable: for the penalty for our transgressions was just foregone. This is why we are upset when vile criminals are given mercy without having to pay for what they've done. Our intuition against such hollow mercy is driven by the sentiment that wrongdoings must be paid for: otherwise, the value of abiding by morals and the law is undermined; our moral standards would be rendered a farce.
Instead, the Cross frees us by justifying us by faith apart from our faulty works. Yet the Cross also constrains us to pursue holiness, because any sincere understanding of the Cross would come with a stricken sense of the value of holiness, constraining us to a lifelong pursuit of it, enabled by the Spirit of God.
~
These are just three big little things about the Cross. There’s
obviously much more that can be said, but to say it all would be an endless endeavour.
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1 Law students, think of consideration, except that God produces both the consideration on our part and confers the benefit on his part!
