Discovering God: the cross

Galatians 6: 12– 18

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 06 Apr, 2008

THE CROSS is the sticking point of the gospel. Good people are saddened by its cruelty; evil people hate it because it confronts evil; only Christians can love it, because it gives life.

We have seen, as this series progressed, how much God desires, how much God longs, for our fellowship. It is not that he is in any way incomplete with out us. His amazing grace reaches for us. He desires to draw us close.

The generic Creator–God — Elohim in Hebrew — apears in chapter 1 of Genesis. Yet he is revealed in Chapter 2 as God–in–relationship, Yahweh Elohim, The LORD God.

He walks in the garden with the man and the woman. He searches for them when they do not come to him. But he cannot continue that relationship when they abandon him.

That’s the story of Genesis. It is a story of God’s grace and our rebellion. You can’t even sufficiently make the point by speaking simply of disobedience. Instead of trusting God and leaving their lives in his hands, Adam and Eve separate themselves from him. They take matters into their own hands. They decide that God can not be believed. They think that he will withhold good things from them. They believe they have to struggle and grasp these things for themselves.

But God still cares. He can’t allow them everything they want. He can’t give them immortality. Death enters the world. God created us humans to rule the world, to have dominion over the entire creation. instead we drag it into the gutter as we fall.

I was putting up a new blind in the boys’ room when we lived at Berala. I climbed onto the head of Joshua’s bed and began screwing new brackets into place.

I was guilty of hubris, of believing myself better than I was. I do not balance at all well on a bed head that is barely 20mm thick. I fell. And, as I plummetted, I grabbed the one thing in reach — the blind. I dragged it down with me.

Fortunately I didn’t destroy the blind, but I did have to start over with the bracket. Oh well...

I think my cry of, “Oh, rats!” as I fell was entirely justified.

Why don’t we all cry out, “Oh, rats!”? See how far we have fallen! Why do we show so little concern or interest? We drag the entire creation down with ourselves as we plummet towards the abyss.

Why do we need the Kyoto Protocol? Because the entire creation has been dragged into our fall. Why the struggle to end whaling? Global warming, pollution, loss of habitat, loss of species — it’s all part of the fall. War, oppression, persecution, crime — it’s the fall that did it.

George W Bush was tipped over the line in the Presidential race four years ago by the strength of the fundamentalist vote. Many Christians believed that he would bring a Christian outlook to the US Government.

What nonsense! Even Methodist Presidents are fallen; all who have power are corrupted by that power.

There is none righteous, not one.

Kevin Rudd is a Christian, and I like a lot of what he has done so far. But I have no illusions. He is fallen, we are fallen, every single person is damaged. Christians are not perfect, just forgiven. A wicked leader will drag us all down, a good leader will raise us up, but neither one will solve the nation's problems.

Vanity of vanities: all is vanity, says the Preacher.

Until we grasp these truths, we can never really understand the cross.

There are many theories about the meaning of the cross, but the cross is greater than all those theories. Many words have been spoken, many songs have been sung, about the cross, but all of them together are insufficient to declare its wonders.

But let me tell you that without the cross, there is no answer to the sin problem.

I have already said that God does not arrive with guns blazing, that he does not overwhelm his enemies. God does not blast us into submission through the tactics of shock and awe. The theory of shock and awe was what Hitler called Blitzkrieg, and it was as ineffective in 1940 as it has been since Gulf War Mk I. God wins hearts and minds.

But that takes suffering. He can”t win us by being nice. There’s a vast price to pay.

Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling like a mighty ocean
In its fulness
Over me!

The famous German Theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it: “Grace is free, but it is never cheap!” In the first place, Jesus paid the price. He calls us to follow him in the way of the cross.

We sing,

The Price is paid
Come, let us enter in
To all that Jesus died to make our own.

If nothing else, the cross demonstrates how great a price had to be paid for our salvation.

Is there any surprise when Paul says,

 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. ?

The cross is precious to him, because it has such value. There the price was fully paid.

Yet, while the Bible clearly insists that the cross brought about our redemption, it is not particularly detailed as to how that redemption occurred through the cross.

A price was definitely paid. Mediaeval theologians said Jesus paid a ransom to release us from the devil’s grasp. They said that sin had made us all rightful captives of the devil, but Jesus gave his life as a totally satisfactory substitute for us in our sin, so the devil had to give us up.

There’s a truth here. But there is also a problem. The problem is the resurrection. If Jesus rose again and escaped the devil’s clutches himself, that makes God unjust. He pays the price, gets the captives free, then snatches the payment back. That’s not fair!

But in another sense, Jesus did pay a price for our redemption from satan’s clutches. It was a price which not even resurrection undoes.

There was a price of obedience.

Paul wrote to the Philippians,

He was obedient unto death,
Even death on a cross.

Have you ever done something that seemed totally crazy — just on faith?

The first time we had a church houseparty, I faced a quandary.

Chris and I had been urging the deacons to take initiatives. Up till then, we had always done the organising, and several deacons even said, “Here the pastor organises everything and tells us what to do.”

So Tom and Joan told me one day, “We’ve organised a houseparty in November, and we’ve put you down as the speaker, OK?”

I was overjoyed! Someone had taken an initiative in ministry!

Apart from one or two minor issues, it was exciting to see this progress.

It would have been a little better if it hadn’t been planned for the date of my final College examination in a subject that I was struggling with. I’d have felt a lot more comfortable had I been able to concentrate fully on my study, rather than have to prepare four studies hand–outs and all the rest. And it did happen to be the weekend when the General Superintendent of the Baptist Union planned to visit our church...

I was happy that they had made plans, but I frantic about all that had fallen on my shoulders!

I prayed about it. How could I discourage people who were uncertain about their planning ability? How could I change their plans because of my examinations?

It was scary to do that, but I was amazed how God provided. I was at least a term behind on reading in this subject, because I just had too much extra to do. But I trusted God. When the examination came, I found that the three mandatory questions were matters that I had dealt with in general church work in the fortnight before the exam, and the free choice topic was a direct overlap with another subject I had taken during the year.

But I had no written guarantee that God would provide, I just had to trust and do what I could.

And the General Superintendent came to our houseparty, so that was nice.

When Jesus went to the cross, the only guarantee he had was the quality of his relationship with his heavenly Father. He didn’t know for certain that he would come through at the other end. No one had been there before him: he is

...the pioneer and perfecter of our faith
who, for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame...

That obedience unto death is a kind of payment which is not wiped out by resurrection but confirmed by resurrection. It’s love in action: love to God, love to Jesus’ fellow humans. Satan had never dealt with that before. It broke the curse. Because one had tunnelled out of prison, all the rest could follow. It was their choice.

But, in a sense, a ransom has been paid, but not to the devil.

I have to be careful here. Many people hate the blood of the cross. They say that God is bloodthirsty. They reject a God like that.

Some religions do believe in gods who are hungry for sacrifices, but that it not Yahweh of the Bible, the God who

...takes no delight in the death of the wicked.

Yes, the Bible does say that

without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin

but there is also a real sense in which God also is disgusted by the shedding of blood. God doesn’t want blood: he wants what it stands for. God wants self–giving sacrifice.

How could Jesus’ death on the cross be effective if God desired blood for his own pleasure?

On the contrary, God says, “Your sin, O man, is too horrible to contemplate, and only an equally horrible penalty can compensate for what you havef done ever since you were a child.”

If God rejoices over his people with singing when we are in right relationship with him, how much must he want to scream when he sees his only begotten son tortured to death on a cross? How much must he want to turn his back on the spectacle and say, “It is too horrible to contemplate! What evil people do!”

Yet he also says, “It is the only way.”

It satisfies God’s sense of justice.

It’s like the old story of the judge whose own son appears before him. He is a good judge, and does what is right. The young man pleads guilty, so he imposes the largest fine he can on him. Then he reaches into his pocket and pays the full fine himself.

Justice is done, but grace is not defeated.

Finally, let’s just think about Paul’s words that we read a little earlier:

 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.

The cross is effective because it changes our whole situation. As Paul also tells the Galatians,

Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.

One clear image of the cross is that of substitution.

Christ died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God.

Where you and I fully deserve to die, Jesus died in our place. It carries the idea of the judge who pays the fine just a little further. Jesus gave himself, a ransom for many.

As you look at how he died in your place, you begin to grasp it: if he died for me, then he did my dying; if he died for me, then I am no longer alive to this world and all that it means, but I am dead; it no longer has a claim on me.

Just as Jesus was fully cut off from participation in this world by the cross, so, in him, we are also cut off from the world’s claims. It is no longer where we belong. Now we belong to the new creation, the new realm, where Jesus is King and we are his forever and forever.

There is certainly no attractiveness in the cross, not in a conventional sense.

In fact, many people are offended by the cross. It is ugly. It is sordid. It does reveal the evil people are capable of. Yet there is also another kind of beauty in it.

There’s an old story of a beautiful young woman, raised by her ugly, scarred mother.

As the girl grew older, she became increasingly ashamed of her mother, and avoided spending time with her.

The young woman went away to University and returned at the end of term on the train with a classmate.

When the mother came to greet her daughter, the girl turned away. She told her new friend, “I don’t know this old woman. It must be a case of mistaken identity.”

The old woman stood and sadly watched until her daughter’s friend was gone. Then she came to her daughter again and said,

“I never told you before about why I look the way I do.”`

“When you were a baby, we lived in an old timber house. One day it caught fire and was burning very quickly. You were in the inside bedroom, and the only way I could get to you was through the flames. As I ran to get you, my dress caught fire. I grabbed you, wrapped you in a woolen blanket, and ran back through the flames and smoke to get us to safety. I was badly burned, but you came out without a mark on you. I am sorry if my ugliness offends you, but my ugliness is the price I paid for you to live.”

The ugliness of the cross is the price Jesus paid for us to live.

The choice is yours — and mine. Do we give all to Jesus and share the resurrection life he now offers us, or do we say, “This cross — it’s too horrible, too ugly. It offends me. Take it away.”

What is your choice?

© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)