The Cross Is Required

I have a confession to make. I like the piece of sacred music entitled How Great Thou Art -not as part of a worship service, but as an expression of thanks to God for creating us and saving us. I particularly like the version sung by the American all- male a cappella group ‘Home Free’ that you can still see on YouTube. The scenery from the Swiss Alps is breathtaking and tuneful words and stunning pictures blend beautifully in appreciation of God’s creation.

However, there’s a problem with that version. The group sings the first verse, praising God’s power and creativity, and the second verse, celebrating specifically the woods, the forest glades, the birds’ singing and the lofty mountain grandeur. There follows a brief interlude from a different piece, “It is well with my soul” before the group finishes by looking forward to Jesus’ return, to Jesus taking them home and to eternal joy.

But there’s no explanation of how he can do that for sinners or how they can call Heaven home. For they’ve left out the third verse, the all-important focus on the cross, “For on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing, he [Jesus] bled and died to take away my sin.” Any rejoicing that is not grounded in that sacrificial death for others can only ring hollow. Without the cross Christianity is only pie in the sky and without the resurrection the cross is incomplete.

In this article we turn to what lies at the very heart of Christianity – the old rugged Cross and the empty tomb. I have another confession to make. I sense my previous article in this series was a little too complicated. I was trying to show that the reason the world continues, the underlying reason for God’s covenant throughout the Old Testament, is that He will save sinners like Adam and Noah and Abraham and Moses and David through the deliverer promised as far back as Genesis 3, when sin first came in.

Christianity is simply one beggar telling another where to find bread – the bread of life (which actually refers to Jesus’ death (Jn.6:51). Christianity is one lost and guilty person telling another where to find forgiveness, how to be found. So let me not complicate what is essentially a very simple but very costly and transforming message, “The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world” (1 John 4:14).

For the most part, I want to take one verse in order to outline what God has done through Jesus, the core of the Christian message. It is the last verse of 2 Corinthians 5, “For our sake He [God the Father] made him [God the Son] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” In this English version there are just two words of more than one syllable, so that a little child can understand the language. However, we cannot exhaust the depths of what God is telling us here through Paul. Let me just try to gather the thought together in three headings.

WHO JESUS IS.

And Paul tells us He is completely without sin. That is the force of His unique conception. Although it exceeds the boundaries of our minds, He was implanted into the womb of Mary without any human involvement - to show he is human, but at the same time separate from the sin that is passed down from one generation to the next. And for His whole life on earth, on every page of the Bible that shows Him to us, He is never less than perfect.

We find that hard to take in. You and I have never known anyone, even the best and holiest person we can think of, who doesn’t have a chink or two in his or her armour. It was Alexander Pope who first said, “To err is human.” Paul isn’t saying Jesus didn’t know what sin was. He had a much more sensitive radar for sin than us. But he had no personal knowledge of sin.

The Bible tells us this time and time again. In several of the psalms anticipating Jesus we’re told He was hated, attacked and persecuted without cause (see Psalm 69:4; 109:3; 119:78,86,161). You know someone who did better than you at school, but who let you know about it. Jesus had that perfect combination of self-assurance and self-denial so that common people, sinful people associated with Him freely.

The Jews meant it as an insult when they said He was the friend of tax collectors and sinners (Matt. 11:19). The chorus on His innocence before His death is deafening. Three times Pilate, the Roman governor, says He has done nothing to deserve death (Luke 23:4,14,22). The thief dying beside Him on the cross says He has done nothing wrong (Luke 23:41). The centurion in charge of His death says He is innocent (Luke 23:47). Surely it would be hard to keep up a pretence when you’re nailed to a cross.

What’s more, those closest to us know our faults best. Yet Peter, Jesus’ right-hand man, says He is a lamb without blemish or defect (1 Pet. 1:19), which made his own denial of Jesus all the more painful. John, the one Jesus loved, says, “In him there is no sin” (1 Jn. 3:5). The writer to the Hebrews says Jesus was tempted in all points like we are, yet never, ever gave in (Heb. 4:15). At one point Jesus Himself turns to a hostile crowd and challenges them, “Which one of you convicts Me of sin?” (Jn. 8:46). And no one speaks.

So at the Cross something unique and unexpected is happening. Adam’s sin led to Adam’s death, and led to a sentence of eternal death against every one of us. For we have all descended from Adam. We’re all part of the one race. But Jesus never sinned. He had a perfect nature, without any bias to sin. He never said a word out of place. He never acted hastily nor in a cowardly way. He never allowed a sinful thought to take root in His mind. His life was one of absolute perfection, of tested righteousness. For, all around Him, sinners were constantly testing Him, consciously or unconsciously.

So why, then, if the wages of sin is death, and if Jesus never earned those wages by sinning, why, then, did He die in such a public and painful way? Simply put, it is for believers, on our behalf, in our place. That brings us to the second part of the verse in 2 Cor. 5.

WHAT GOD DID.

God made Jesus to be sin. The ESV adds the words “to be” there to avoid misreading the verse to say that God forces Jesus to sin. Paul is choosing his words carefully here, and so must we. We must see that salvation is God’s idea. Back in verse 18 of this section of 2 Corinthians Paul says, “All this is from God” and the next few verses back that up with Him doing the reconciling, with Him making Jesus to be sin.

In other words, salvation is not about Jesus dragging a reluctant or raging God back to us. Nor is it about God punishing Jesus instead of us in some kind of vengeful way. What moves the Father, who has been so offended by our sin, to send His Son, is love (John 3:16). It’s quite clear from verse 21 that God’s problem with us is our sin – not our low self-esteem or our sense of inadequacy, but our sin.

What He is doing in counting our sin against Jesus is removing the ugly barrier that exists between Him and us. He is taking our sin, our rebellion, our disobedience, our desire to be God and placing it on the only One who did not deserve it. On the only One who could properly carry it. On the only One who had agreed before the beginning of time that He would do it. On the only One who was uniquely qualified, as God and man. For only as man could He sympathise with our weaknesses. Only as man was He tempted to give in to sin. But only as God could He triumph over death. And only as God could He pay for the sins of a multitude together.

Have you ever thought of the enormity of that sin-bearing? If we were to commit just three sins a day – one of thought, one of speech and one of action – that would make 21 sins in a week and would amount to about 1,000 sins in a year. For young people reading this, at that rate you would have committed some 20,000 sins in your life so far. That’s not to mention the good things you’ve neglected or the sinful bias in each one of us by nature. Can you begin to see what it meant for Jesus, the One who hates sin so much He would punish it just the same, to be made sin?

On the Cross the Father is counting Jesus to be the One who committed all those sins of every believer and He is treating Him as such. That is what Jesus’ cry of abandonment is all about. For He is suffering the forsakenness of Hell which every human being deserves. He is quoting the Psalms to show this is the way it was meant to be. But He hears no comforting word in return. Only blackness. He is led outside the city as the sin-offering was in Leviticus. He is being declared guilty so that we might be declared righteous and treated as such. He is being handed over to sin and to eternal death so that we might be set free.

He is drinking to the dregs the cup of God’s anger against our sin in order that we might know His gracious smile. He is being made a curse so that we might be blessed. He is being alienated from God so that we might become His friends. As John Stott says, “substitution is… the heart of the atonement itself” (The Cross of Christ, pp. 202–203). As the first-born among the Israelites could say the morning after the Passover, “That lamb died for me,” so a real exchange is taking place on the cross. Jesus is taking my sin. He is suffering my punishment. He is dying my death, a real death.

If you can say with Paul, “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20), then you know what God did at Calvary in your own life.

HOW WE BENEFIT.

The phrase ‘in Him’ in the second part of the verse is vital. For that tells us He is alive. What would be the sense of us becoming something real and active and alive—the righteousness of God in Christ—if His body remained in the tomb? The whole force of this verse is underpinned by our union with Christ, in His death and resurrection for us.

As J.C. Ryle says, “Without a real death, there could be no real resurrection; and… without a real death and real resurrection, the whole of Christianity is a house built on sand” (Expository Thoughts on John, vol. 3, p. 356). Each time Jesus brings before His disciples the horrifying details of His rejection, suffering and death, He finishes with a note of triumph: “And after three days [the Son of Man will] rise again” (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34).

Let me just briefly summarise some of the implications and benefits of the resurrection of Jesus.

Firstly, Paul himself sums up Jesus’ work like this: “Jesus our Lord… was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:24–25). Jesus’ resurrection does not declare believers righteous, but it does show that the work of justification performed in His death has been completed. As Peter says to the crowd at Pentecost, God raised Jesus from the dead because it was not possible for death to hold Him. In His death He has broken the power of death. He took all that was against believers and paid the penalty for it in His own body. Death no longer has a hold on Him—or on those who stand in Him. We have a living Saviour and Advocate with the Father.

Secondly, in Daniel 7 we have the scene in Heaven where Jesus, the Son of Man (a divine, not human title), is presented to His Father after His victory on the Cross. Because of that victory, He is given worldwide dominion and an everlasting kingdom. That is the force of that psalm we love to sing—Psalm 2—where God announces that He has set His King on Zion, His holy hill. Jesus is risen, so He now has universal authority.

And thirdly, Paul lays out the future to the thinkers of Athens like this: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man… he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30–31).

The Cross of Christ has changed everything. People can no longer plead ignorance. The message of sins paid for and forgiven has gone out and is going out. How people respond to that message—in repentance or in rejection—will determine where they spend eternity. The risen, reigning One will be our Judge.

The Cross of Christ is not something we come to just at the beginning of our Christian life—Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, to take up a cross daily and to follow Him (Luke 9:23). The next article must explore that a little more. But the resurrection brings us these benefits: Someone to save us; Someone to rule us, by His royal word; and Someone to judge those who have not repented, but to speak up for those who are not ashamed of Him (see Luke 9:26).

Sinclair Ferguson is right when he says so often in his preaching, “It’s all about Jesus!” To reword slightly the words from our Father that conclude a Max Lucado book: “I did it for you, believer. I did it all for you” (He Chose the Nails, p. 151).