The Offence of the Cross
0 comments | Posted by Steven Layson on 07 Apr 2007 in From Steve's Study ::
There is always someone who wants to grab the headlines at Easter time. It may be a fiction writer, who is claiming that Jesus didn’t really die, but ended up raising a family and a mortgage. It may be an American Bishop or Australian “historian” claiming the Resurrection didn’t really happen, but was all a figment of the imagination of the disciples.
This year it is a Anglican cleric in England who is claiming that the Church’s traditional teaching of Christ’s crucifixion is “repulsive” and “insane”! The Very Rev Jeffrey John is claiming that the idea that Jesus “took the rap and we got forgiven as long as we said we believed in him”, is “repulsive as well as nonsensical. It makes God sound like a psychopath… a monster”. Instead, he says, that Christ was crucified so he could “share in the worst of grief and suffering that life can throw at us.”
If Jesus were just a man, he may have a point. How can an innocent man take the place of the guilty? Even with all the best intentions, aren’t the guilty ones still in debt?
However, this is to profoundly misunderstand who Jesus is & what he is doing on the cross.
The reason Jesus’ death isn’t unjust, is because God is actually taking the punishment on himself. When Jesus said, “The Father and I are one”, he made the bold claim to be God himself. So it is God himself, the one against whom we have rebelled, that is taking the death penalty. That’s how much he loves us.
The Bible says tells us that death entered the world as a result of us rejecting God. Every one of us has turned our back on our creator.
Having rejected God, we learn what it is like to live in a godless world. When we cut ourselves off from the source of life, we experience anger, hatred, decay, suffering and finally death. That is the world we live in.
Jesus however was the one person in all of history who did not turn his back on God. He alone did not reject God and he alone did not deserve to die. Yet in Mk 10:45, he says that he will die as “a ransom” for us. God didn’t forsake him because of what he’d done, but because of what we’d done. He solved our problem by taking our death on himself.
Unjust? No! Jesus is God. God himself is hanging on that cross. The one offended against is the one who takes the punishment. How outrageous is that? God allows this to be done to himself. It is only God whose death can pay for the sins of so many.
And, of course, it couldn’t have been any other way. To suggest that Jesus went through all this agony, simply so he could know how it feels for us, is far more offensive.
The death and resurrection of Jesus are rightly the centre of the Christian faith, for it is only by them that we have the hope of eternal life.
« Mission Spotlight - The Jazz Night & Coffee Hut Christ in the Passover»
Commenting has expired or Comments are turned off for this article.
