Christian Belief Session 2: The Cross

Christian Belief Session 2: The Cross Have you seen the SNL skit Cowbell? In this hilarious skit (at least in my opinion), Will Ferrell s character plays the cowbell for Blue Oyster Cult on their hit Don t Fear the Reaper and distracts the rest of the band. Christopher Walken s character, the record producer, disagrees with the band and thinks they need more cowbell, and at one point he states, Guess what? I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. Often in our lives the things we think we need more of are actually the things that are wrong. We live in a world in which we have a fever, the sickness of original sin. Paul describes this in his Letter to the Romans as he cites from Psalms 14 and 53: All are under the power of sin, as it is written, There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, not even one (3:9-12). All the suffering and pain we experience ultimately comes from sin our sin against God and others, and the sin of other people against us. There are two concepts that no one needs to be taught, two concepts that are innate: disobedience and selfishness. We never need to teach kids to say, No when asked to do something; they do it instinctively. We never need to teach kids to say, Mine when asked to share something; they do that instinctively as well. The original sin, the innate disobedience and selfishness that all of us have, is one of the few things that every human being shares in common. Centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ the prophet Isaiah prophesied about our original sin and the fact that God would lay that upon Jesus Christ, All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). In summary, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and the only prescription is the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross for us. Last week as we examined the grace of God we saw that even at the fall of Adam and Eve God revealed his grace, his one way love, in speaking a prophesy about how one day the serpent would be crushed and also in making clothing of animal skins to cover the shame of Adam and Eve. Both of these foreshadowed what Jesus Christ would accomplish through his death on the cross for the sins of the world. What Jesus Christ did on the cross for us is the most important event in the history of the world. In his First Letter to the Corinthians the Apostle Paul wrote, For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures (15:3). In fact, throughout Paul s ministry of preaching the gospel throughout the Roman Empire his focus was on the death of Jesus Christ on the cross: When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified (I Corinthians 2:1-2). Because Jesus Christ is fully God as well as fully human, his death on the cross is sufficient to pay for the sins of the world. All the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:19), who is the reflection of God s glory and the exact imprint of God s very 1

being (Hebrews 1:3). In addition, Jesus Christ never sinned, but rather became sin in our place: For our sake he (God) made him (Jesus Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (II Corinthians 5:21). That is why John the Baptist could accurately proclaim at Jesus baptism, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). When Jesus Christ died on the cross for the sins of the world, he did for us what we could not do for ourselves. The catechism from The Book of Common Prayer describes this: Q. What is the great importance of Jesus suffering and death? A. By his obedience, even to suffering and death, Jesus made the offering which we could not make; in him we are freed from the power of sin and reconciled to God (850). As the Apostle Peter wrote in his first letter: For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God (I Peter 3:18a). This truth is reflected in the Eucharistic prayers we use when we celebrate communion. In Eucharistic Prayer I of the Holy Eucharist: Rite I service in The Book of Common Prayer the celebrant prays, All glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who made there, by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world (BCP 334). Similarly, in Eucharistic Prayer A of the Holy Eucharist: Rite II service the celebrant prays, He (Jesus Christ) stretched out his arms upon the cross, and offered himself, in obedience to your will, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world (BCP 362). This echoes the Christ hymn from Paul s Letter to the Philippians: Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on a cross (2:6-8). Jesus Christ through his death on the cross for us does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. This can be viewed in several ways. Through Jesus death on the cross for us he: 1) saved us from sin and death, 2) atoned for our sin, 3) redeemed us, 4) reconciled us to God, and 5) justified us. 1) Through Jesus suffering and death on the cross He saved us from sin and death. When I was seven years old my family went to the beach for the first time. We rented a raft and I took it out in and rode the waves in over and over. At one point I went too far out and a rip tide took me a long way from the shore. I tried to doggy-paddle and pull the raft behind me, but the current was much stronger than me. A lifeguard swam to me, helped me get on the raft and pushed me back to shore. I was unable to save myself; I needed to be saved. Through Jesus Christ s death on the cross he saves us, when we are unable to save ourselves. Jesus revealed his mission to save us in his conversation with a tax collector named Zacchaeus, The Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). 2

In his conversation with a Pharisee named Nicodemus on a rooftop one evening Jesus stated, God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him (John 3:17). The Apostle Paul emphasizes this to his protégé, Timothy, a young pastor in Ephesus: The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost (I Timothy 1:15). 2) Through Jesus suffering and death on the cross He atoned for our sins, that is, he paid the ransom for our sin on our behalf. In Leviticus 16 God gives Moses instructions about how Israel was to sacrifice animals to atone for the sins of Israel each year on the Day of Atonement. (In fact, even though the sacrificial system of Jewish worship ended when the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, is still celebrated). The high priest was to enter the Holy of Holies alone, sacrifice a bull to atone for his own sins, sacrifice a goat to atone for the sins of the people, and then confess the sins of Israel over a second goat that was then sent into the wilderness as the scapegoat. In the Letter to the Hebrews we see that Jesus Christ in his death on the cross atoned for the sins of the whole world: For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin once and for all by the sacrifice of himself (9:24, 26b). Moreover, Jesus Christ also served as the scapegoat for the sins of the world: Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood (Hebrews 13:12). Paul describes this in his Letter to the Romans: Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith (Romans 3:23-25a). Not once, but twice, the Apostle John, the only one of the original disciples who witnessed firsthand the death of Jesus on the cross, refers to Jesus death on the cross as atoning for our sins: He (Jesus) is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world (I John 2:2) and In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins (I John 4:10). 3) Through Jesus suffering and death on the cross He redeemed us, that is, bought us back from sin and death. In Jesus day slaves could be redeemed, purchased, by a slave owner and then set free. Jesus death on the cross redeemed us, purchased our freedom from sin and death. The Apostle Paul states in his letters: In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us (Ephesians 1:7-8a) and He (Jesus) has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:13-14). 3

Man on Fire clip In this clip from the film, Man on Fire, Denzel Washington plays Creasy, a former CIA operative who served as a body guard for a nine-year-old girl named Pita, played by Dakota Fanning. At one point in the film Pita is kidnapped in a gunfight and taken hostage. Creasy thinks Pita is dead, as does Pita s mom, but in a conversation with her captor, he finds out she s alive. Creasy then agrees to turn himself over to Pita s captors, to literally trade his life for hers, so that she could be set free. This happens on an abandoned bridge That is what Jesus did for us: he gave his life as a ransom, as the price to purchase our freedom from sin and death. 4) Through Jesus suffering and death on the cross He reconciled us to God. With our personal finances it is a good idea to make sure our checkbooks are congruent with our monthly bank statements by reconciling our checkbooks. We adjust our checkbooks to the bank statements, not the other way around. As fallen sinners we are enemies of God who cannot reconcile ourselves to him. We need Jesus to reconcile us to God, and he did just that in his death on the cross, as the Apostle Paul describes: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life (Romans 5:6, 8-11). In his Second Letter to the Corinthians the Apostle Paul further describes Jesus Christ s act of reconciliation through his death on the cross: All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them (5:18-19a). This great work of reconciliation involves not just the relationship between God and humanity, but the reconciliation of the entire created order: For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:19-20). 5) Through Jesus suffering and death on the cross He justified us, that is, made us righteous and innocent in God s eyes. Because of Jesus Christ s death on the cross we are not only forgiven, but made righteous and innocent in God s eyes, because the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed, or placed upon us. It is like a courtroom in which the judge, God, passed the sentence of death upon us because of our sin (which is the correct sentence, for the wages of sin is death Romans 6:23), and then through Jesus Christ s death on the cross served that death sentence. The death of Jesus Christ thus makes God both just and the one who justifies those who put their faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 3:26). We cannot justify ourselves before God by obeying God s law or being good people. We can only be justified before God by faith (putting our trust and confidence) in Jesus Christ, as the Apostle wrote to the Galations: We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law (2:16). 4

When Jesus Christ died on the cross for us, he saved us, atoned for our sins, reconciled us to God, redeemed us from sin and death, and justified us before God. This clip shows the final moments of Jesus on the cross, as he accomplished all these things out of love for us. How can we respond? How can we respond to God, who through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross sacrificed himself for us, and in so doing saved us, atoned for our sins, redeemed us, reconciled us to himself, and justified us? All these things are gifts of God s grace: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8) and For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift (Romans 3:22b-24a). We do not earn gifts; we receive them. And we receive the gifts of salvation, atonement, reconciliation, redemption, and justification when we receive the Giver of these gifts, Jesus Christ: To all who received him (Jesus), who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God (John 1:12). Finally, the death of Jesus Christ on the cross for us is the ultimate proof of God s love for us: God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8) and We know love by this, that he (Jesus Christ) laid down his life for us (I John 3:16a). And it gets even better, because the death of Jesus Christ on the cross is not the end of the story, because he was resurrected on the third day, as we ll see next week. Reading Recommendations: John Stott, The Cross of Christ by John Stott Paul Zahl, A Short Systematic Theology 5