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SERIES A - BASIC TEACHING
THREE
A3.1 THE COMPLETED RESCUE - THE CROSS OF CHRIST.
Now Christ has appeared publicly on the scene. He rolled up all the ages into one and sacrificed Himself once and for all to make sin null and void.
(Hebrews 9:26)
Who in His own self bore our sins in His own body. (1 Peter 2:24)
He told them, It is written that Christ must suffer, and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness will be declared in His Name to all nations. (Luke 24:46-47)
The Head of the human race has spent Himself to buy it back.
He was crucified for our sins - He by whom and for whom all things were created, the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, the ultimate Man worth more than all the rest of us put together - He has died for us. This is the Gospel message.
God will never allow His Son’s sacrifice to be undervalued. He is worth more - infinitely more - than the whole human race throughout all time. Therefore, because God has so overpaid for our rescue, there is no one who cannot be forgiven - never has been, never will be, never can be.
The question “How does Christ’s death save us?” is not fully answered in scripture. When the apostles first proclaimed the message they simply declared that Jesus is the Messiah, was crucified, rose again and that there is Forgiveness in His Name. They did not explain how by dying and rising He could win forgiveness for repent sinners who repent. They just declared that He had done so.
The Cross is the greatest mystery of all, and yet the Bible does give us some explanations - each of which may help us understand it.
A3.2 FORGIVENESS WITHOUT COMPROMISING JUSTICE.
This is probably the explanation most frequently attempted. To those brought up in cultures with a strong sense of justice it is the easiest to understand. Paul explains;
No one can become right with God by keeping the rules. The most the rules can ever do is show us where we are wrong.
But now a new rightness has been demonstrated. It comes from God and has nothing to do with keeping the rules (although the Law and the Prophets point to it).
This rightness comes from God to all who will trust Jesus Christ for it.
There is no distinction. All have sinned and come short of God’s glory; but justification is gratis - by God’s free ungrudging open-hearted open-handed goodwill - and the liberating ransom in Christ Jesus.
God has put Him forward publicly as the one who, by shedding His own blood, became the meeting place between God and those who trust Him.
This shows how God could be right to pass over sins in years gone by and, without compromising justice, can still be right to justify those who trust Jesus. (Romans 3:20-26)
God had been forgiving sins for centuries before Christ came, without ever fully explaining how. His justice and His mercy were declared side by side and never reconciled. Indeed the middle verse in the Bible declares,
Mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other. (Psalm 85:10 KJV)
Forgiveness can never be cheap. Built into every one of us is a deep rejection of the idea of a forgiveness that comes too easily. If it does, we cannot accept it.
Imagine an author who is commissioned to write a convincing, realistic story in which one character, with no mitigating circumstances, betrays the other to the enemy - after being loved and trusted. Then the final chapter has to show them good friends again, without rancour, recrimination or embarrassment.
The author’s task is almost impossible, but if forced to attempt it any competent writer will insist that some very drastic and traumatic events must have come between. Somehow, somewhere there is a price to be paid for the sin, and the happy ending can only be credible if that price has been paid. (Actually there is no need to imagine such a story in fiction. The story of Joseph and his brothers makes the point perfectly. Genesis 38-45 )
Simple forgiveness cannot heal a deeply damaged relationship. It is too cheap and does not work. It offends the sense of justice that is built into human nature. Attempts at reconciliation fail again and again if the only basis for it is “kiss and make up” (in a marriage) or “shake hands” (in a friendship). People will sometimes fight first (with fists or with words) until having hurt and been hurt enough they can at last bring themselves to give and receive forgiveness.
God wanted to deal with the estrangement between Himself and the worst of sinners - without limits on the depths of evil reached. Justice had to be so fully satisfied that villain and victim can be united into the community of Heaven in a relationship perfectly restored, accepted by Him and accepting each other. He wanted evildoers to be able to accept themselves - but not the evil they had done.
Perfect harmony after unlimited discord; perfect acceptance after unlimited rejection; perfect rightness after unlimited wrong - human ingenuity cannot find a way to achieve it. God’s Son was nailed to a cross to achieve it.
A3.3 I WAS CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST (Galatians 2:20)
It is God’s doing that you are included in Christ Jesus.
(1 Corinthians 1:30)
All who were plunged into Christ Jesus, were plunged into His death. We were therefore buried with Him. (Romans 6:3-4)
A new apprentice comes home from his first day’s work at a builder’s yard and proudly tells Mum and Dad, “We built the Town Hall, the Cathedral, the Hospital and the Jail.” These buildings were up before he was born, but already he has identified himself with the company sufficiently to claim its achievements.
Or there was the Englishman who took American citizenship and declared, “Yesterday we lost the War of Independence, today we won it.” It was not the outcome of the long-past war that had changed, but the meaning for him of the word “we”.
The day I was transferred out of the old humanity into the new one, of which Christ is Head, I took on a new history. I am crucified with Christ, and dead corpses are not troubled by guilty conscience or by the law. His history has become mine; so I have died and death has put me beyond the reach of guilt.
Just as the new person he has made of me will be for ever included in Christ; so the person I used to be has already been included in Him, crucified and dead. Christ is the end of the old humanity and first of the new.
How then did the cross of Christ save me from my sin? Because I was on it, no accusation can touch me ever again, I am dead.
A3.4. IN ANCIENT SYMBOLISM, BLOOD ON GOLD.
In most languages, bloodshed means violent death. To those brought up in ancient Hebrew culture it meant that and more because blood was respected as a symbol of life. Hunters had to pour out the blood of their catch on the ground before taking the meat home to their family. Blood was not to be eaten under any circumstances and the language had phrases like, “innocent blood” which can hardly be translated. It meant the wrongful killing of an innocent person - but that translation does not convey the shocked horror of the original phrase.
In that culture, where reverence for life was expressed in reverence for blood, the use of the term “bloodshed” for violent death had redoubled force.
Yet at the centre of that nation’s worship there was a beautiful golden chest with an ugly bloodstain on the lid. The stone tablets on which the ten commandments were engraved were kept in that chest, placed in the Holy of Holies. The chest was of wood overlaid with gold and its lid of solid gold.
The lid, sometimes called the Mercyseat, was the work of a highly skilled craftsman named Bezaleel. Two Cherubs of wrought gold stood with their faces downwards as if they could see through the golden lid and read the law on the stone tablets in the chest. Cherubs were seen as guardians of God’s holiness (Genesis 3:24), beings who would stand no nonsense if they saw a law that had been broken.
The Mercyseat was only seen on one day a year, the Day of Atonement, (Yom Kippur) and only then by the High Priest. He would enter the Holy of Holies carrying an incense censer billowing fragrant smoke and there, surrounded by symbols of God’s Majesty, he put a few drops of blood from the sacrifice onto the gold, under the eyes of the Cherubs. Now if they could see the broken law they could also see that blood had been shed for it.
The whole event was no more than a ceremony of course, an enacted parable or picture. Real forgiveness is not obtained by putting drops of blood on gold. But what did the picture show?
Somewhere in the highest place of Heaven, surrounded not by gold and incense but by the true Majesty and awesome holiness of The High and Lofty One Who Inhabits Eternity, there is evidence of eternal law that I have broken. Sin cannot be dealt with down here where we are. I cannot look inside myself and sort out the mess I have made of my life. The stench of my wrong actions has gone up to Heaven, that is the only place where it can be set right.
And that is the place where the crucified and risen Lord has gone, “with His own blood” to place the evidence of His death over the evidence of the broken law. (Hebrews 9:24)
The word “Atonement” in the Old Testament meant literally “covering.” The broken law was covered by the shed blood. It happened out of the sight of the people and The High Priest came back afterwards to tell them it had been done.
Heaven, not Earth, is the place where sins are covered. There where everything is vividly clear, where no excuse can stand and no issue be blurred, before God’s all-searching gaze, there in the ultimate Holy of Holies, my sins are blotted out by Christ’s blood and no further action is required on Earth.
A3.5 THE CROSS IN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
What Christ did for us on the Cross stands eternal in Heaven and also reaches into our hearts to affect what we are.
Most of us are deeply hurt. God planned that every child should be brought up in a secure loving caring and ordered family. We enter the world needing to be valued, loved, and trained for life. Because all families, even the best, are made up of faulty human beings, not one of us has had what God planned for us. But we needed it - very much.
It is not only in the family that hurts are made. God planned that people should live in communities with right standards of care and respect for all. Not one of us has lived in a country or neighbourhood which meets God’s standards; so we are all deprived.
Some have been wronged more than others. Some have been abused, neglected, or unwanted. The pain goes deep.
God does not offer a quick easy answer, no magic formula to make us feel better. His answer is the suffering of His Son nailed hand and foot to a wooden cross. His answer is also the Holy Spirit sent into our hearts, but the Cross had to come first.
That pain can be so deep inside that we don’t even know where it keeps coming up from. Yet it is touched by His pain. He is great enough, not only to suffer FOR us all but also WITH us all. We are united with Him so that our pain is linked with His. At that point He picks us up and begins the healing work.
Part of healing is to see that He suffered, not only for our own sins but also for the sins of those who wronged us. Nothing else can set us free to forgive - and until we forgive we are in bondage. The freedom of forgiving is linked with the freedom of being forgiven. Christ died for both.