The Centrality of the Cross: Healing for Sinners and Saints
- Rev Norman Cameron

 

Easter“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds we have been healed.”  1 Peter 2:24

When it comes to thinking of things that symbolise the christian faith there is one symbol that stands out and that is the cross. The Christian religion is a religion about a cross. With the passing of the centuries the cross has lost something of its horror, its cruelty, its revulsion. Perhaps it took the bloodiness of Mel Gibson’s film The Passion to remind us of how barbaric and awful death on a cross was. It was not just the cross, it was the scourging prior to the cross which added to the humiliation, the pain, the desolation.

            Death on a cross was reserved for the lowest of the low, the worst criminals; even the worst Roman citizens were beheaded rather than crucified. The Jewish historian Josephus called crucifixion “the most wretched of deaths”. The ancient Roman philosopher Cicero asked that decent Roman citizens not even speak of the cross because it was too disgraceful a subject for the ears of decent people. Under the leadership of Pol Pot in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge performed crucifixions for they reckoned it was one of the most painful ways to kill someone.

THE CENTRALITY OF THE CROSS

Yet we cannot read the Bible and fail to see the centrality of the cross. It was to such a cross and such a death that Jesus of Nazareth submitted himself, indeed was determined to undergo. Luke 9:51 “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.”  At least a third of each gospel deals with the week leading up to the death of Christ. John’s gospel is divided in two with 50% taken up with the events of the week up to Christ’s death. As the cross approaches Jesus prays in John 12:27  “Father save me from this hour. No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father glorify your name.”

            The world gets excited about Christmas for we can be sentimental about a baby, but Christians get more excited about the cross but it is hard to be sentimental about a man bleeding to death on a tree. And yet this is the core of our faith. If we do not understand the cross we do not understand Jesus Christ, and if we do not understand what Jesus was doing on a cross we do not understand Christianity.

            Why is the cross central to our faith? The short answer is that God has made the cross central. The whole of history leads up to this point and everything leads from it. The OT prophets looked forward to the cross, especially Isaiah,  – “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him.” (Is.53:5) The NT writers looked back to the cross and its centrality – Acts 2:23 Peter says “This man Jesus was handed over to you (to die) by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge…”; Gal.6:14  Paul says “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…”  Peter again in 1 Peter 3:18 “Christ died for us so that he might bring us to God.”.

            The cross is absolutely central to our faith because God wants it to be central. You cannot come to God except by the way of the cross. Jesus himself reminded people that back in the days of Moses when the people were bitten and poisoned by snakes and dying that Moses was told by God to make a bronze snake and lift it up on a pole. As the people looked at this bronze snake they were healed and did not die from the snake poison. In John 3:14 he says “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert so the Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life”.

            The cross is central because God wants it to be central – it is the way to him, it is the way he has chosen to be reconciled to mankind, it is the way to spiritual healing. But why should we be reconciled through a death, and death on a cross at that?

THE NECESSITY OF THE CROSS

If we are to understand what happened at the cross we need to understand some basic facts about God and about us. These essential and foundational truths are presented time after time in the scriptures and we do not have time to look at them all; but these truths are in general not accepted by people. And yet if we do not accept them we cannot understand the cross – it will remain foolishness to us. As Paul says 1 Cor.1:18 “for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God”.

            Fact one is that God is holy. This characteristic of God is mentioned 800 times in the Bible, it is mentioned more than any other characteristic. The word holy means separate, different, pure, unique, not common or defiled. The God who has made everything is a holy God, he is a good God who defines what is good and not good. He is sinless. That is he is perfect, he is pure, he does not do wrong or think wrong. This is the God that the Bible presents as the creator of all things.

            Fact two is that we sin and disobey God. While God made us good he also created within us the capacity to disobey God so that we were not mindless robots. He gave us the capacity to love and to hate, to make decisions and to be creative. This is part of what it means to be made in the image of God. But mankind decided not to fully obey God but chose, and still chooses, to do its own thing. God says do not lie, but we lie, God says do not steal but we steal. God says love me with all your heart and soul and mind and we say we would rather love ourselves more. God says worship me and we say we would rather worship our football team or our music or our jobs. The bible calls this sin, the falling short of God’s perfect standards, the refusal to say God is boss.

            Fact three - Because God is holy then sin is a big deal to God. It offends him, it angers him, it saddens him. It especially saddens him because he sees what sin does to us as well as to him. But sin separates us from God and the best that God has for us. Indeed God says to us that sin pays, but the wages it pays are not good – “The wages of sin is death” – physical death and spiritual death.  Sin leads to death, this is our punishment. Many do not like the idea of a God who punishes, or a God who gets angry at sin. They maybe like the idea of a God who is angry at a rapist, or a child abuser but not a God who gets angry at my own sin or my shortcomings, my selfishness, my anger, my pride, my lust, my lies, my greed.

            Fact four – because God is just then sin is to be punished, but you see God loves people. He wants to rescue people, he does not want to eternally condemn people. So in the OT he devised a way that would deal with sin, that would recognise the seriousness of sin, his love for people and satisfy his sense of righteousness and justice.

            Annually on the Day of Atonement (Lev.16) the High Priest would come to the Temple to atone, or cover, or pay for the sins of all the people. And so he would take part in a ceremony involving two goats. One goat would be killed and its blood sprinkled on the altar. Elsewhere in the Bible it says without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. The animal’s blood signified the seriousness of sin, sin leads to death, sin is to be punished. The animal’s blood represented the payment for sin. Then the priest would take another goat and symbolically lay his hands on the animals head as if placing the people’s sin upon the animal and it was sent into the wilderness. It carried away the sin, it was called the scapegoat.

            Now the problem with this was how could a goat, an animal, or even two or two hundred goats, effectively deal with sin. How could an animal’s blood cover human sin. It could not really – ideally human blood should pay for human sin. This is where God and Jesus decided that Jesus would take human form and die a death that would cover or atone for the sins of the world. Romans 3:23 sums it up well  -“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..so God presented Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood”.  

            The cross dealt with the facts as we have it presented to us in the Bible – God is holy, we are sinners, sin is serious, sin is to be punished but God loves us. So the cross was necessary if God was to satisfy his justice – punish sin that offended a holy God – and satisfy his love, save a sinful people. At the cross we see justice and mercy meet. God did not have to save us, but he chose to save us. This is a gift, we cannot earn our salvation, we simply receive this gift. It is all of God’s grace.

            1 Peter 2:24 says “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”. Jesus took our sins upon himself, the sinless Son of God voluntarily took my sin and your sin and the punishment for that sin. Isaiah 53:5 says “the punishment that brought us peace was upon him”. 2 Cor.5:21 says “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us”

            What happens on the cross is a great exchange. Our sin which is upon us is placed upon Christ, the sinless one. Christ fulfils all that the Day of Atonement was to fulfil – he is the two goats. His blood pays for sin, and he takes the sin away. He deals with it finally, completely and he opens up the way to God, he reconciles us to God. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.” But that is not the end of the story. 2 Cor.5:21 says “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”.

            He became sin for us but then another great and wonderful exchange takes place. Not only does he take my sin, but he gives to us a declaration that we are righteous. We are declared to be holy in Christ, sinless in Christ. When God looks at us he sees Christ in us the hope of glory; he adopts us into his family so that we are seen to be the sons and daughters of the living God. Martin Luther put it this way “Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him and say Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You took on you what was mine; yet set on me what was yours. You became what you were not, that I might become what I was not.”

            The two theological words for what is going on here are substitution – God in Jesus substituted himself and took our punishment that we deserved – and imputation, Christ’s righteousness, his obedience, are imputed to us. He declares us righteous.

            So this is why the cross is not only central but necessary. It deals with the facts – a holy God, a sinful people and the satisfaction of both justice and mercy. The cross, the most brutal, cruel, awful death devised by man is the most powerful symbol of God’s salvation of mankind. Jesus at his greatest point of weakness was achieving his greatest work of salvation. “For it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life…but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”  1 Pet.1:18

            For this great exchange to be effective for us God calls us to trust in Christ, to repent of our sin and our sinful attempts to justify ourselves and try and earn our salvation. He calls us to repent, believe and follow Christ. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” We need to recognise God, recognise our sin for what it is and recognise that we have only one way of salvation – through the cross. When we come to the cross we find that there is healing.

HEALING AT THE CROSS

There is healing at the cross. Isaiah 53:5 says “the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed.”

1 Peter 2:24 says “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed”. What are we healed from? We are healed from sin sickness, we are healed from constantly rebelling against God, we are healed from self-centredness, from thinking that the world revolves around me, myself, I; we are healed from death – both physical death and spiritual death, we are healed from thinking that we can save ourselves. This is what we are healed from. And this is what the cross is central and necessary and we dare not stray from it. Will you come to the cross today for the first time? Do you see God as holy, your sin as an offence and your death as certain without coming to the cross. Set aside your pride and come to the only one who can save you. There is healing at the cross.

            Or perhaps you are already a Christian but God has seemed distant, your life has been filled with self and not God and maybe you need to come back to the cross and remember why Jesus died for you and what he died for. Jesus said “Take up your cross daily and follow me.”(Lk.9:23) As Christians the cross life needs to be lived, we need to daily die to self, to the old fleshly life. AW Tozer said “There is a new cross being preached which is different from the old cross. The new cross is all about good clean fun and oceans of enjoyment….it lets the old Adam nature live without any interference…a person still lives for his own pleasure. The new cross does not slay the sinner it just redirects him. But the old cross is a symbol of death. God salvages the individual by liquidating him. God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life he offers is life out of death. Among the plastic saints of our times Jesus has to do all the dying and all we want is to hear another sermon about his dying.”

            You see we never leave the cross. The cross brings healing for sinners, but it also brings healing for saints. Sometimes most of our hurts come from our self centredness and our pride. We need to die to self and pride. Jesus said “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  (John 12:24)

            Jesus, said Bonhoeffer, bids us come and die. But as we die we discover life in all its abundance, we discover Jesus and we live more for God and less for self. And in that we find healing. The cross is central, the cross is necessary. There is healing at the cross. Have you been to the cross?   

“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds we have been healed.”  1 Peter 2:24