Do you really understand the cross?

Does anyone truly understand the message of the cross apart from brokenness, contrition, repentance, and faith? To repeat rather mechanically the nature of the transaction that Christians think took place at Golgotha is one thing; to look at God and his holiness, and people and their sin, from the perspective of the cross, is life-changing.

— D. A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Books, 2003), 64

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The Father’s Love at Calvary

How deep the Father’s love for us

how vast beyond all measure.

that He would give His only Son

to make a wretch His treasure

 

How great the pain of searing loss

the Father turns His face away

as wounds which mar the chosen One

bring many sons to glory

 

 

VERSE 2

Behold the Man upon the cross

my sin upon His shoulders

Ashamed I hear my mocking voice

call out among the scoffers

 

It was my sin that held Him there

until it was accomplished

His dying breath has brought me life

I know that it is finished

 

 

VERSE 3

I will not boast in anything

no gifts, no power, no wisdom

but I will boast in Jesus Christ

His death and resurrection

 

Why should I gain from His reward

I cannot give an answer

but this I know with all my heart

His wounds have paid my ransom

–”How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” by Stuart Townsend

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The center of it all: the cross and the resurrection!

The Christian faith is not a mere collection of doctrines — a bag of truths. Christianity is a comprehensive truth claim that encompasses every aspect of revealed doctrine, but is centered in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And, as the apostolic preaching makes clear, the gospel is the priority.

As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ we are reminded of the priority of the gospel.  In his most recent article, “Of First Importance: The Cross and Resurrection at the Center,” Dr. Albert Mohler Jr., recalls what the Apostle Paul considered, “of first importance.”  Dr. Mohler reminds Christians that among all the glorious revealed truths of the Christian faith it is the death and resurrection of Christ that are of first priority.

You can read Dr. Mohler’s entire article here

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Free ebook by Sproul on the cross!

Get it here.

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When men sentence God

Randy Alcorn shares a compelling illustration worth pondering this week:

In If God Is Good, I share a story that John Stott tells in his bookThe Cross of Christ about billions of people seated on a great plain before God’s throne. Most shrank back, while some crowded to the front, raising angry voices.

“Can God judge us? How can He know about suffering?” snapped one woman, ripping a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. “We endured terror… beatings… torture… death!”

Other sufferers expressed their complaints against God for the evil and suffering he had permitted. What did God know of weeping, hunger, and hatred? God leads a sheltered life in Heaven, they said.

Someone from Hiroshima, people born deformed, others murdered, each sent forward a leader. They concluded that before God could judge them, he should be sentenced to live on Earth as a man to endure the suffering they had endured. Then they pronounced a sentence: . . .

What was the sentence these men demanded from God?  Read on.

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Perfect satisfaction of divine justice!

When the Lord Jesus Christ offered up Himself a sacrifice unto God the Father, and had our sins laid upon Him, He did give more perfect satisfaction unto Divine justice for our sins than if you, and I, and all of us had been damned in hell unto all eternity. For a creditor is more satisfied if his debt be paid him all down at once, than if it be paid by theweek.

— William Bridge, quoted by I.D.E. Thomas in A Puritan Golden Treasury

HT: FI

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Have the cross painted on your eyeballs!

“The cross is so extensive a field for meditation, that, though we traverse it ever so often, we need never resume the same track: and it is such a marvellous fountain of blessedness to the soul, that if we have ever drunk of its refreshing streams, we shall find none other so pleasant to our taste.”

—Charles Simeon, Horae Homileticae (1832), vol. 8, p. 323.
“The cross is the foundation of the Bible: If you have not yet found out that Christ crucified is the foundation of the whole volume, you have hitherto read your Bible to very little profit. Your religion is a heaven without a sun, an arch without a keystone, a compass without a needle, a clock without a spring or weights, a lamp without oil. It will not comfort you; it will not deliver your soul from hell.”

—J.C. Ryle, Old Paths (London, 1977), p. 248.
“There is no end to this glorious message of the cross , for there is always something new and fresh and entrancing and moving and uplifting that one has never seen before.

—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross: God’s Way of Salvation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1986), xiii.
“Oh that I could have the cross painted on my eyeballs, that I could not see anything except through the medium of my Savior’s passion! Oh, Jesus . . . let me wear the pledge forever where it is conspicuous before my soul’s eyes.”

—Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Lord’s Supper—Simple But Sublime!” (1866), Sermon #3151, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit.

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Did Jesus spend Saturday in hell?

We just talked about this at our theology class on this past Wednesday evening and I explained that I do not think so.  The question came up in relation to Ephesians 4 which talks about Christ descending into the lower parts of the earth and then ascending far above the heavens.  Also there are some passages in 1 Peter that proponents of this position use to argue for this.

John Piper takes on this question and argues along the same lines I do.  Read “Did Jesus Spend Saturday in hell?”

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Help me cling to the cross!

Help me to cling to the cross,
be crucified to the world by it,
and in it find deepest humiliation,
motives to patience and self-denial,
grace for active benevolence,
faith to grasp eternal life,
hope to lift up my head,
love to bind me for ever
to him who died and rose for me.

May Christ’s shed blood make me
more thankful for your mercies,
more humble under your correction,
more zealous in your service,
more watchful against temptation,
more contented in my circumstances,
more useful to others.

- Puritan Prayer (adapted) from Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions, pg. 46

(HT: TW)

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Barabbas and us

Commenting carefully on  Luke 23:15–22, David Mathis writes:

Luke is leading us sinners, in his careful telling of the story, to identify in this significant way with Barabbas. As Jesus’ condemnation leads to the release of a multitude of spiritual captives from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, so also his death sentence leads to the release of the physical captive Barabbas. It’s a foretaste of the grace that will be unleashed at the cross.

Jesus is manifestly innocent. Barabbas is clearly guilty—just as we also are clearly guilty before God. Rebels deserving death. Romans 3:23 says it’s not a few of us, or even many of us, but all of us who “have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And Romans 6:23tells us that “the wages of sin is death.”

So as Pilate releases Barabbas the guilty, and delivers over to death Jesus the innocent, we have here a picture of our own release effected by the cross through faith. In Barabbas we have a glimpse of our guilt deserving death, and a preview of the arresting grace of Jesus and his embrace of the cross through which we are set free.

Here as Jesus is delivered to death, and Barabbas is released to new life, we have the first substitution of the cross. The innocent Jesus is condemned as a sinner, while the guilty sinner is released as if innocent.

Read more of “Barabbas and Me”

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