Someone dying on a Roman cross almost two thousand years ago to get people to heaven? A brutal crucifixion in my place? The whole idea is ridiculous to some and repulsive to others. Yet the cross of Jesus continues to be at the heart of Christian belief. Surely, we can find a less gruesome way to reach God in heaven? Surely, there’s a better and more culturally-acceptable way for 21st century Christianity?
No other way for God
The God of the Bible is 100% perfect, 100% of the time. Our problem is that we are not 100% perfect any of the time. Whereas God is holy, we are commandment-breakers who do not deserve a place in his perfect heaven. In his perfect justice, sin must be punished. That means God doesn’t ‘turn a blind eye’ to our guilty-shortcomings. He doesn’t ‘sweep our wrongdoing under the carpet’. So, here’s the problem: if we were admitted into heaven as we are, God would cease to be just and, if God let hell-deserving sinners like us into paradise, heaven would cease to be heaven – it would then be just as bad as the world!
Yet the God of love has a perfect way of reconciling people like us to himself. Without compromising his justice, God can forgive sinners and grant them entrance into his perfect heaven. The only solution to that problem of sin is found in the cross of Jesus Christ.
Jesus, God’s eternal Son, took on a human body that first Christmas so that he could live the sinless life we have failed to live. That qualified him to go to the cross and take the punishment that sinners deserve. If I went shoplifting with my friend, I couldn’t say to him, ‘Don’t worry – I’ll take the rap. I’ll take your punishment.’ Why? Because I’d be just as guilty as he is. A guilty person cannot take the punishment for another guilty person when they deserve punishment themselves. Yet Jesus, as the perfect substitute, takes our place. The Bible describes it like this:
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God (1 Pet. 3:18).
On the cross, the sinless one died for the sinful, to reconcile us with God. Those who rely on what Jesus accomplished on the cross by faith, enjoy sins forgiven, peace with God and a home in heaven. God’s holiness and justice remain intact. God, through the only way of the cross, did this ‘to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus’ (Rom. 3:26). In the cross of Christ the justice and the mercy of God is seen.
No other way for Jesus
In our garden I often hear the coastguard helicopter returning from a mountain rescue having been searching for those lost and in danger to bring them back to safety. Did you know that’s why Jesus had come into the world? He had come to seek and save those who are lost and far from God, to bring them to eternal safety from God’s judgment. He had come into the world on a rescue mission for sinners.
A friend of mine worked as a winch-man on the search and rescue helicopters. He has recounted so many hair-raising occasions that, given the choice, they would have passed over but they didn’t. Why? Because there was no-one else who could rescue those in danger.
On the eve of his betrayal, an event which would effectively begin his journey to the cross, Jesus prayed, ‘O my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me’ (Matt. 26:39). Was there another way for sinners to be saved from sin, death and hell? Was there another option rather than the agony of the cross? No. The metaphorical cup would not pass from him. He was the only one qualified to be the Saviour of sinners and so, Jesus submitted himself to the Father’s way of salvation and the awful consequences of our sin. He went on in his prayer, ‘Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will’. He, for the joy beyond the suffering, endured the cross.
On that first Good Friday, Jesus really did die. There upon Calvary’s cross ‘Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures’ (1 Cor. 15:3). It was all in fulfilment of God’s promises throughout the BC years of human history. Predicted and prophesied in the Old Testament, God’s Messiah would come to fix our problem of sin and restore us to a right relationship with God. Jesus came, identified with humanity and humbled himself so much that he would suffer and die on a cross. There, as the old Easter hymn says, on that green hill far away, outside a city wall, the dear Lord was crucified. Later on in that hymn, Cecil Alexander says:
There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin,
He only could unlock the gate
Of heaven and let us in.
No other way for us
All these years later, the idea of a crucified-saviour seems strange and even stupid to many people. Surely, if I want to get to heaven, I must do it myself, many think. The problem is, no amount of good-living or good works ever cancelled out our sin. This idea of our good, outweighing the bad doesn’t avoid our accountability before God. People have said to me that they try and keep the ten commandments meaning that they hope God will be pleased by their clean-living. However, trying to use those commandments as a ladder to heaven cannot work because, let’s face it, we keep falling off the ladder! We can’t make our own way to heaven.
The only hope for people like us is to come God’s way. God’s way is not through religion or ritual. God’s way is through the cross where Jesus died in the place of sinners. You can’t do it yourself. It is only through Jesus that we come to know God, enjoy God and one day be with God. Jesus himself said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14:6). It is when we turn from our sin and turn to Jesus in complete faith, that we are reconciled to God.
In the cross we find the answer to our problem of sin. Though many find this way repulsive and ridiculous, have you come to God by way of the cross? Written in the first century, the words of the Apostle Paul are just as true in the 21st Century:
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 (1 Cor. 1:18).
What is the cross to you? Foolishness? Or the powerful means of reconciling a sinner like you to a holy God for time and eternity?