At the Cross, Now and Ever
In my own helplessness and dependance, I think and meditate upon the cross often. I travel with Christ to Golgotha. I see human spits and blows failing on Him. We corne to the hill. No need to push his arms back. He stretches them upon the cross, he is Love personified. For this moment He came. The cross. Iron nails rip his fiesh, electrifying his nerves, “Father forgive them” He says in the worst of his agony1. Have we heard him correctly?? In ali of history, did any man ever speak such? Such love meits stone-coid hearts, heals the sick at heart, and turns sinners into saints. I love Christ most on the cross. What can be made of the cross? I do not know of topic with greater spiritual power and significance. I urge you to read til the end and meditate with me on the beauty of the cross. It is the power of God unto saivation2.
Before we can ever medîtate on the wonders of Christ’s sacrifice, we must recognize the holiness of God, spotless and undiminished. God’s holiness means that God’s character is without defect or deficiency. God’s character is free from taint of any sort. God’s love is free frorn sentimentaiity; God’s anger is free from ill-temper; God’s judgement is free frorn arbitrarîness; God’s patience is free from indifference; God’s sovereignty îs free from tyranny.
God’s holiness means that ail the aspects of God’s character just mentioned are gathered up into a unity. Just as everv shade of the spectrum from infra-red to ultra-violet is qathered up into what we call “light”, so everv dimension of God’s character and God’s transcendence is gathered up into God’s holiness. God’s holiness is what scripture is actually about from cover to cover. To be sure, the Scriptures are also about the holiness of God’s people. In my own faults and imperfection, and surrounded by faults and imperfections of others, how shall we even corne close to God?
The answer of the cross is the only answer.
The public ministry of Jesus lasted only about three years. But did you notice that over 50% of the written gospels concerns just one week (the week Jesus died)? The Old Testament anticipates the cross on page after page, from the Edenic story to the story of Abraham and Isaac to the pronouncements of the prophets. They insist, together with Paul, they will preach only “the word of the cross.” They understand the resurrection of Jesus to seal the sacrifice of the cross; they understand the Holy Spirit to magnify the preaching of the cross.
We, as people of God, should be the people of the Cross, In view of the centrality of God’s holiness, everything about him and us must be understood in terms of his holiness. Our sin is our defiance of God’s holiness and his Law. God’s anger (his reaction to our sin) is the reaction of his holiness. God’s patience with us is the persistence of his holiness. And his love? God’s love is his holiness refusing to compromise itself even as it refuses to abandon us. If God’s holiness refuses to compromise itself even as it refuses to abandon us, where does it ail corne to expression? What is the outcome? It ail cornes to expression in the cross. Let’s be sure we understand something crucial. Because God is holy, he is jarred by our sin. Jarred? Sin does more than assault him; sin offends him. He’s repulsed by it. He finds it loathsome, so very loathsome, in fact, that he can’t tolerate it. Since there’s no sin apart from sinners, God finds sinners loathsome and can’t tolerate them. Then he has only two choices: either he annihilates sinners, or he remedies their sinfuiness. There is
nothing in between. It’s plain that God has chosen not to annihilate sinners (for the time being, at least.)
To be sure, God has every rîght to annihilate us. For we are ungrateful, defiant, insolent people who owe him our existence and our every blessing. He can’t pretend that we are glad and grateful, obedient sons and daughters when we aren’t. He can’t pretend that we are fit to enjoy his presence when we are not more fit for him than a deaf person is fit to enjoy a concert or a blind person fit to enjoy an art gallery. God’s holiness has brought us to this point: either in his holiness he has to annihilate us or he has to remedy us.
Because God’s character is holy (and therefore it is absolutely good and loving), he provides what the apostle John calls “the remedy for the defilement of our sîn.” The reason that the cross dominates ail of the Scriptures is that in the cross. God’s holy love absorbs his holy anqer. In the cross the iudaement of the holy God is enacted and displayed. In the cross of Jesus the judgement of the holy God is borne by the Son of God – which is to say, borne by the Father himself, for Father and Son are one in nature, one in judgement, one in its execution, and one in its absorption. In the cross, however. God honours ail that his holiness entails even as he fulfils his purpose in fashioninq a holy people who love him, obey him. serve him and lend qlory to his name.
In the cross God’s judgement is unsoftened. as Christ’s cry from the cross testifies4. To say that salvation is “free” is a serious mistake. God himself paid its cost one Friday afternoon. The opposite is true: the cost of the cross is infinite beyond any human comprehension or thought. In the cross God’s love is undiminished, for how much more could he Himself love us than to submit Himself to humiliation, torment, and selfalienation in the Son?
There is no word in biblical Hebrew for “doubt.” There are, however, many words in biblical Hebrew for “wonder.” There’s no word for “doubt” because God’s inescapable holy presence, charged with his power and purpose and love, renders doubt groundless. On the contrarv, the love of God calls forth wonder without end. We hear such adoring wonder in the hymn, “How Great Thou Art”:
And when I think
That God, his Son not sparing,
Sent him to die,
I scarce can take it in,
God’s holy love is brouqht to effectuai focus on the cross. One wise lady asked: “Who can measure the love Christ felt for a lost world, as he hung upon the cross, suffering for the sins of guilty men? This love was immeasurable, infinite.”4 It truly is. By beholding the cross, we desire to forsake evil and sin. Beholding the infinite sacrifice of Christ, His love without measure on the cross, our hearts can only melt with gratitude and desire to follow Him. The cross is the triumph of God’s holy love over sin and ingratitude and unbelief. The cross is the Sou! Winner. Why not turn our eyes fully to the bleeding crucified Saviour? Where else can we obtain the power and the inspiration to lîve a victorious Christian lîfe? Let us grasp the cross with both arms and hang on! This life is a rough ride, but let us hang on!
And not one will ever perish.
Let us remain at the cross, now and ever.
Radek Dobias
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1. Luke 23:34
2. Romans 1:16
3. Matthew 27:46
4. The Signs of the Times, August 28, 1879