15 It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. 16 Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would […]
But this is the message of the cross: God took the worst evil and made it into the greatest good. He took the cross of Christ and made it into the salvation of mankind.
You either operate under threat of punishment or you operate under unbreakable one-way love. These are two different universes, two different kingdoms. Which do you believe is true?
Cannibalism is the single most immoral human act. It is murder PLUS eating human flesh. Christianity takes it to the extreme. Cannibalistic cultures typically eat their enemies or their grandmothers who died naturally. Jesus is asking us to eat Him – the Messiah, God in the flesh. Kill and eat! Drink His blood!
However, as believers in Christ we do not come together in assembly just because we are supposed to. We come together because the blood of Jesus brings us together. It is our community. We are all partakers of the grand scandal of forgiveness in Christ.
This was why the “Lord Lord didn’t I” people in the sermon on the Mount were turned away. They equated virtue with earning the bestowal of favor. The cross of Christ severs this tie completely. It says, when you do right, you will be rejected and crucified. It says, if you want to be my disciple, you must bear the cross. The Father God will not necessarily step in and help you in the way and at the time that you think He must. We learn the secret of contentment at the point when it becomes evident that our virtue has not secured our blessing (Philippians 4:12-13).
So even if you affirm the truth of God’s wrath as a point of doctrine, you must come to the place where you celebrate it. You must see that He loves dearly and so He stands passionately and completely against anything that would harm us.
My contention is that ‘substitution’ is not a further ‘theory’ or ‘image’ to be set alongside the others, but rather the foundation of them all, without which each lacks cogency. If God in Christ did not die in our place, there could be neither propitiation, nor redemption, nor justification, nor reconciliation.
The idea of surprise is steeped in grace. If a gift is truly a surprise to someone, it means they didn’t ask for it. Yet, unbeknownst even to them, it is something which they would have badly wanted if they could have thought of it. Since it is a surprise, it is something which is all done on the initiative of the giver.
Why can’t we rest in the simplicity that the cross offers true and lasting mercy? Mercy is not simple, and there is nothing at all unimportant about the power of the forgiveness we have received in Christ. At the cross Jesus became just and the justifier; He has rolled away the stone of our reproach.