6 March 2023

(A)

We may well ask “Is the cross necessary? Is there no other way of salvation?

It is shallow thinking that we can live good enough lives, that we are basically good. How do we hold this ground in the face of wars, crime, cruelty, selfishness, child abuse, violence, the policies that allow mass starvation in many lands and the drug culture and abuse in others? Our modern world is a demonstration of the truth of the Christian contention – the world screams a protest against the view that we are basically good.

The Bible says that the human predicament is due to sin; the BIble says that we are all sinners (1 Kings 8:46; Rom. 3:23) – sin is universal. We cannot dismiss the evil we do as simply the result of the ways we are made, as our fate rather than our fault. We are responsible people and in due course must give account of ourselves to God – it is our fault and that is our problem when we stand before God.

The Bible speaks often of “the wrath of God” (Rom. 1:8, 9:43, 47). Judgement is both a present reality (John 3:19) and a future certainty (Rom.2:12), Jesus Himself spoke often of hell (Mark 9:43, 45,47). God has implanted the conscience in our hearts that even the most careless of us will be apt to say, in the face of a revolting crime, “That deserves to be punished”.

We must never overlook the fact that sinners have broken the law of God and that this is serious. If sinners are to be saved, the fact of the broken law must be taken into consideration. Christ saves us in a way that does take this law into consideration; and there is never the slightest indication that anything else than Christ’s atoning work can deal with the problem of the evil that is so much part of the human situation.

The four gospels in the New Testament are put together with accounts of the good news of what God has done in Christ to bring about salvation and they all point to the cross. The sermons in Acts major on the death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul can sum up the Christian message in the words “We preach Christ crucified” (1Cor. 1:23). The writer to the Hebrews sees Jesus coming to earth as “in order that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (Heb.2:9). In Revelation it is by “the blood of the Lamb” that the multitude are saved (Rev. 7:14). Everywhere in the New Testament it is emphasised that the cross is at the heart of the faith.

But the Bible reveals the astounding fact that in the face of our sin God keeps loving us. He keeps loving because he is love (1 John 4:8,16). It is his nature to love. In love he brings about the salvation of sinners (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8). The God who demands righteousness from his people is himself righteous, and he does not forgive sin in a way that might be understood to mean that sin does not matter much. God forgives sin by the way of the cross.

Salvation depends on what God has done in Christ. God’s forgiveness is based on what Christ’s death has accomplished, not on any merits of repentance or on some necessity of God’s nature; an atoning act is needed!

We must not miss the fact that we are justified by the objective work of Christ on the cross – Christ has died for us – a double exchange has taken place at the cross: God ‘made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).

Many were ready to hold that essentially the cross was nothing more than a demonstration of the truth that God has loved us and the result of that demonstration is that sinners are moved to love in return. There is a tendency among some quarters to take the line that because God is a God of love there is no need for any atoning act. If people repent, they claim, God will forgive them. It must be emphasised that God sent His Son to die on a cross and to make a way of forgiveness for sinners (the Triune God is intimately involved in this process of the salvation plan). If we miss this, we deny the reality behind all the New Testament teaching on the atonement; it is to leave Christ out of the process altogether – believers must beware of taking up such a calamitous position.

The salvation God brings has implications for the saved. Those who have been saved by the cross of Christ find that they have a cross of their own. The Christian has been crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:19) and buried with him (Rom. 6:4). Salvation by the cross of Christ means relying wholeheartedly on what Christ has done. It means a total rejection of the notion that we can save ourselves by our own merit. It means being humble in the light of the facts that we cannot save ourselves, and that Christ has saved us at a great cost to himself. If our will is firmly set on ‘saving’ our life, on making the fullest and richest life for ourselves, then by definition we have not entered into the life that Christ has won for us, for that is a life in which we are not set on achieving selfish aims. The Christian must realize that he is given life, not to keep it for himself, but to spend it for others, not to husband its flame, but to burn himself out for Christ and for men.

This is what the gospel is all about; this is why the cross is central in the salvation of man – this is why there is no other way but for Christ to die to save us. This is also the implication of what we are saved for. In sharing the gospel, in evangelism, and in making disciples of Christ, all these must not only be understood by the messenger and seen in his/her life, but they need to be communicated prayerfully with God’s enabling such that regeneration and conversion can be effected by the Holy Spirit.

(B)

We must prize the gospel of salvation – it is Jesus’ central message, and with it know and prize Jesus and His love-gift of new life, new joy, new strength and new security.
Whatever happens around us – socio-political concerns; anxieties we may feel about the state of the church as an institution – the heart of the Christian message is still Jesus Christ crucified, risen, reigning, and now in the power of His atonement, calling, drawing, welcoming, pardoning, renewing, strengthening, preserving, and bringing joy – it is still the focus of Christian worship, and the fountain of the Christian life. Jesus Christ is the only Saviour!

Why do Christians hold that personal relationships matter more than anything else in the world, and that the truly human way to live is lovingly, constantly, unreservedly to give ourselves away to God and others, and that anything less than this offends God?

Ultimately, the answer is that we believe that Jesus was as fully human as He was divine, and that as He taught these things, so He lived them, and that at the deepest level of personhood, Jesus was the one perfect human life that the world has seen.

Why do Christians insist that God’s forgiveness of sins is only ever possible on the basis of an atoning sacrifice? It is because Jesus saw the atonement as the main purpose of HIs coming, and after three years as a preacher, He went to Jerusalem deliberately to die, in order that the Father’s will in this matter might be accomplished.

Why do Christians view the gatherings of thousands of congregations (the churches) not as a chain of clubs, but as outcrops of a single organic entity, within which they are brothers and sisters in one family of redeemed sinners, one body sharing a common link with Christ the head, sharing a new supernatural life? It is because Jesus taught His disciples to see His Father as their Father, HIs death as their ransom price, and Himself as the way to the Father, and now as their bread of life and the vine in which, as branches, they must abide.

Why do Christians maintain that full humanness requires embodiment, and hence look forward to physical resurrection? It is because they are sure that Jesus rose bodily from the state of death and that His risen life is the model for ours.

And why do Christians cling to the hpe of a cosmic triumph of divine justice and power when the world around us seems to be slipping deeper into sins, evil, despite humanity’s best efforts and everything seems to degenerate into chaos and anarchy?

It is because we believe that God’s risen Son reigns, even hiddenly, over all things, and is pledged to return in glory to judge and renew this world which He, with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, first created.

How does the cross save? By being a blood sacrifice (Eph.5:1; Rom.3:25, 5:9). How did Christ’s sacrifice save us? By redeeming us from the jeopardy of guilt and exposure to God’s vindicatory wrath that we were in before (Gal. 3:13; 4:5). How did Christ’s sacrifice redeem us? By reconciling God to us and us to God, cancelling our sins (2 Clor.5:18-21) and ending the mutual hostility (Rom. 5:10). How did Christ’s sacrifice end God’s enmity to us? By being a propitiation – that is, as one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin (Rom.3:25).

How did Christ’s sacrifice have the propitiatory effect? By being a substitution – that is, a vicarious enduring of the retributive judgement declared against us (the curse of the law, Gal. 3:13; the tally of our sins nailed to the cross to account for Christ’s execution (Col.2:14).
He died for us, and now we go free. Salvation by substitution is the heart of the gospel message.