The Wonder of the Cross, Part 2

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” Ephesians 1:3-6

The wonder of the cross is that it displayed both the love and holiness of God. In one moment in time, God’s hatred of sin and His unfailing compassion for sinners blended together in the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.

The cross was necessary because man could not save himself from sin, and holy God could not condone sin. God’s holiness, however, was matched by His love which sent Christ to die in our stead, bearing our guilt, dying our death. In his book, The Cross of Christ, the Rev. John R. W. Stott writes of the significance of sin’s gravity and God’s amazing love:

“All inadequate doctrines of the atonement are due to the inadequate doctrines of God and man. If we bring ourselves to His, then, of course, we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it. When on the one hand, we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely ‘hell-deserving sinners,’ then and only then does the necessity of the cross appear so obvious.”

“You do not understand Christ till you understand His cross.” -P.T. Forsyth