Introduction
Some wonder how I can come up with so much to say each Sunday. That may be a nice way of saying I preach a long time. In most cases, my problem is not coming up with enough to say, but having to limit myself. More often than not, I end up cutting material out. I did that last Sunday. I left out what any Christian would be most desirous to hear. I went on about how foolish the cross sounds to unbelieving ears. But what about those who are being saved, who have been called of God. How is it that the cross is the power of God and the wisdom of God?
God’s Power
For we who are being saved, we know the power; it is the power to save us from sin. As William Evans says:
We believe that Christ’s Cross reveals the love of God, and that throughout all these ages men have been bowed in penitence as they have caught a vision of the One who hung thereon. But if you were to question the multitudes that have believed in God because of the Cross, you would find that what moved them to repentance was not merely, if at all, certainly not primarily, that the Cross revealed the love of God in a supreme way, but the fact that there at that Cross God had dealt with the great and awful fact of sin, that the Cross had forever removed it.
Everyone likes to speak of Jesus’ death as an act of love. It proves that we are all God’s friends. Even Jesus said that the highest act of love is to die for a friend (cf. John 15:13). Therefore, Jesus died for us to let us know that we are all friends of his and friends of God.
For those of us who find in the cross the power to save, we have no trouble saying what our true condition was when Christ died. We were sinners; indeed, we were the enemies of God. We were slaves to sin, which we served with full obedience. Some of us were oblivious to our condition and thought that God ought to be pleased with how good we were. Some of us realized our precarious state and were dismayed over our inability to be good enough. Some of us did not care and were smug about our “independence” from God. But at some point, for all of us, the helplessness of our state and the power of Christ to save us hit home, and the love of God overwhelmed us. Now when we read such verses as these, our spirits affirm the great love that is expressed:
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:9,10).
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:6-8).
This is love! And it is a love with power. For God does not simply look upon us with love. And Christ did not die on the cross simply as a Valentine card. God sent his Son to make the just payment for our sins and to break the stranglehold of sin on us. Once we were guilty and over us hung the just punishment of God ready to fall upon us; now there is no condemnation for our guilt has been removed. We are pronounced “not guilty” and set free. We are justified in Christ. That is power!
And we are no longer haunted by our past, fearful that our sins will find us out. For God’s Word tells us in Colossians 2:13-14: And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
On the cross Jesus Christ reconciled us to God. As Romans 5:10 states: while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son. And the point that is made in this passage is that if God would pay the supreme sacrifice to reconcile us to himself while we were enemies, how much more will he do now that we are reconciled. In other words, what God began, he will complete. The cross justifies us now; the cross has rid us of our sinful past; and the cross guarantees a glorious future. That is power!
And those of us who are being saved, this is the greatest power one can know.
Charles Wesley wrote of it in his hymn “And Can It Be?”:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night.
Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray:
I woke—the dungeon flamed with light!
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
Horatio Spafford wrote of it in his hymn “It is Well with My Soul”:
My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious tho’t!—
My sin, not in part, but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
Because of the cross there is resurrection. Christ’s death led not only to life, but glory. Because he humbled himself on the cross, he was raised and exalted on high. Indeed, if there can be degrees of glory, he has attained the highest because of the cross. There Jesus won the victory over sin and over death.
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:55-56).
For us who are being saved this is great power indeed, for death no longer is a sentence of judgment, but now the entry way into the presence of our Redeemer.
We sing with Christian Gellert in his hymn “Jesus Lives, and So shall I”:
Jesus lives and death is now but my entrance into glory.
Courage, then, my soul, for thou hast a crown of life before thee;
Thou shalt find thy hopes were just: Jesus is the Christian’s trust.
Now that is power, and it is a power that works in us. We are are being saved testify to it. We testify that we have amazed ourselves by what has been accomplished in us. Some of us have conquered alcohol, some drugs; some of us have been transformed from self-centered obnoxious persons to good parents, loving spouses, and dependable friends. Some of us have changed from being cheaters in school and work to honest students and workers. I could go on listing dozens of vices and sins that different ones of us can testify that we have been delivered from, and all would give the same testimony. We did not change because of power we discovered in ourselves that we had all along; but we give praise to our Lord Jesus Christ who by his death broke the hold sin had on us. And there is something about faith in his death that gives us strength we never had.
But I want to take you further with this. For as much as we can speak of new power to overcome sin, we would all also testify that in another way sin seems all the more alive in us. And where we might have victory in one area, we seem to fall in another. And then some of us are still beset with the same addictions, the same struggles as before. What difference has the cross made for us?
Oh, all the difference in the world, for even our failures magnify the grace of God displayed in the cross! Because of the cross we hear the promise pronounced: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Because of the cross a new covenant has been mediated for us with God by Jesus Christ. It is a covenant that is fulfilled by his work on the cross and his work cannot fail. He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (Hebrews 9:26). By means of his own blood [he has secured] an eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12).
By the cross we are redeemed; by the cross we are justified before God; by the cross we are sanctified, set apart in the Holy Spirit, and made God’s saints. And every sin we commit, every stumble in our walk is but testimony to the enduring grace of God manifested and secured by the cross of Jesus Christ. All our weaknesses do is reveal how strong our God is and how strong our Redeemer is to save his people. That is power!
The Wisdom of the Cross
And what of the wisdom of the cross? Surely in the cross we see the truth of God’s declaration in Isaiah 55:9-10:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
In The Lord of the Rings, the good guys are able to defeat the enemy Sauron by doing the one thing that Sauron in all his cleverness never considered: destroy the ring of power. In the gospel is wisdom of even greater surprise. The great God of glory, in the Son, takes upon himself mortal flesh and presents himself as a sacrifice before his enemies. That in itself is great mystery. Why? Why should God do such a thing when his happiness is not dependent on our salvation? The Trinity has always had perfect bliss in fellowship with one another. We are not needed. What mystery this is.
But it continues. As Charles Wesley exclaims:
‘Tis myst’ry all! th’Immortal dies:
Who can explore his strange design?
In vain the firstborn seraph tries
To sound the depths of love divine.
How does God become man? How is the eternal Son of God conceived in a woman’s womb? How does the eternal Son die? What takes place in those blood curdling words uttered by the Son to the Father who for eternity have had perfect communion: My God, my God why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46). Do you want mystery in your religion? Here it is. It astounds me that Christianity is criticized for being a dogmatic religion that takes the mystery out of God. It is these very doctrines, especially the doctrine of salvation, that blow apart our nice little philosophical musings. When we come face to face with the incarnation of Christ, the crucifixion of Christ, his resurrection and his ascension into glory, his sending the Holy Spirit to dwell within us and mystically unite with us, and his final coming, for us who are being saved we can but fall on our knees and give him all praise and honor and glory for such wisdom.
And then we begin to start putting the pieces together and marvel at the wisdom of the cross. Now we begin to understand how the sacrifices and religious customs of the Old Testament fit in. We see how they point to Christ on the cross. The covenant made with Abraham: how it is to be fulfilled for us makes sense now in Christ. All that history stuff of Israel starts to become clear in the light of Christ’s work. The prophecies are fulfilled in him.
The problem of sin is solved. How can God be merciful to forgive sin and yet remain just? By the cross. Jesus’ death is mercy to us, but satisfies the justice that must be carried out. So God is both just and merciful.
The cross solves the problem of the law which demands complete obedience for us to be accepted by God. Jesus on the cross fulfills the law’s demands. He enables then the law to do its true work – to point us to our Redeemer and to depend upon our Redeemer.
The cross is the key to unlocking the mystery of God’s Word. The cross is the code-breaker. We don’t find what God really wants us to know by running computer code-design programs. We find out by setting up the atoning work of Christ on the cross as our study lamp and then reading Scripture by its light. Read the fall and the promise in the light of the cross; read the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, the reign of King David in the light of the cross and you will read the story of redemption. Read the Psalms and the prophets in the light of the cross and the mercy and justice and wisdom of God will jump up at you as you see them time and again fulfilled in Jesus’ redemption of you. That is the wisdom for us who are being saved.
We love this stuff! We can’t get enough of it, whether we have been Christians for a short time or for ninety years. The gospel is so simple that a child can grasp what it means and at the same time so profound that the greatest human minds can hardly scratch the surface of its wisdom.
Application
We are intoxicated by the cross, aren’t we? There are two other responses that have somehow made strong inroads among Christians. One is to be burdened by the cross. It goes something like this. When I consider what Jesus did on the cross for me, I am ashamed of my failure to live a more worthy life. I am ashamed that I am not doing enough to make his death worthwhile for me.
Let’s get this straight. You and I can never live good enough lives to make the cross worthwhile. We cannot do enough good deeds, witness to enough people, be kind enough, moral enough that God says, Considering the change in your behavior, it was worthwhile to sacrifice my Son for you. Instead, he says, Considering your ongoing behavior, it is a good thing my Son died for you.
If you really want to make the cross “worthwhile,” then do what Jesus said he wanted to accomplish in us – to have life abundantly (John 10:10). That’s not just living forever; that’s taking joy in belonging to Jesus, in being a child of God. It is taking joy in being freed from the bondage of sin, joy in knowing that there is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus and that nothing, nothing can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Count it all joy.
The other response is perhaps more pervasive and maybe more reprehensible. It goes like this. Thank you, God, for sending Jesus to die for me. Thank you for my salvation. But where are the real benefits? I was expecting life to get easier, not harder. I ought to have been married by now, or, my marriage ought to have gotten better by now. Work should be going better. And do I need to go through my health problems? Where is the victory?
Think about this. The whole Bible centers around the cross – Jesus’ redeeming work for mankind. It is the cross, more than anything else, that glorifies God. And we take the attitude of “that’s fine for getting salvation, but I’m ready to move on to other things. What I really want from the Bible is a how-to manual to make my life better.” Do you remember when Alan Shepard got his chance to go to the moon? What did he do? He hit a golf ball. That was funny, but what would we think of him if someone were to ask him what he got most out of that trip and he replied, “All that preparation I did for that golf swing really improved my golf game”? Well, that is how many of us view the cross. The real value we find in his death is the lessons it teaches us on how to live a more productive and moral life.
Glory is what the cross is about! Listen to one who is caught up in the glory of the cross:
In love 5 [God] predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:4-13).
This is the power and wisdom of the cross.
