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“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” —Colossians 1:19, 20
There
could be no worse, no crueler death than to be crucified. Christ suffered the
worst so that we could receive the best: “For
Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring
you to God...Christ suffered in his body” 1 Peter 3:18, 4:1.
John
Piper writes in The Passion of Jesus Christ: “We will never stand in awe of being loved by God until we reckon with the
seriousness of our sin and the justice of his wrath against us. But when, by
grace, we awaken to our unworthiness, then we may look at the suffering and
death of Christ and say, ‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that
he loved us and sent his son to be the [wrath-absorbing] propitiation for our
sins’ (1 John 4:10)” (page 21).
But
it’s the end of the story that explains the necessity of the means required to
get there.
I
read the story of the Battle of Britain recently. In one chapter the author
described one way in which the British authorities addressed the desperate
shortage of raw materials with which to build up their war machinery. At one
point an appeal was sent out to all the households on the island asking women
to sacrifice their pots and pans so that the aluminum could be recycled into
Spitfires, the most popular and powerful of the fighter planes that the Brits
used against the Luftwaffe. Tons of aluminum were collected and the most humble
of housewives felt personally involved in the war effort just by imagining that
the enemy was being thwarted by their kettle or frying pan!
The
cross was a sacrifice, but Jesus knew that the glorious end justified the
terrible means. There would be reconciliation—two parties whose relationship
was fractured would have that relationship restored. Two parties in conflict
would find peace.
This
truth is often pictured for us as a deep gap, or gulf, called sin. On one side
of the gap is God. On the other is man. The breach is so wide and so deep that
it is impossible to get across. Then, in the gap between God and man, a cross
is placed. Its horizontal arms bridge the space between the two and provide a
walkway that allows for a holy God to bring a sinful man back into His presence
and for that man to cross the barrier created by his sin.
In
the place of a dysfunctional relationship and conflict comes reconciliation and
peace.
That’s
the end game of the cross.
Paul writes in Romans 4:25-5:1, “He was delivered over to death for our sins
and was raised to life for our justification. Therefore, since we have been
justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
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