The Cross

Last week we talked about the God kind of love. It is a love that is not selfish and that seeks the best for the other person. Jesus demonstrated this love for us in His life, death and resurrection. So why did Jesus come to earth and die such a horrific death on the cross? Couldn’t He just wipe away our sins from heaven? Just send a prophet with the message, “Hey guys, your sins are forgiven. Praise the Lord!” After all, He is God and He can do anything, right?

There are people who think the death of Jesus was too brutal and unnecessary. This line of thinking leads people to believe that God is a cruel God. But nothing could be further from the truth. To understand why the cross was necessary we have to consider several things. First is that God is a holy God – meaning He is set apart and different from us, see Isaiah 6:3, 1 Samuel 2:2. Holiness is not something God puts on like a wig on a bad hair day. It is who He is.

God asks us to be holy because He is holy, 1 Peter 1:16. We can put on holiness and we can also be unholy. Unholiness comes more naturally because of the sin nature. But God is holy, all the time. His holiness means He can’t stand sin, and He has no sin or evil in Him, see James 1:13, Proverbs 6:16-19. There is no darkness in God, see James 1:17. Sin is detestable to God.

God is also righteous, which means He is just. He does not just do righteous things, He is righteous in and of Himself. It is who He is. Psalm 11:7 says, “For the Lord is righteous, He loves righteousness; the upright will behold His face.” Isaiah 5:16 says it this way, “With justice the Lord Yahweh, Commander of Angel Armies, displays his greatness, and righteousness sets him apart as the holy God.”

His justice displays His greatness… Let’s think on that for a second. It’s not His mercy that displays how great He is. It is not His kindness that sets Him apart as holy. It is His righteousness. He does not sweep things under the rug and pretend they did not happen. God addresses things and brings justice. His righteousness, His justice, is what sets Him apart as holy. Because we know we are terrible judges. We are lenient towards ourselves and people we like, and we are harsh with others. If we do something terrible, it is because we were under a lot of stress, and we were having a bad day. If someone else does the same, there is no amount of jail time that is sufficient! We are not just but God is. In all His dealings with us, He is just.

God is also love. Love is not something He does, it is who He is. He loves us more than we can understand. As Christians I think sometimes, we have overemphasized God’s love and forgotten about His holiness and His righteousness. See the Bible says in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Our sin brings separation between us and God. We cannot be in God if we are in sin. That was the problem humans faced after the fall in the Garden of Eden. We were separated from God and there was no way we could die and go to heaven because that would allow sin to enter heaven. God’s holiness could not allow that.

So how do we then get rid of sin so we can be cleansed and made right with God? Leviticus 17:11 says, “…for the life of the body is in its blood. I have given you the blood on the altar to purify you, making you right with the Lord. It is the blood, given in exchange for a life, that makes purification possible.” This was in relation to the sacrifices the Israelites made back in the day but foreshadowed the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the perfect Lamb of God, John 1:29.

Before Jesus came, God had a problem. His holiness could not embrace our sin. He could not have communion and close relationship with the very ones He loved. His righteousness demanded justice for our sins, and His word tells us we deserved death. But His love stepped in and said, “I will die in their place!” That is a gift we could never earn! Jesus did not deserve the cross, we did. But He took our place instead. Salvation is God’s love gift to us. We don’t deserve it, but He paid full price for it on the cross.

This is why Romans 5:8 says, “But Christ proved God’s passionate love for us by dying in our place while we were still lost and ungodly!” So the cross is where we see God’s holiness, righteousness and love all come together. Without Jesus dying on the cross and His blood being shed, we could not be forgiven. This is why John 3:16 says, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” All we have to do is believe in Jesus.

When we believe in Jesus, we have righteousness imputed on us. God judges us as righteous because we are now in Jesus. He can now come close and dwell within us because we are no longer separated from Him by sin. Sin separates us from God. The cross was necessary for God to have a relationship with us.

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano