Who is Love and Justice?
The cross is central to the Christian message. Some churches display a cross, some people wear a cross as a fashion accessory. In this session we are going to examine the real meaning of the cross of Jesus Christ.
Many people find it difficult to understand why Jesus Christ dying an undeserved and cruel death on a cross can have any effect on their own lives. In fact until we understand two fundamental truths - the extent of God’s love and our need for forgiveness – we can not fully understand the cross. When we fully understand what Jesus accomplished, the cross is good news, the cross is the place our freedom was bought and paid for by our Lord.
In John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress we are given a picture of the power of the cross. A man named Christian goes through a chain of encounters desperately looking for the real way to the Celestial City (heaven). On his back he carries a huge burden of trials, temptations, failures, doubts and immorality, yet he is determined to find the correct way. Christian follows a variety of different routes, stumbling every step of the way. Then he meets someone who tells him “the only way” to be free: through the cross of Jesus Christ on the way to Calvary.
Christian struggles up a steep hill to the top where the cross stands. His heart heavy, he arrives and kneels before the foot of the cross and prays for help. To his amazement, the heavy load falls off and rolls down the hill. The change is instant. He has freedom from the burden of sins, for the first time in his life he knows what it means to be forgiven. He stands up, descends the hill and continues his journey toward the Celestial City singing: “Blessed cross! Blessed sepuchre! Blessed rather be the man that was put to shame for me.”
1 John 1 The Word of Life
1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4We write this to make our joy complete.
5This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
8If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
The power of Good News
There is great joy when the message of the cross is understood. The demonstration of God’s love towards us is revealed. The good news that whatever our past, whatever our history of living without connection to God, whatever we have done right or wrong, we can be forgiven because of what Jesus did on the cross.
Do you remember the sense of relief when you realised that you had been forgiven?
There is a great promise in 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Our old mistakes are forgiven, but we need to admit and confess them, knowing He will free us.
The cross gives us an assurance of God’s enduring, eternal connection and love for us. When John the Baptist saw Jesus walking towards him, he shouted to the crowd, “Look, this is the One who comes to take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). The apostle John wrote, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10).
Was the cross an afterthought?
There are at least seven times in the New Testament when the death of Jesus Christ is described as planned before the creation of the world (eg Revelation 13:8). The death of Jesus on the cross was not a last-minute decision by God, God did not say “Oh dear, the people I made have sinned, what do I do next?” A careful study of the Bible, from the beginning to the coming of Jesus, clearly reveals a theme of sacrifice that culminates in the cross.
Jesus knew His destiny
Many in the ‘modern’ or ‘enlightened’ world would like to dismiss Jesus as a misunderstood martyr. The truth is that Jesus spoke frequently about His destiny as a person with a goal and timetable. On numerous occasions He spoke to His disciples with phrases such as “My time is not yet come”, “I have come to give my life as a ransom for many,” and “I have come to seek and save the lost.” Jesus described His approaching death on the cross at the Last Supper the night before the crucifixion. As He sat at the table with his disciples, He told them He was going to die to bring forgiveness: “Eat the bread and drink the wine to remember my death, for forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28).
Then late at night His disciples, not fully understanding the meaning of what He had said, saw Jesus allow Himself to be taken away by Roman soldiers. “He humbled Himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!” Philippians 2:8
Why couldn’t God just forgive us? Why did Jesus have to die? A logical question to ask, the answer is that in a moral world, for justice to be done there needs to be a payment for sin.
Would abolishing all punishment solve the problem of evil either here in our world or in heaven with God? For every crime there is a cost, a price to be paid. If someone damages your car, someone must pay for it to be fixed. None of us would allow a serial killer to continue killing without punishment. There are laws that state the penalties and consequences for offence.
Usually payments for wrongdoing are logical, based on what has been done. Some payments are set by human law, others are decided by God; every religion and country in this world requires some form or retribution or cost for not following their ways or laws.
The Bible states in Habakkuk 1:13 that God’s eyes are “too pure to look on evil.” The eternal God requires that every sin-debt be paid.
How can we explain the justice of God?
If we are honest, we tend to emphasis the love of God far more than the justice of God. God’s standards are not our standards. Our modern culture and thinking do not easily comprehend God’s truth and righteousness. God is fair and just and loving. Our own concepts of morality, regardless of how we compare to each other, simply do not measure up to God’s moral vision; when our standards conflict with God’s perfect standard we can not defend ourselves. As Romans 3:23 puts it we all “fall short of the glory of God.” The Biblical truth is clear – measured against God’s perfection, we all need forgiveness. People like to weigh themselves up against others, usually against someone they perceive to be worse than themselves rather than better – by definition, the criteria for entry into heaven is absolute perfection.
What happens when love and justice meet?
God is 100 percent loving; He is also 100 percent just. At the cross love and justice are perfectly balanced. Right from the beginning, God provided a solution for our moral deficit. The solution involved sacrifice: offerings of animals and grains were brought to the Lord in celebration and thanksgiving, and as evidence of repentance for doing wrong. The sacrifices to God were offered in place of the person who gave them and brought forgiveness to the person who offered them.
Both the Psalms and the prophets suggest that the sacrificial system portrayed in the Old Testament prefigure the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The cross displays God’s love and justice in action. This is not one human dying in the place of another human debt – this is the eternal God offered as a sacrifice for every person who will trust Him as his or her personal Lord and Saviour. The sentence, the punishment that should have been ours, was carried out on Him. We are the beneficiaries of His sacrifice, His mercy, His sinlessness, His love and His justice.
Jesus the Enabler
The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross enables two things to happen:
- He takes our punishment. “The LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). “He Himself bore ours sins in His body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24).
- We become a new creation. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17); “God has made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
The best choice we can make in life is to admit our need and kneel at the cross of Christ, as John Bunyan’s Christian did.
So where does grace come in?
The Bible uses the word grace to explain the cross. “The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men” (Titus 2:11).
“[We] are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24).
Like a Barclaycard bill, the debt of sin must be paid. When the debt is paid, the person is excused, forgiven. When the bill is paid for by another, this is called “grace.”
There is a story of two men who went to university together. One became a banker; the other a lawyer and later a judge. Twenty years went by and the banker was charged with stealing several million pounds. His case came up before his old university friend who was now the judge.
The tension in the courtroom was high when foreman of the jury read out a verdict of guilty. What would the judge do? The defendant was his friend, would he be lenient in sentencing? Or would he, for fear of criticism, be overly tough? What would the sentence be?
The judge read the maximum sentence that could be imposed: $1 million. Then the judge stood up, walked around the bench, took off his robe, put his arm round his friend and said, “I have sold my house and every one of my investments and I will pay this debt for you.” The man was free.
The banker did nothing, earned nothing to pay his debt, the judge did everything to ensure that justice was carried out and that the debt was paid. Grace and justice. By our sinfulness we are indebted to God and unable to repay the debt on our own; Jesus takes our debt and, by sacrificing himself on the cross, satisfies it, clearing our debt. By the grace of God, we are excused and forgiven.
(Source: Ravi Zacharias, Just Thinking: The Court of Last Resort)
Why do we get stuck in the old mindset that our good outweighs our bad? Why do we so often think we need to earn God’s grace? Even though we know about the grace of God in forgiving us, often our old mindset creeps back in – we forget that we, on our own, can never achieve the standards heaven require. We have no ability, no merit, no works that enable us to make it by ourselves; we need to realise that it is all of God, by His grace and the rescue operation of the cross.
The Apostle Paul stated “By grace you have been saved [forgiven], through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
So what happens when we are forgiven?
The amazing thing when we are forgiven is this – God actually deliberately forgets our sins – we are free. We are free! God’s love for us is without end and our past failures are gone.
Jesus our assurance
God’s Word assures us that we are forgiven
“as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”
Psalm 103:12
“In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back.” Isaiah 38:17
“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” Isaiah 43:25
“Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.” Micah 7:18-19
“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins.” 1 John 1:9
God has provided a way for us to be redeemed.
Our part is that we must come to the point where we accept what Jesus has done for us. We need to come to the cross for forgiveness.
For personal reflection
What does the sacrificial system of the Old Testament suggest about the weight of sin and the provision of God?
How does the death of Jesus on the cross fit the description “where love and justice meet”?
How do the following words or phrases help you to understand the meaning of Jesus’ death?
1 Earning verses receiving a free gift.
2 Grace.
3 Good news.
Reflect on this verse:
“He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness” 1 Peter 2:24
