Part 2 - Basics of the Cross.
Why is the Cross Necessary?
A common question I hear is, "Why doesn’t God just get rid of all sin and take us all to heaven?" Another frequent question is, "If God is so loving, why would He send someone to hell just because they don’t believe in Him?"
There are hundreds of skeptical questions that I could include here, but there is one basic flaw in all of these types of questions: man is at the center of it all instead of God. What we are really asking is, "Why doesn’t God conform to my ways?" We were created for the purpose of having a love relationship with God, our Creator. Revelation 4:11 says, "You are worthy, O Lord, To receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, And by Your will they exist and were created." All things exist (including man) because of the will of God. Philippians 2:13 tells us that God works in us for His will and for His good pleasure. What God wants for us is good but it usually conflicts with our human nature. It isn’t God that needs to alter His will, but man who needs to yield to God. The world does not center around our will, but God’s will. He has the right to decide how man is created and what man’s purpose should be.
God did not create us as robots. An automatic response is not love. If we did not have any choice to love God, it would not be love at all. I can program my computer to say, ’I love you’ each time is starts up, but that is meaningless to me. If we don’t have a choice to not love God, then we also don’t have a choice to love God. Man is the crown of all creation because we are created in God’s own image and we have been given the capacity to love God and the right to choose whether or not to love Him. The purpose of the cross is not to get us into heaven. The purpose of the cross is to restore the lost fellowship with our Creator by paying the penalty of our sin that separates us from Him. Why would a loving God send anyone to hell? Why would a loving God violate our choice of not wanting to love or have a relationship with Him? Heaven would be hell for those who hate God. The entire focus of Heaven is a face-to-face relationship with God. Everything in Heaven centers around God. If a person despises the idea of God interfering with their life here on earth, how much worse would it be in heaven for that person to have to worship, praise and live in a place that is completely focused on God? If they have already willfully rejected the person of God, it would be misery to live a life that glorifies God? God does not force us to love Him now, and He will not force us to love Him in heaven. Everyone will bow and acknowledge Him as Lord, but they will not be forced to love Him. It would be the height of injustice to make someone who rejects God to serve Him in heaven against their will. But for us who love God and take pleasure in serving Him here will be overjoyed to serve and fellowship with God when we can see Him in all His glory!
Even on earth, the void created within us cannot be satisfied outside of complete surrender to God. Because God has created us for a purpose, if we substitute our purpose for the deception of the world, we will never be satisfied. We can be gratified, but never satisfied. It is important to understand the difference. Gratification is the point where we saturate our desires. We may be able to temporarily get to the point where we no longer desire a particular pleasure and maybe have a brief illusion of satisfaction, but as the pleasure fades, the emptiness inside returns. It is like putting a square peg in a round hole. You may be able to make it fit, but you can never fill in the gaps. People crowd their lives trying to cover up the hole inside, but it continues to rise to the surface. Therefore we are forced to find something else to cover it or we will be consumed with the emptiness. That is why people run from pleasure to pleasure and can never rest. From the world’s perspective, the Christian life seems to be uneventful. They cannot comprehend not being driven by pleasures. But when we are satisfied, we no longer need to live for the purpose of finding pleasure. Instead of ruling us, pleasures take their rightful place in God’s design. All pleasure has been created by God and was never intended to be the object of our focus and our first love. When pleasure is our purpose and it is gone, we are without purpose until we find another pleasure to pursue. But when God is our focus and purpose, He sends pleasure into our lives. The pleasure never becomes our focus so we are free to enjoy without remorse and continue to pursue our relationship with God. We were not created for pleasure and if self-gratification is our god, our lives will never be fulfilled regardless of how much activity we crowd in. Anything outside of our purpose of loving God will not work. We were created for this purpose and until we fill the void in our hearts with our Creator, nothing will be fully enjoyed. You will never find a man or woman who loved God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength crying out, "I hate my life" or saying, "I don’t know who I am anymore".
Without the cross, there cannot be a relationship with God. Even Old Testament believers are saved through the cross of Jesus Christ. In reality, there are no Old and New Testaments. The Bible is one revelation as God carried mankind by the hand from Adam’s fall to redemption in Christ. All of the Old Testament prepares the way so that we understand what God is doing through the cross. The purpose of the law in the Old Testament was not to make man righteous, but to prepare our hearts for Christ. Look at Romans 3:
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
20 Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
The law never justified anyone. The Old Testament sacrifices did not purify anyone. The Bible says that "it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin". The believers in the Old Testament were justified by faith just as we are today. They kept the law out of faith in God’s provision for sin even though they did not understand the purpose behind it. They looked ahead to the coming Messiah and obeyed God out of faith. We look back at the revealed Messiah (Jesus Christ) and we obey out of faith. It is not and never has been the law that justified anyone. It is and always has been obedience through faith.
Several passages make salvation by grace clear – even for Old Testament saints. 2 Timothy 1 says that God “has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ” (verses 9&10). Many miss this important point. The grace of God was issued before time began, but was not revealed until Jesus Christ died on the cross. The plan of redemption was in place and working in the lives of men from the very beginning. The fall of man to sin was not a surprise. Redemption was planned before man even fell.
The power to redeem is only found through the Cross of Jesus Christ. God is a holy God and because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God that we were created to reflect, we are separated from God. Sin is simply disobedience to God. God’s commands are designed for our protection and to teach us to adopt God’s character. Anything that violates God’s character violates God’s law.
It is true that the Bible teaches that God is love, merciful and kind, but the Bible also teaches that God is just, holy and pure. God’s mercy does not nullify God’s justice. Instead, because God is merciful, He paid the penalty demanded by His justice. We were under the penalty of sin, but God suffered that penalty on our behalf. God will never sacrifice His character and He cannot change. Even in our human perspective we see the need for consistent justice. When a judge shows leniency in the courtroom, we feel like justice has been violated. We call that corruption. Yet with God, somehow people think that justice should be violated. It would be a confusing world if we did not know if and when God was going to uphold His standard. God does not change and He declared that heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will never pass away. All will be fulfilled just as He declared. God’s law is based on His own character. God said that He will avenge and punish every sin committed. The Bible also says that God is the God who forgives, but He takes vengeance on our sins. That sounds contradictory until you see it in light of the cross. For those who are in Christ, God has avenged our sins. Through Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven and avenged. Only in Him are mercy and justice united. The cross is necessary because without the cross, the penalty of sin would fall on our shoulders. Forgiveness is not possible without justice. Because of the cross, God is able to be just and the justifier of those who place their faith in Jesus (Romans 3:26). The cross is necessary because God was able to be just - or judge our sin and issue a just penalty for the violation against righteousness, and still have mercy and forgive us by becoming the justifier - or the one found guilty and judged for our sin.
What Happened on the Cross?
1. Jesus became our sin.
Look at these two passages:
2 Corinthians 5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Colossians 3:
13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,
14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
Jesus was sin-free but became our sin in our place. The wrath due us was poured out against the sins that He bore in His own body on the cross. Romans 5:9 tells us that we are justified by His blood and saved from God’s wrath against our sins through Jesus. If not for the cross, we would stand in account for our own sins. God’s vengeance against sin would have been laid to our account. Because of what Jesus did on our behalf, no one is judged for their sins, but we can be judged with our sins. In other words, our debt has been paid. God has already paid the just penalty for every sin I have ever committed or will commit. Because of Jesus Christ, I can either let Jesus nail it to the cross by surrendering to Him by faith, or I can exercise my right to pay for and be judged with my own sins. Every sin will be judged. The only question is where? For us who trust in Christ, our sins are already judged and paid in full. Those who reject Jesus Christ will pay the just penalty of their own sins. Judgement is always God’s last alternative, but He does allow us to choose eternal judgment if that is our will.
Jesus’ final words were, "It is finished" and "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit". The words, "it is finished" comes from the Greek word, ’Tetelestai’ which literally means, ’paid in full’. In Rome, when a debt was paid off, the receipt was stamped with the word ’tetelestai’ or ’PAID’. The weight of the law required death to sin, and Jesus fulfilled this obligation. The Bible says that God paid our debt with His own blood (Acts 20:28). We know that God endured the suffering on our behalf. He did not shield Himself, but suffered up until the final words, ’Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit’. It wasn’t just the fleshly body that endured, but the very heart of God. The greatest suffering on the cross wasn’t the physical pain, but the spiritual agony of the wrath against our sins.
Before I move on, I want to look at how scripture tells us that Jesus became sin for us. Did Jesus have to cease from being God on the cross to become our sin? This is a major area of confusion and if we don’t understand this, we can’t recognize the errors that are often taught. We know that Jesus never ceased from being God. Above I referenced Acts 20:28 which clearly states that God purchased our sins with His own blood. Also look at 1 Timothy 3:
15 but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the Gentiles, Believed on in the world, Received up in glory.
There is no question scripturally that Jesus was God manifest in the flesh and that He paid for our sins with His own blood. We know that the body of Jesus was God in the flesh even while on the cross. It was not until He gave up His spirit that His departed his body.
Another area of confusion here is that many struggle with the idea that sin was poured out on God. After all, God is holy and sin cannot abide in His presence. We have to remember that it is sin that can’t stand in the presence of God and not God that can’t stand in the presence of sin. Sin does not affect God, but His holiness has a drastic effect on sin. Sin did not attack God on the cross. God attacked sin on the cross. The cross was God’s victory over sin. Instead of judging sin in the world (which would have doomed us all), He took on the sin of the world and judged Himself. That is the amazing love story of redemption.
2. Was God divided?
This is not possible. The Old Testament teaches that the heavens and earth cannot contain God and that He is omniscient (all knowing) and omnipresent (everywhere at once). The scriptures clearly teach that Jesus is God and Ephesians 4 tells us that Jesus is the one "who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things". If the heavens and the earth cannot contain God and similarly, Jesus fills the universe, then it would be literally impossible for God to have abandoned Jesus on the cross. That would require Jesus to no longer be God and this is not possible because God cannot change (Malichi 3:6). We are given an amazing insight into the crucifixion in Psalm 22. This passage vividly describes the crucifixion and gives us a glimpse as to what was going on between the Father and the Son.
Psalm 22 begins with the famous words found in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34, "My God, My God. Why have you forsaken Me?" We are not given any further details in the gospels because eyewitnesses could not see what was going on spiritually. But God has revealed a portion in this Psalm. As Jesus bore the weight of the sins of the world, He did not shield Himself from our pain or our perspective. Otherwise He could not have claimed "in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest" (Hebrews 2:17). In His suffering He was punished for our transgressions, but He was never rejected by the Father and He was never abandoned. There is nothing in scriptures that remotely indicate that the Father turned away from Him. In fact, the scriptures teach the opposite. Psalm 22:19-22 shows us that Jesus cried for help and said, "do not be far from Me…" and then says, "You have answered Me".
Psalm 22:24 says, "For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from Him; But when He cried to Him, He heard." Don’t miss the impact of this passage. He (the Father) did not despise nor abhor Christ even during His affliction for the sins He bore on the cross and the Father DID NOT hide His face from Him. This is encouraging to us because during our darkest hour and the times we feel afflicted, it seems as though God has abandoned us, but in reality, we can only see the burden we are bearing and this blinds us to the fact that God is actually carrying us through it. Because Jesus is our High Priest and He had to suffer all things to identify with our needs, He experienced those same feelings. However, faith is not based on feelings. Regardless of how we feel, God’s mercy covers us and He cares for us, hurts with us, and bears our burdens. In the same way, Jesus’ suffering was necessary. There was no other way for us to be reunited with God without the suffering of Jesus Christ. The Father could not take away the cup of suffering and still accomplish our redemption, therefore He suffered with the Son through the cross. The moment the cup of His wrath due us had passed, the relief was found and victory was proclaimed by Jesus.
21 …You have answered Me.
22 I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.
23 You who fear the LORD, praise Him! All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, And fear Him, all you offspring of Israel!
24 For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him; But when He cried to Him, He heard.
25 My praise shall be of You in the great assembly; I will pay My vows before those who fear Him.
26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied; Those who seek Him will praise the LORD. Let your heart live forever!
27 All the ends of the world Shall remember and turn to the LORD, And all the families of the nations Shall worship before You.
Regardless of how we examine this passage, we cannot get past the testimony of Jesus where He said, "You have not abhorred", "You have not despised", and "You did not turn away"
Sin does separate us from our relationship with God. It does not turn God away from us, but us away from God. When I was living a sinful lifestyle, I felt rejected by God, abandoned and abhorred. My feelings blinded me to the fact that God did not reject me, but was working in my life to bring me to repentance so that I could have an abiding relationship with Him. My feelings made me feel forsaken, but in reality, God never moved. God never moves or turns from us. We move and turn from Him.
What Happened after the Cross?
There are many who reject the redemption on the cross by claiming that Jesus had to do more. Some claimed that Jesus had to suffer in hell. I have heard many teachers say, "if you don’t believe Jesus suffered in hell, you can’t be saved". This idea comes from misinterpreting the Apostle’s Creed and these passages
1 Peter 3:
18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit,
19 by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison,
Psalm 16:10 For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption
The King James Version translates ’Sheol’ into ’hell’. In the Old Testament, ’sheol’ is used for the grave, pit and hell. Therefore it is important to examine the context. In Psalm 16:10, the context is that God’s ’Holy One’ will not see corruption - or decay in the grave. This is a prophecy about Jesus’ resurrection and not that He is rescued from hell. In 1 Peter, the context is that Jesus will preach to the spirits in prison. Whether that prison is the grave or hell itself is not important. What is important is that Jesus did not go there to suffer, but to proclaim His victory.
The Apostles also interpreted this passage as ‘the body in the grave’. The on the day of Pentecost, the apostle Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to preach. He used this same passage from Psalms in his sermon. He said that David wrote it, not about himself, but foresaw the face of Christ. Peter said that David’s tomb was known and his body was still in it, but this passage referred to the bodily resurrection of Christ (Acts 2:25-36). It is also worth noting that in verse 27, Peter uses the word ‘Hades’ as the interpretation of Psalm 16:10, not hell or ‘Gehenna’. Whenever the Bible refers to hell as the place of torment, it is ‘Gehenna’. Jesus always referred to ‘Gehenna’ as the future torment of the wicked. ‘Gehenna’ was a word-picture Jesus used to illustrate hell.
Gehenna was actually a valley south of Jerusalem where the city dumped dead animals and the filth of the city. It was known for its foul odor and decay. To attempt to control the decay, a fire was continuously burning there. Obviously, there is no way to accurately describe to people what is spiritual and beyond comprehension. Therefore, Jesus used Gehenna as symbolic of hell because He knew everyone was repulsed by this infamous valley. When Jesus said, “if you eye offends you, pluck it out. For it is better to enter into eternal life maimed than to go with two eyes into ‘Gehenna’ where the worm does not die and the fire does not go out”, everyone had a terrible mental picture of what hell must be like. So when the Bible says that Jesus would not remain in the grave, the word Hades is used, not Gehenna. It was not referring to torment, but the bodily death and resurrection of Jesus.
One opposing view given is that Jesus had to suffer in all ways like us, therefore, He had to suffer in hell to fulfill that requirement. The problem with this logic is that hell was never intended for man. Hell was created for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41) and not for man. Because man is not appointed to hell, there is no need for Jesus to suffer in hell. Hell is only for those who have chosen to be followers of the devil by rejecting salvation through Christ. Or as Jesus put it in Matthew 7:
13 " Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.
14 "Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
People accuse God of sending them to hell, but in reality, God doesn’t make that choice for anyone. God allows for two doors and we all choose which door we enter in. Following our selfish desire is a choice. It is just easier to be carried by the current than to take that difficult path that leads to life.
Jesus did not have to suffer in hell. The doctrine of Jesus suffering in hell does not derive from scripture. This idea is mostly a modern sway from doctrine. Those who teach it try to associate it with the beliefs of the early church, but this is not a true statement. Even the Apostle’s creed does not say Jesus suffered after death.
Apostle’s creed
I believe in GOD, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
And in JESUS Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen
People who hold the unbiblical doctrine of Jesus’ suffering in hell lead others to believe that our church forefathers believed in this false teaching, but that is not true. The Apostles and the early church testified that Jesus preached to the spirits, but they did not teach He suffered there. Whether Jesus went to hell itself or preached His victory to dead believers waiting for His redemption is not entirely clear and really is not important. It is important when someone denies the redemption of the cross. When Jesus declared that ’It is finished / the debt has been paid", it is a slap in the face of the gospel declared by God to then say, "No, you have to do more than what Jesus did". It is the height of arrogance to declare God’s sacrifice insufficient for our redemption. Jesus cried to the Father, "Into Your hands I commit my spirit". He could not have stated it any plainer than this. He was not committed into hell to finish the job. He declared the plan of redemption as complete and committed His spirit to the Father in victory. He then was able to descend into hell or the grave and preach His victory.
Even the resurrection is not part of the salvation message. The resurrection is the evidence that Jesus was who He claimed to be - God in the flesh and the Resurrection itself. He rose bodily to prove His words were true. He did not see corruption in the grave, but fulfilled prophecy and His own claims that if you kill destroy this body, I will raise it up again on the third day (John 19-21). When people asked for a sign that He was who He claimed to be, He declared that the only sign given was the sign of Jonah the prophet. Just as Jonah was in a fish three days, so Jesus would be in the earth three days. It is funny that Jesus performed many signs through healings and miracles, yet He said the only sign given as evidence was the resurrection. All of the miracles didn’t prove He was divine. The only sign to be concerned with was that He would not see corruption in the grave, but would rise again on the third day. His resurrection is the sign that everything He taught was true and the redemption on the cross was sufficient for our sins.
When we lose sight of these things, traditions begin to creep into the biblical message of the gospel. The gospel message will never change. Even the apostle Paul warned that even if he should return and change the message, he was under the judgment of God. Regardless of how great of a prophet of God someone claims to be, if their doctrine does not align with scripture, they are not of God. God does not change and the gospel does not change. Even if God’s own angel stands before us and proclaims a different gospel, we have been forewarned not to believe him. Look at Galatians 1
8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.
9 As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.
The word ’accursed’ comes from the Greek word ’anathema’, which literally means ’cursed by God without hope of redemption’. I don’t believe this is referring to mistakes we make in doctrine while we are still learning. We all grow and increase our understanding of scripture and when we see that we have a flawed doctrine, we align ourselves with what is taught in scripture. However, when someone chooses a tradition or flawed doctrine over the word of God, then they are on dangerous ground. This is Paul’s warning. When someone chooses to reject God’s word because it doesn’t comply with what they prefer to believe then they are in rejection of God. It is God who stated that He exalts His word over His own name. We are not given the option to pick and choose which part of God’s truth we want to believe. When someone sees the truth of God’s word and refuses to turn from their error and then teaches others to follow a false gospel, they are under God’s curse. We are commanded not to listen or welcome teaching and not to be afraid of the threats many self-proclaimed prophets will issue. It does not matter if a false teacher curses us. They are under God’s curse and do not have the right or the power to curse God’s people. Curses are used to keep people in submission when a false leader knows that he or she is in error. We are not commanded to avoid the curse of teachers, we are commanded to validate what is being taught to what God has already revealed in scripture. If the two cannot be reconciled, we are to count them as under the curse if they refuse to submit to God’s word. There is nothing to fear from any spiritual leader. No God-ordained leader will curse anyone. The scripture commands that we bless our enemies and not to curse. We are also commanded to love our brethren in Christ. We aren’t given any room to curse those who oppose us. That right is reserved by God and He desires mercy first. It is when people choose traditions and doctrines of men over the word of God that we stand under the curse.
1 Corinthians 16:22 says, "If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed". Outside of Christ, we are under the curse and we have the right to choose this option. It all centers around a love relationship with our God. It is not rules, works or anything we can do that gives us salvation. It is a love relationship with God. The cross was necessary because we have sinned and God is just and cannot violate His own nature. The cross was the payment due us poured out on Christ. Jesus died in victory, and preached that victory to the spirits in prison after our redemption was sealed by His own blood. Jesus rose from the grave as evidence that His words and claims were true and to give us hope of our future resurrection when He returns.
It is a complete story and a complete work of redemption. There is nothing we can add to it. We can only take away from it by polluting God’s amazing grace with tradition and pet beliefs. We have always been and will always be counted as righteous by our faith in God’s redemption offered to every man who will surrender to Jesus Christ.
*** This sermon can be downloaded as a Word document by following the link at http://www.exchangedlife.com/Sermons/topical/basics2.htm
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