The Necessity Of The Cross Series

THE NECESSITY OF THE CROSS

Charles Wesley was born in 1707. He was the 18th child! His parents had one more child after him. If it was today, the Wesleys would have been in the news! 19 children is exceptional. Charles Wesley’s father, Samuel Wesley, was the rector of the local church. Charles Wesley also trained to be a priest in the Church of England, and he became a priest at the age of 27. As far as anyone knew, he was a Christian. But three years later, something changed. On May 21st, 1738, he had a conversion experience. He wrote in his journal, ‘I now found myself at peace with God.’

Historians are pretty sure that almost immediately after that, Charles Wesley wrote one of his most famous hymns. It starts ‘And can it be.’ Can anyone remember how the hymn continues? ‘And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Saviour's blood? DIED HE FOR ME who caused him pain…?’

Two weeks on Friday it will be Good Friday, the day of the year when we remember that Jesus died on a cross. Charles Wesley believed that JESUS DIED FOR HIM. Was he right? Did Jesus die for him? Did Jesus die for US?

That’s what the Bible says. Paul wrote to the church in Rome that: ‘God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, CHRIST DIED FOR US’ [Romans 5:8]. He wrote to the church in Corinth: ‘CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS in accordance with the Scriptures’ [1 Corinthians 15:3]. John wrote about Jesus, that ‘HE is the propitiation FOR OUR SINS’ [1 John 2:1]. So, yes, CHRIST DIED FOR US. That’s what the Bible says.

Leon Morris was a scholar of the New Testament. He wrote a book titled, ‘The Cross in the New Testament.’ In it, he wrote, ‘The cross dominates the New Testament.’ But why? Why was the cross necessary? Why did Jesus have to die for us? That’s the question we are looking at today. What was our situation, that it could be solved by Jesus dying for us?

Further on in Charles Wesley’s hymn he describes his situation. This is how verse 4 starts: ‘Long my imprisoned spirit lay…’ Wesley thought of himself as imprisoned. It wasn’t that he was physically in prison. His spirit was imprisoned. Then he continues: ‘fast bound in sin…’ Sin had bound him and held him fast.

Wesley is certainly not the only hymn writer to describe his situation this way. In 2006, Chris Tomlin wrote a variation on the hymn ‘Amazing grace.’ He added a chorus which starts, ‘My chains are gone, I've been set free.’ Probably a hundred or more songs have been written with the idea of being imprisoned. Are Wesley and Tomlin and these other hymn writers right? Is this the situation we’re in? Are we imprisoned by sin? Is this an idea we find in the Bible?

It certainly is! Actually, the Bible has two ideas. It has the idea of sin keeping us out, and sin imprisoning or enslaving us.

How does sin keep people OUT? Almost at the beginning of the Bible we read the story of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve disobeyed God. Then Genesis tells us that God ‘drove out the man [that is, Adam], and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life’ [Genesis 3:24].

We don’t know exactly what cherubim are. Later, the people of Israel made carvings of cherubim, and gave them wings, so I suppose they are a kind of angel.

There were no locks in those days. But Adam and Eve were certainly barred from the Garden of Eden. No more walking with God for them! No more talking with God for them! And definitely, no getting to the tree of life for them. The cherubim would make sure of that.

Sin resulted in Adam and Eve being driven OUT of God’s presence.

How does sin IMPRISON or ENSLAVE people? Jesus once told a group of Jews, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin’ [John 8:34].

Let me describe two kinds of slavery.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, on average almost 80,000 slaves were brought each year to the Americas. The slave traders and slave owners had power over them, but it wasn’t because of anything the slaves had done.

Today, the most common kind of slavery is debt bondage. It’s illegal in every country of the world but it still happens, especially in India and Pakistan. Someone borrows some money. They can’t repay it, so the person who lent the money forces the person who borrowed the money to work for them.