When many Christians look at the cross they see mercy but dont see condemning judgment. When Jesus died on the cross He became sin, a curse and was judged accordingly. The just condemnation that we deserved He received. Isaiah says that it was God’s will to crush Him and make His life an offering for sin, the Lord layed our iniquity upon Him. He became a curse, God judged Him to take away our sin. It was God’s plan to kill Him instead of us, that becomes affective in a person when they place their trust in the cross of Christ. God’s justice was executed upon Jesus. In His life blood is the new covenant as Jesus stated at the last supper. We become one with Him in His death and resurrection the moment we place our trust in Him.
So in the cross we see both mercy and condemning justice. When we see how God judged individuals and nations and then see His desire to save us from wrath and sin by executing Jesus, we can say as Paul did, “I glory, rejoice in the cross of Christ. For by it I have been crucified to the world and the world to me.”
The cross is our power over sin. The cross is our redemtion. The cross is the way God provided for our salvation. The cross is why the Word became flesh, why He became the Son of Man. The cross of Jesus is eternal life to me. Thank God for the cross of Jesus.
Sin is an action to me, its something we do. I do not believe you can literally become sin anymore than you can become jump or run.
To me there is nothing just about punishing and judging one person for the sins of another.
I believe the Romans in collaboration with Jewish religious leaders killed Jesus, not God. But this does not mean it was not or could not be part of the plan. I am sure God knew that if he became human we would probably execute him.
I see a lot of metaphors being taken literally. I see a society immersed in animal sacrifices and as Mitchell puts it, “blood magic,” interpreting the incarnation, death and resurrection Jesus in the best way they know how.
I don’t claim to understand the fullness of Jesus’ death but I am not a fan of what I perceive as a wooden literalism and penal substitution.
Then how does His death on the cross work salvation for those who believe it?
The scripture is clear if you take it for what it says but if you deny it you’ll have to make something up.
What you call blood magic is the blood of the New Covenant which a person has no part in if they dont receive His blood sacrifice.
The incarnation creates solidarity. Allows us to see God’s love clearly in spite of ourselves. I see the act of salvation as stemming more from the side of what God was willing to do for us. To become one of us, to lead us in the right way. I remember reading a fictional story way back in the day about a skeptic around Christmas time who didn’t believe in Jesus or the incarnation. He saw some pigeons (some type of bird) outside during a snowy and bitterly cold freezing night. He knew they would die if they didn’t find shelter so he opened his barn/shed and tried to get them in. Naturally since he wasn’t one of them they were fearful of him, distrustful and couldn’t understand he was just trying to help them. They would keep scattering but they wouldn’t go too far away. He thought to himself, if only for a moment I could become one of these pigeons, they would see my true intent, trust me, and allow me to lead them to safety. At that exact moment church bells began ringing. Or so the story goes.
I would not say this is necessarily the totality of Jesus’ work on the Cross. But I certainly believe a solidarity model can account for significant portions of Christianity. God lowered himself to the point of dying on the cross just to show us that despite our faults, he still loves us. That if we turn to him and repent, he will embrace us with open arms. The infinite God of the universe condescended himself, stripped his divinity and suffered a horrible death just to show each one of us his love. I think of that grizzly and barbaric Cross as the greatest love story ever told.
That’s what you and others think but that’s not what God foretold, Jesus and the apostles said. People metaphor themselves into unbelief. The scripture is full of what I have consistently been proclaiming. God did a work of salvation for us by Jesus becoming sin, literal sin.
But that still doesn’t change what God very clearly explains. Jesus revealed it directly to Paul. The Law of God pointed to it. Jesus said that’s what He came to do. That is exactly what the apostles preached and called the Gospel of Jesus and that is what the Church of Jesus is built on. You must conform to it, not it to you. A person’s salvation depends on it. This Gospel is the power of God unto salvation.
Totally wrong. If you believe in a false Jesus or Gospel you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Paul said, let those who preach a different Gospel be condemned.
Paul warned and rebuked some who were being lead astray that there is no resurrection, they were believing a lie. If there is no resurrection then Jesus didn’t raise from the dead so they were still in their sins. Knowing the true Jesus and Gospel is necessary for salvation. The Muslims believe that Jesus was but they think He was only a prophet, not God’s Son. They do not know Jesus and are not safe from God’s judgment.
One reason the Jews of Jesus time didn’t see Him as their Messiah was because they were expecting Him to deliver them from their enemies the Roman’s, they were looking at the wrong enemy. The true enemies were sin and the devil, thats who they were slaves to. Wrong understanding and love of self left them in unbelief and slavery to sin.
May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
I remember reading that for the first time and thinking I had a long way to go before I would feel that way. I was deeply grateful for his crucifixion, but I wasn’t excited about undergoing my own. Tozer wrote that He doesn’t leave us hanging there forever; that there comes a time when He says “that’s enough.” Thought that was fascinating. I sense the worst may be over after decades of the destruction of my sinful nature where every second was pure agony. I can relate to the question, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”
The death of our old spirit and being Born Again, becoming a New Creation is instant. We are recreated in the righteousness of God in a moment.
But daily we must put to death the flesh and its desires by the power of that new life of God that we were reborn with.
We can not work our way to the New Birth or the New Creation, that was all done by the unmeritted favor (grace) of the Father. Born Again, not by the will of man but by the will and power of God. The same power that God exerted in raising Jesus from death lives in us. He freed us from the power and lordship of sin and the devil when we placed our trust in Jesus. Now walk in that liberty.
We were crucified with Christ the moment we believed.
I have been for decades. I cooperate. I received the new birth and I take up my cross and, and… I follow him. I can get down or walk away without my cross anytime I choose to do so, and I have. I must work out my own salvation with fear and trembling.
Right after encountering Jesus and coming to love him more than life, I was asked to be in a play at university. We began to practice a scene and the female as part of her role, suddenly, unexpectedly, divulged a large area of her anatomy normally completely covered. As I saw this beginning to happen, I turned away so I would not see it.
I ached for hours. My body hurt. Physically and psychically I felt I had been assaulted.
I cooperated with the process of sanctification, of submitting my self as a living sacrifice to God’s will. I had no idea, none whatsoever, that something like that was a part of what it meant to live for Christ.
It took place in a split second, the decision to turn away. Instantly, I thought of hell. Whether right or wrong, biblical or not, doctrinally correct or not, I didn’t consider those things. I considered going to hell and I had just come from there–almost, and I didn’t want to go back.
The warnings that Jesus gave about judgement are a godly encouragement to run from sin. They helped me come out of a time of unbelief. Jesus said, “when the Spirit comes, He will convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgement”. The Spirit of God uses the fact of judgement to turn people from sin, if they will believe what He says.
And running from sin and choosing to sit with the pain are deliberate actions I take to remain in close fellowship with the One who sacrificed everything for me. At least that’s how I look at it. I take no credit for escaping that situation, but I sure did participate. We are commanded to love him with all our strength and turning away took everything I had, not just at the moment but for days–I ached literally for days. It shook me to my core.