What is the meaning of the cross?

There are, decidedly, two aspects of the death of our Lord here. First, it was according to God's counsel and foreknowledge; secondly, it was the culminating action of the hatred and rebellion of men. Thank God, from long before time began, in view of the incoming of sin with all its dread consequences, a divine counsel determined that the establishment of the will and glory of God, and the laying of a righteous basis for the blessing of men, should rest on that very death which was the crowning act of man's hatred. The death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross is the basis of all God's designs for the blessing of men. Indeed, we can rightly and thankfully say that the cross is the centre of eternity. Eternity past, as we speak, looked forward to the cross, and eternity to come will look back to the cross. By the cross, with the sacrificial death of our Lord, God has been vindicated; sin has been dealt with; the devil defeated; righteousness established; and the love of God has flowed out towards those who otherwise would have been, deservedly, banished from His presence for evermore.

The cross is to us the supreme manifestation of the love of Christ, that passes knowledge; it is the revelation of the heart of God to the world. It was there that our sins were atoned for; there the cup of our judgment was drained to its last drop by our suffering Saviour; there the hatred of men was fully exposed, but there the love of God shone out above it all in all its splendour. We must stand by the cross and let its meaning move our souls; as we do so we shall be consciously the disciples whom Jesus loves and shall respond to His love in faithfulness and praise.

Hitherto we have only looked at the King of the Jews in reference to His birth; but grand and glorious as that event was, we afterwards see Him in a position far more blessed for our contemplation than even that. I refer to Calvary's cross. Yes, it is the cross of Christ that is the happy meeting-place between God and man. No death of the cross, there could have been no triumph over death. No death of the cross, there could have been no salvation from hell. No death of the cross, this world would have been without one cheering ray as to the future. No death of the cross, not one sinner could have ever reached the mansions of glory. But the blessed gospel declares that Christ has died. The Scriptures most prominently set forth the eternal value of Christ's death, and our Lord taught the same thing. He said, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." The believer's peace with God is only through the atoning work of Christ. We are justified by His blood, sanctified by His blood we have access into God's presence, where our High Priest is, by His blood. It is in the death of Jesus we see God's wondrous love to man so abundantly manifested. There we see that Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it. There we see that the King of the Jews died for that nation. There we see that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. There we see God's infinite hatred of sin, and His amazing love to sinners. There Jesus bare our sins in His own body. There He was made sin for us. There His soul was made an offering for sin. There He once suffered under God's wrath, that we might receive eternal peace and blessing.

Our Lord died a sacrificial death, an atoning death, a vicarious death. He did not die for Himself. He took the sinner’s place on the cross, bearing the punishment due to sin, upholding God’s righteous claims and the holiness of His Person, making the way clear for God to righteously express His love in the offer of forgiveness of sins to guilty sinners. If not a single sinner were saved by His death, yet that death infinitely glorified God.

But in the cross perfect righteousness against sin is displayed and exercised, and infinite love to the sinner. God is glorified in His nature, and salvation to the vilest, and access to God, according to the holiness of that nature, provided for and made good, and this in the knowledge, in the conscious object of it, of the love that had brought it there; a perfect and cleansing work in which that love was known. This, while the sins were put away, could only be by the cross: God revealed in love, God holy and righteous against sin, while the sins of the sinner were put away, his conscience purged, and by grace, his heart renewed, in the knowledge of a love beyond all his thoughts; himself reconciled to God, and God glorified in all that He is, as He could not else be; perfect access to God in the holiest, where that blood, the testimony to all this, has been presented to God, and the sins gone for ever, according to God's righteousness while the sinner has the consciousness of being accepted according to the value of that sacrifice, in which God has been perfectly glorified, so that the glory of God and the sinner's presence there were identified. Angels would learn, and principalities and powers, what they could learn nowhere else.

The cross of Christ is the basis, the fundamental centre, of all these truths, — the relations between God and man as he was, his responsibility; grace; expiation; the end of life, as to sin, the law, and the world; the putting away of sin through the death of Christ, and its consequences in us. Everything is established there, and gives place to the power of life that was in Christ, who there perfectly glorified God — to that new existence into which He entered as man into the presence of the Father; by whose glory, as well as by His own divine power, and by the energy of the Holy Ghost, He was raised from the dead.

There entered into the death of Christ the questions of sin and its judgment, our never-dying souls and their eternal salvation, the thraldom of Satan over men and his overthrow, the eternal justice of God and the vindication of His character, as well as the declaration of His love. And it is because men have lost the sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, of the priceless value of souls, of the holiness and justice of God and the absolute necessity of the cross of Christ if sinners were to be righteously saved, and if God was to be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly, that they dare to belittle the death of Christ in this manner.

Upon the cross, the holy, sinless Son of God was made sin for us, and then and there made atonement for our guilt, and secured eternal redemption for us. He both satisfied and glorified God in regard to our terrible guilt, and we know Him now as our Lord and Saviour; Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. He is God and Man. Who else could bring fallen man back to God in a right way in happiness and blessing, and glorify God in doing it? And in what other way could even such an One do it righteously and abidingly, save by bearing the judgement we deserved? There was none other who could do it! There was none other way! To Christ on the Cross we look to see the way of God’s wonderful wisdom.

The whole power of Satan was concentrated at the cross. He brought up all his forces to this point. He staked everything — the power of the world, and the power of darkness. (Luke 22:53.) He had ever watched, with most malignant jealousy, God's chosen vessel of wondrous grace to man. He missed Him when he slew the babes in Bethlehem. He was overcome in the temptation in the wilderness, and bound by a stronger than he. But he returned to Him again. "The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me." He had no power of death over God's unblemished Lamb. He laid down His life of His "own voluntary will." "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself." (John 10:17-18.) His death, then, was not the result of the power of man or Satan over Him; but of His own perfect subjection to His Father's will. At the same time it clearly proved the extent of Satan's power in the world. As the obedient One He lays down His life. In appearance the enemy triumphs. But it was not so. "Through death he destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." (Heb. 2:14.) This was absolute victory. He bore the judgment of God against sin in His death, and thereby completely annihilated all the rights and power of the enemy for ever. Morally, judicially, and absolutely, the true seed royal triumphed over the great enemy of God and man. True, "He was crucified through weakness." But He entered the regions of the dead as "the Son of God with power." His presence was felt throughout the deep caverns of the grave. He burst its bars asunder, and carried off in triumph the spoils of the enemy. "He ascended up on high, leading captivity captive." A risen Christ is LORD OF ALL.

It is this revelation of God in the cross that is its moral power. In all that He does, the Son of God is doing the Father's will, keeping the Father's commandments, making known the Father's name. The gospel is the "gospel of God" — His good news, — in which "glory to God in the highest" coalesces with "peace on earth, delight in men." And so it is "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me." Every way it becomes true, "when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son." This is that moral power of the cross which some would make the whole matter, but which can only be when found in a true atonement for our sins. Mere exhibition would be theatrical, not real, and could not do the work designed in it. A real need really met, a just debt paid at personal cost, guilt measured only and removed by such a sacrifice, — this alone can lay hold upon the heart so as to be of abiding control over it. And this does control: "O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant and the son of Thine handmaid; Thou hast loosed my bonds."