The Message of The Cross
THE CROSS IS MY ONLY PLEA
Sir John Bowring KCB was born in Exeter in glorious Devon in 1792 and died there in 1872. During his lifetime he became one of the most remarkable men - an English political economist, traveller, miscellaneous writer, and the 4th Governor of Hong Kong. He was also one of the greatest linguists who ever lived. It is said that he could converse in over 100 different languages.
On a visit to Macao on the coast of South China, Bowring saw one day a sight that deeply impressed him. There stood overlooking the harbour the ruins of a beautiful church, originally built by early Portuguese colonists but destroyed by a typhoon. What impressed Bowring was not the beauty of the building or the drama of its destruction, but the sight of a bronze cross towering on the summit of the one remaining massive wall. Of all that man-made beauty, only one wall remained, topped by that huge bronze cross.
And it is said that Bowring, through the inspiration of that sight, penned that well loved hymn “In the Cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time.”
The Cross Is Enduring
For nearly 2000 years, the cross of Christ has towered over humanity. It endures as the unmistakable symbol of the love of God, who demonstrated his love for the world in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
The dispensations of men have come and gone but the cross and the gospel it symbolises have stood firm. Persecutions, religious apostasy, Enlightenment rationalism, militant atheistic communism, modernism and post-modernism have failed to eradicate its influence. For the future, I am confident enough in God to predict that the cross will outlive the current aggressive secularist agenda, the growing challenge of other faiths, and whatever ideologies humanity can throw at it. And I believe that the cross will still tower over the world when Jesus comes again. Battered, bruised and blood-drenched it may be – but stand it will.
History is littered with the wrecks of time and they will go on piling up around us. But the cross is not one of them, because it is not a thing of time but of eternity.
The cross has stood from eternity past in the purposes of God. The Bible assures us that it is no Divine afterthought. Jesus is the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Rev 13:8). In other words, in some mysterious way hidden deep within the inscrutable purposes of God, Christ was marked out for the cross from the very beginning. Equally, he will carry its marks into eternity future. The endless ages yet to come will not erase the nail prints or the spear marks from his glorious body. And one day in heaven, if you wish it, perhaps he will allow you to feel them as Thomas did all those years ago.
The cross appeared at a given moment in time, but it has stood from eternity past and will stand into eternity future, forever at the heart of God’s purposes, forever central to the plan of salvation, forever declared by God to be his one and only provision for the forgiveness of sins and the salvation of the human race.
The Cross Is Non-Negotiable
Charlotte Elliot said it well; “Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me.” In other words, the cross is my only plea. No other way home than through the cross.
There are many reasons for saying so. The cross of Christ is like a many-faceted jewel and every angle of view shows us a different sparkling truth about salvation. But from every angle one message repeats itself over and over again - God loves us!
The cross represents God’s total commitment in love to this one plan of salvation. No plan B; no other way; all his divine eggs in one basket; total self-giving in and of His son. How true were the words of Jesus, ”Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
The cross marks the Father’s complete and utter abandonment to this one way forward. Complete and utter acceptance onto himself of the worst that man could do.
And man’s worst was very bad indeed. Let me just remind you how bad, for the sake of a better understanding and a proper appreciation of the love that gave all for us.
The Cross Was Hell For Jesus
You may not like the sound of that but please remember it! I don’t mean it in the sense of the Apostles’ Creed (“He descended into hell...”). I mean it simply at the level of suffering. The cross was a hellish thing.
What do you honestly see in your mind’s eye when you think about the cross? An elegantly formed piece of brass on a polished communion table? A well crafted piece of wood on a church wall? A shiny gold ornament adorning a pretty neckline? Or a wooden thing hanging round a preacher’s neckline?
I had a passing thought the other day that our Lent Cross here was looking a bit crude and dog-eared. Now things do wear out and I know it was a lot smarter when it was new. But I’m glad that it is as it is now and I hope we’ll hang on to it. Because we need reminding that the real thing was not about beauty.
William How, one time Bishop of Wakefield, wrote: “I sometimes think about the cross; And shut my eyes, and try to see, the cruel nails and crown of thorns, And Jesus crucified for me.” The paradox for us is that the cross doesn’t bear thinking about but it must be thought about.
A reasoned response to the cross requires that we face it squarely and think about it realistically for what it is, not as a decoration piece but a cruel and pitiless thing, and a thing that is utterly meaningless apart from the Christ who bled and died in agony upon it.
The gospels don’t help when they simply say “And they crucified him”. But here is the reality.
Physical “Hell” If you had witnessed the crucifixion with your own eyes you would have seen Jesus stripped and tied to a whipping post and flogged with several thongs of leather interwoven with sharp jagged bone and lead. This treatment often laid bare the victim’s veins, muscles, sinews and bowels to exposure. You would have seen a crown of thorns thrust onto his head, and Jesus mocked and hit about the face and head, blood and tears streaming down his features. You would see the soldiers forcing him to carry a heavy cross bar on his bleeding shoulders until he collapsed, and Simon of Cyrene being press-ganged into helping him.
At the Place of the Skull, the disgusting, stinking town refuse heap (almost as if Jesus was being thrown out with the Jerusalem garbage) you would have seen him stripped naked, laid on the cross, and six-inch nails driven into his forearms just above the wrist. His knees would be twisted sideways so that the ankles could be nailed between the tibia and the Achilles’ tendon. Then before your sickened eyes, the whole cross would be lifted up with the blessed Son of God on it and dropped into a socket in the ground.
That was only the beginning. Crucifixion usually forced its victims to inflict on themselves a very slow death by suffocation. When Jesus’ arms were outstretched and fastened by nails to the cross, he had to support most of his body weight with his arms. His chest would be pulled upward and outward, making it difficult to breathe in and out. When his longing for oxygen became unbearable, he would have to push himself up with his feet to take the weight off his arms and let his chest contract more normally. In this way he could fend off suffocation, but it caused searing pain because it meant putting the body’s weight on the nails holding the feet, and bending the elbows and pulling upwards on the nails through the wrists. And Jesus back, torn open repeatedly by his previous flogging, would scrape against the rough wooden cross with every breath. So there you would see him hang, in intense heat and unbearable thirst, the sweating panting mob taunting and abusing him, flies crawling on his eyes, mouth and bleeding flesh. It was the height of pain and the depth of shame.
How many of us see it these days for what it was? The truth is we have grown familiar with the unthinkable. We have made a trinket out of a murder weapon. We have glamorised the shocking and the shocking no longer shocks us. You probably don’t flinch very much these days when you see new images of suffering in (say) Zimbabwe or the Sudan. Constant exposure has dulled our senses.
I want to ask you today if constant exposure to the message of the cross has inured you to the severity of the sufferings of Christ. Has familiarity bred in you, if not contempt, then a degree of comfort?
Even on the purely physical level, I say again that the cross was hell for Jesus.
Spiritual “Hell” But to that physical we must add the spiritual; the enormous pain of bearing the sin of the world, of bearing the wrath of God, of bearing abandonment by God.
Empathy with Jesus at this point is impossible. Because we are physical beings we just might have some slight idea of his physical suffering and feel some empathy toward him. Maybe! But his spiritual sufferings are in a different dimension. None of them is capable of human understanding. They represent pain that is off any scale we know. Consider it:
• The sinless and holy one, with the sins of the world in all their stinking corruption heaped upon his spotless shoulders.
• The one of whom God had said “This is my Son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased” feeling the enormity of his Father’s displeasure against sin – the wrath of God upon himself as he bears the sin of the world alone.
• The one who from eternity past had known only the sublime intimacy of the Father’s nearest presence, hanging alone and abandoned by God on the Cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is suffering that cannot be imagined or shared or empathised with. It is beyond words. It is beyond human comprehension because it is God’s pain, God’s heartache for a lost world. And it is the essential redemption price for the world.
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Peter, the same man who had deserted and denied Jesus only hours earlier, later wrote these words, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed......but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” (1 Peter 1:18)
Do you know it this Good Friday? If so, what difference does it make? Is it written on your heart and mind – that Jesus Christ purchased your pardon not with hard cash but with shed blood? Not with pounds and pennies but with pain and perspiration? Because nothing less would do and nothing more could be given?
You must make your own mind up about the cross. But for my part I am sure of this:
• That God would not have allowed his beloved Son to suffer and die like this for us if there had been any alternative way of salvation for the human race.
• It is illogical to suggest that, having considered it necessary to go these lengths, the Lord would allow anybody to negotiate another way into the Kingdom.
• It is illogical to suggest that having paid such a price he would be open to accept any other currency; that he would tolerate anybody trying to negate his self-sacrifice.
• It is simply unacceptable to conclude that the cross is just one way among many by which people can come to God. The Biblical message is unequivocal; we come by the cross or we do not come at all.
The cross is my only plea. And today the Saviour who died upon it stands before us once again with open arms ready to receive us. Ready, in fact, to receive all who will come to him in repentance and faith. Will you do that? Will you come? It might be for the first time, or to renew or reaffirm your discipleship. But come today as God calls you to the cross which is your only plea.
Peter Waugh
