The Gospel of the Cross

[Brother-Paul]

The Gospel of the Cross - 1

The gospel of the Cross is that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He hath been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures."

According to the Scriptures there is a divine necessity for the death of Christ. It was neither arbitrary nor accidental. All the writers of the New Testament insist upon its necessity. They differ on some points of importance, but not on this.

The New Testament gospel of the Cross is the same in John as in Paul, and Peter agrees with them both.

The death of Christ is the first fact of the Christian gospel, and its interpretation the first work of apostolic teaching.

In the Gospels our Lord insisted upon its necessity. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up."

After the confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi, His teaching centered in the Cross.
"From that time began Jesus to show His disciples, how that He must go into Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up." All the later teaching of Jesus centers in that must.

"According to the Scriptures"

Immediately the fact was accomplished the interpretation began, and it is based entirely upon the Scriptures.
To the disciples on the way to Emmaus the risen Lord said, "Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into His glory? And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself."

What things? On the evening of the same day He was with the larger company in the Upper Room, and it is said, "Then opened He their mind, that they might understand the Scriptures; and He said unto them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day."

It was the theme of the first Christian sermon preached by the Apostle Peter on the Day of Pentecost, and it is central to all the teaching of the New Testament.
To all the apostles the cross of Christ is the basis of faith, the substance of the gospel, the inspiration of holiness and the constraining passion of all redemptive toil and prayer. The death of Christ has stored up in it the redeeming virtue of "the gospel.

There is no gospel for sinners but in the cross of Christ; for if the New Testament is the rule and standard of Christian doctrine, there is no gospel but in the redeeming death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We may like it or not like it, but it is idle to propagate the Christian religion on the basis and with the authority of the New Testament unless we are prepared to receive its message into good and honest hearts; and that message is, the gospel of a sin-bearing, sin-expiating love by which alone sinners may be saved by grace through faith.

"Christ Died for Our Sins"

No one can fail to see that, in all the teaching of the New Testament, Christ is set forth as taking the place of the sinner in His death.
Every blessing of salvation is ascribed to the vicarious or substitutionary death of Christ.

The passages are too numerous and too familiar for quotation. One or two of the great passages will suffice.

Paul says:
"Christ died for the ungodly.... He commendeth His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:6, 8).

"Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (II Cor. 5:21).

"Christ also suffered for you.... who His own self bare our sins in His body upon the tree" (I Pet. 2:21-24).

"He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world" (I John 2:2).

"Christ suffered, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us unto God" (I Pet. 3:18).

"Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me" (Gal. 2:20).

To many these passages are an offense. They do not deny their logic, but they reject their teaching. To them a doctrine of substitution is inconceivable and even immoral. They deny both the necessity and the validity of atonement by the death of the Cross, and affirm that its propitiation is not necessary to salvation. To them, the parable of the Prodigal Son is the whole gospel, and in it there is neither mention nor sign of a Cross.

"God Was in Christ, Reconciling"

It is quite true that there is a way of preaching the Cross that approaches blasphemy. It pits the Son against the Father, and represents God as a reluctant Shylock who yields only when the utmost claim has been met. There was no antagonism between the Father and the Son. God was in Christ in all the suffering of redemption. The Son was the gift of the Father's love. The love of God is commended, not conceded, in the death of Christ. Herein was the love of God manifested in us, not procured for us, that God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

The Cross is the supreme manifestation of divine love, but it is that because it was for our sins He died.
Love sums up all, for God is love; but in love is law. Love and holiness are not at variance, any more than Father and Son could ever be in antagonism; but love is not complacency.

God is love, and God is fire. The death of Christ is set forth by God to be a propitiation through faith, by His blood, to show His righteousness. God could not connive at sin. The problem of redemption was to find a way by which a holy God could be just and the Justifier of the ungodly.

The gospel of the Cross, as set forth in the New Testament, solves the problem, and opens a new and living way to the Father. Through the death of Christ, God is just and the Justifier of them that believe in Jesus. He so deals in the Cross with the sin of the world that it is no more a barrier between Him and men.

Unless the death of Christ did this for the world, there is no gospel to preach to sinners, for there only is the sure ground of the faith that saves. It rests upon the finished work of redeeming love.

"Through Faith in His Blood"

Most of the defective teaching about the Cross comes from false ideas about sin, or the misunderstanding of faith.

If there be no sense of sin, there can be no understanding of the Cross; and if there be no saving faith, there can be no knowledge of its power.

Christ died for sin, but His death brings no salvation from sin apart from faith.
Substitution is made effective by identification. The fact that Christ died for me must be made operative by the faith which translates the Cross into the personal experience of crucifixion with Him.

The Cross is neither for wearing nor bearing; it is a thing to die upon.
Faith rests upon the death of Christ: "The answer of faith to the death of Christ is the believing abandonment of the soul to the righteousness of God that has satisfied the moral order of the world, and to the love of God which signifies its strength in what Christ has done for men."

"If one died for all, then were all dead." If Christ died for me, then I died in Him.
Faith reckons on that fact. It identifies the believer with Christ in His death and in His resurrection, and God honors the faith by making the reckoning good. There is the familiar illustration of George Wyatt, whose place was taken in the American Civil War by Richard Pratt. Pratt was killed in action, and died as the substitute of Wyatt. Some time later Wyatt was again drawn for service, but he claimed exemption on the ground that he had already been killed in action. The court upheld the claim. In something like the same way faith puts in its claim. We are justified by faith. It is not a fiction, but a fact, because through faith there is revealed the righteousness of God.


The Cross accomplishes more than reconciliation.
Sin goes deeper than relationship. Behind the sins there is sin.

Sin may be pardoned; but, unless the sin can be purged, the root of the evil will remain. The Blood cleanses as well as cancels.

The gospel of the Cross is that "the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."
The believer is not only crucified with Christ. He is alive in Christ, and Christ lives in him.
He is dead to sin, dead to self, dead to the world, dead to the law; and he is alive in Christ, identified with Christ, indwelt by Christ. The faith that rests upon substitution realizes the completeness of its identification.

It is Christ who saves. There is no salvation in the Cross, but in the Christ who died and rose again.
That gospel saves everywhere and to the uttermost. In it there is pardon for the sinner, cleansing for the defiled, and victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil.

By the Cross there comes to the world

Joyful news of sins forgiven,
Of hell subdued, and peace with heaven.

The Gospel of the Cross - by Samuel Chadwick

(To be continued)

 

[Brother-Paul]

The Gospel of the Cross - 2

The Cross is never a difficulty to the penitent sinner. That is a remarkable fact that is beyond controversy.

It is a difficulty to everyone else, but to the believing penitent it is the power of God unto salvation.
He looks and lives. The gospel of the Cross gives peace to the burdened conscience, breaks the fetters of evil habit, cuts off the entail of heredity, assures the soul of adoption through grace, and thrills the whole being with the sense of new life and power. It makes bad people good, weak people strong, and bitter people sweet.

By the Cross men's eyes are opened, they are turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.
The apostolic defense of the Cross is always based upon its saving power.

St. Paul admits that the word of the Cross is foolishness apart from the experience of its power, but it is the wisdom of God to them that know its power.
Experience is the key to its meaning. Apart from the experience of its saving power, it must always be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. Men have always stumbled at it, and they always will, until they know its mystery, receive its gospel, and prove its power.

The Witness to the Cross

The Cross is the first fact of the gospel of Christ. All the apostles gave it first place. The Cross is central.
They were at variance about many things, but they were at one in the pre-eminence of the Cross. That is one of the surprises of the New Testament. They had feared the Cross. Once a remonstrance was spoken, but the sternness of the rebuke made them afraid to question Jesus as to its meaning. They had fled from the Cross. They all forsook Him when they came within sight of it. Of all to whom His life had been a benediction, there was none to stand at His side when He came to the Cross. Their hope in Him died at Calvary. The Cross shattered their Messianic expectations. How could the Christ die upon a cross?

Then something happened that made that same Cross the foundation of eternal hope and the exultant glory of their faith.

They proclaimed the Crucified.
Instead of keeping the Cross in the background they set it forth, placarded it everywhere. It became the symbol of the new faith.

St. Paul made it the central theme of his preaching. He gloried in the Cross.

To the Corinthians he wrote,
"I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified"; and again he summed up the gospel in the words,
"We preach Christ crucified."

To the Galatians he wrote,
"God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

So it was with all the apostles.
To John, Jesus is the Lamb of God and the propitiation for the sin of the world, and Peter attributes the experience of salvation to the precious blood of Christ.

Everywhere in the teaching and preaching of the apostles the Cross was the basis of faith, the substance of the gospel, and the inspiration of holiness and service.

The Meaning of the Cross

Experience demands explanation. There is no virtue in a fact apart from its interpretation.
Sometimes it is said that we are saved by the death of Christ apart from any doctrine concerning it, but that cannot satisfy the mind of the believer. Experience does not wait for theology, but theology is the inevitable result of experience.

It is not necessary to understand the process by which salvation comes to the penitent heart through the Cross, but faith must be assured why the Cross is to be trusted for salvation.

There is a difference between the "how" and the "why."
The "how" is hidden, but the "why" is revealed.
Faith rests upon truth, and the truth of the Cross is the responsibility of Christian teaching.

The explanation did not begin until the fact was accomplished.
The teaching of our Lord's ministry before His death was practically confined to insistence upon the necessity of the Cross. He had to reassure His own faith. More than once He shuddered and shrank in godly fear. The "must" of a holy compulsion straitened and troubled His spirit. He would not pray to be spared. It was necessary for Him and for all who would follow Him.

No man could be His disciple who refused the Cross. It was an essential condition of the life He came to give, and equally necessary to the Kingdom He preached.

Immediately the fact was accomplished the interpretation began.
The risen Lord was the Interpreter of His own death, and He interpreted it according to the Scriptures.
"And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself."

He never offered any other interpretation. There is no other.
St. Paul reminds the Corinthians how he delivered unto them first of all that which he had received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.

The wisdom of the world has no key to the meaning of the Cross. No man can say Jesus is Lord save by the Holy Ghost, and the Cross is not a theory but a gospel.

"According to the Scriptures"

The Scriptures interpret the death of Christ as essentially related to sin. "Christ died for our sins."
That is the inclusive and final explanation. That is the substance of the gospel of the Cross.

Passages abound in which Christ is said to have died for sinners.
The strongest of them all sets forth the Saviour as being made sin (II Cor. 5:21)—not a sinner, for He was without sin, but sin—as if sin had been embodied and summed up in Him. What is sin? This also must be interpreted "according to the Scriptures."

For if sin is not what the Bible teaches it to be, the cross of Christ is without meaning. "Sin is lawlessness."
It is not a transgression of the law, for law may be transgressed without sin; and sin may never pass into transgression.

Sin is not an act, but an attitude. It is willful and voluntary alienation from God.
The issue of sin is death, the death that is separation from God.
Sin brings guilt, dislocation, and disorder.
Christ died to save sinners from their sin and to lift the curse of sin from the world.

The death of Christ for sin is the supreme demonstration of the love of God.
God was in Christ, not against Him.
The love of God is not conceded to the Cross, but commended in it.
The Cross manifests the love of God, but it did not procure it.
While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He loved me, and gave himself for me.

The death of Christ for sin interprets the Cross in relation to the divine character.
Love and holiness are not at variance, any more than Father and Son were in antagonism.
Love is not amiable complacency.
Love is fire.

The Cross declares the righteousness of God, and provides a way whereby God is "just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus."
The Scriptures interpret the Cross by analogies from the law court, the temple, and the family. No analogy is complete, and none must be pressed as if it were the whole truth. Neither must any be ignored. It takes them all to tell the whole, and even then it transcends them all.

By the Cross we are redeemed, ransomed, bought with a price, reconciled to God, adopted through grace; because Jesus Christ...
"made there (by His one oblation of Himself once offered), a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world."

Redemption Through His Blood

The doctrine raises difficulties for many minds, to which there is no answer but "according to the Scriptures." They have an answer.
There are many who are concerned for the character of both God and man in a gospel through sacrifice; but neither is imperiled, for the Cross is neither unrelated nor unconditioned.

The death of Christ is not an isolated act. The Cross is an incident; the sacrifice is eternal. The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world is in the midst of the throne. The throne is the throne of grace.

Through the Cross there is preached unto all sinners the gospel of forgiving love.

Sins were forgiven before Christ died, but the Cross proclaims to all men the forgiveness of sins.

The handwriting against sinners is blotted out. The gospel of grace proclaims through the Cross the forgiveness of sins.
Forgiveness is concerned with more than penalty. It goes deeper than acts of transgression to the fact of sin. The forgiven must forgive.
The Cross begets Godlikeness in those who receive its gospel.

The Cross is a symbol of experience as well as an object of faith.

The believer is conformed to the death of the Cross, and is quickened by the power of the Resurrection.
It is not a philosophy, nor even a theology, but a fellowship...

"I have been crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."

"God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."

The Gospel of the Cross - by Samuel Chadwick

 

[Brother Paul]

Well done "Brother-Paul". Somehow the dash made you a different person than myself (Brother Paul) which is somewhat disturbing. No hard feelings brother, computers follow the GIGO principle. I would like to comment on this OP but do not want readers to associate us as one and the same (for your sake or mine or the Lord's)(. Apparently I will re-register as a new person and use a new name though I have been watching and commenting for years. I cannot believe the Administrator missed this but it is what it is....May the grace and peace of the Lord be with and upon us all....

Brother Paul

 

[Brother Paul]

(This is Brother Paul not "Brother-Paul")

John MacArthur (The Murder of Jesus, pp. 219-21): To [Jesus] was imputed the guilt of their sins, and He was suffering the punishment for those sins on their behalf. And the very essence of that punishment was the outpouring of God's wrath against sinners.

In some mysterious way during those awful hours on the cross, the Father poured out the full measure of His wrath against sin, and the recipient of that wrath was God's own beloved Son. In this lies the true meaning of the cross.

Can such a thing be equated with being forsaken? Not the same at all…the Bible offers no support for MacArthur’s position without reading meaning into passages (eisegesis), or re-interpreting them as to what they mean as opposed to what they say.

Egkataleipō (forsaken) means to turn one’s back…but to actively pour out one’s wrath takes focus and intent upon the object of such wrath (see the seven seals)… that is not even implied in the Father’s relation to Christ on the cross.

On the cross He abandons Him…the children of Bellial have at Him and they kill Him (death is the consequence of sin and He had never sinned so death could not hold Him)…but His act and the intent of the Father was motivated by love and the experience He experienced on our behalf was OUR consequence NOT punishment.

The “punishment” motif comes from the judicial interpretation of the fall theologically constructed by the politically motivated Roman Catholic church in the early middle ages. Other Christians (the majority at that time) saw the warning “thou shat surely die” as a warning from love regarding the consequence not a punishment God would enact. When I told my little children “Do not run out into the busy street for in the day you do you shall surely get hit by a car” do you suppose I was threatening them? How awful! As if when or if they did this I would go and using a car I would hit them with it? He was trying to warn them foreknowing what was about to take place...this common sense view changes everything.

Brethren we must not forget that God chose to reveal as He did through ancient Hebrew thinkers. In expression near hyperbole is normal and most often the truths expressed are presented as a duality of conflicting thoughts. The truth being communicated is often done so like the two sides of one greater coin. So please also consider this aspect of the work of Christ on the cross.

Now see what the scriptures actually say not how Calvin and the RCs interpreted it....

Hebrews 2:14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; 15 And deliver ( to snatch away, rescue, save) them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world (not for God was so angry at the world) that He gave His only begotten Son…

Romans 5:8 But God shows his love for us (not His wrath toward us) in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Thus Christ’s death was an action of the love for us from God (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit).

Ephesians 2:1 And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath (we are children of “orge” – children of anger, and natural disposition, temper, indignation, agitation – this speaks of our character, not God’s anger at us because of a sense of a need to satisfy His justice), just as the others.

4 But God (now we address His attitude toward us), who IS rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us (loved as in past tense – while we were in our sins -notice it says nothing off His vehement hatred or anger at us), 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us (not wrath toward us)in Christ Jesus.

1 John 4:19 - We love Him because He first loved us (while we were still in out sin He loved us, and was not filled with wrath toward us).

Yes it is in his unfathomable love and in his pity that he redeemed us. Did we deserve this love? No! We would all become children of orge (disobedience)…we all can be indignant, obstinate, of natural disposition focused on the whims of the flesh, and the will of our own minds. So though He died on behalf of all mankind (making the ransom available for all) not all individuals will be saved because most will reject His gift of grace given to restore, redeem, reconcile (the Lord Jesus who loved us so much He willfully laid down His life).

Yes beloved we have been redeemed (ransomed) because of the riches of His grace, by such a steadfast love (God is love), not because His need for legal justice that was satisfied. Death never “satisfies” God (Ezekiel 18:23). It NEVER makes Him happy even to condemn the wicked.

God wanted Adam and Eve to avoid this consequence just as our parental warning was not a decree or threat of punishment for wrong doing, it was a warning from love of the inevitable consequence.

Christ was a propitiation (to propitiate – to win or regain favor by doing or offering something pleasing). He was the offering (of Himself, willfully) of that which disturbed our peace (death). His blood covers our sin and transgression as an acceptable exchange. He redeemed us (ga’al - to redeem, act as kinsman-redeemer not a substitute victim, to avenge and ransomus. He was not was “victimized” in place of us. Thus God in His forebearance “passed over” (atoned) our sins (Romans 3:25-26) not satisfied His need to punish.

You see beloved, there is a problem which many (especially in the west) are not aware of. In the Bible, in the Hebrew as well as the Greek, to be just or justified (as it is translated into English) is NOT about getting justice or having it served in the sense of vengeance, it is about being “made right” (dikaioo).

This is something God does for us because He loves us. When the scripture says “the just shall live by faith” (a principle which Paul leans on heavily) the word “just” here means the “righteous”…to be justified means to be righteousized. The one who is righteous before God is one who lives by faith (thus having been declared righteous by God, like Abraham). Such a one is given God’s Righteousness in exchange for their faith. God counts their faith as Righteousness.

The Father did not hate us because we were sinners and thus want to smite us in His wrath (but the Law would require it), He loved us even in our sin (it grieved Him), and He Himself became man so we could become the sons of God (to restore the fellowship). Think of the parable of the prodigal? What does this tell us of the Father? Was he waiting to beat the son? To punish the son? No He was waiting for him to come to a right mind (repent). The father was already ready and willing to embrace him and reconcile with him, AND restore him to his rightful place. This is an analogy of the Father in relation to sinners…we grieve Him not enrage Him.

IF Christ suffered a “full outpouring of the wrath” as John MacArthur and others teach, and it was the wrath that was eternally satisfied, THEN there is no more wrath (it has been satisfied “eternally” in full, otherwise the cross was insufficient)…but I beg to differ as I know there is yet a wrath at the outpouring of the vials (which we “the ransomed” will not endure) and at the judgment seat there will be a division and all who would not believe God will be cast out of His presence. Think on these things…