“Sin is what it is because it assaults and denies Love, and that Love is what it is precisely because it answers, heals, and redeems the very sin that assaults it”
The infinite complexity of the divine mind is such that God has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses. When God looks at a painful or wicked event through his narrow lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself and he is angered and grieved., But when God looks through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing out from it.
The slain Lamb is the central song of the universe forever. In eternity-past the plan was that the Lamb of God be slain, so that in eternity-future the Lamb of God, slain and triumphant, would be sung as the central song of the universe. Slain forever past in the mind of God, sung forever future in the mouth of the redeemed. He gave it up! The Lamb was slain on schedule. Don’t be intimidated by brilliant people who are utterly in the dark about the central purpose of the universe.
The Cross is not simply a lovely example of sacrificial love. Throwing your life away needlessly is not admirable it is wrong. Jesus’ death was only a good example if it was more than an example, if it was something absolutely necessary to rescue us. And it was. Why did Jesus have to die in order to forgive us? There was a debt to be paid God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be born God himself bore it. Forgiveness is always a form of costly suffering.
Salvation is not some felicitous state to which we can lift ourselves by our own bootstraps after the contemplation of sufficiently good examples. It is an utterly new creation into which we are brought by our death in Jesus’ death and our resurrection in his. It comes not out of our own best efforts, however well-inspired or successfully pursued, but out of the shipwreck of all human efforts whatsoever.
The Cross, it defines Christianity, it symbolizes all that we believe in. Why? Because on it Jesus died so that we wouldn’t have to, and then after that death, He rose to life again. We serve a living God who suffered a painful death on a cross for us. Ever since that defining moment two thousand years ago, Christians across the world and through the ages have meditated upon, written about, and thanked God for the wonder of the cross.
He went to the Cross so I didn’t have to!