WHAT’S THE CROSS ALL ABOUT?

The more I read the Word, the more I have to unlearn.

I find I am fighting enemies already defeated, praying for God to do what He has already done, waiting for a kingdom that has already come, and thinking the cross was just a sacrifice for sin. But what about this…

What if the cross is the restoration of all things and we just don’t see it, so we live in a dark cave of illusions?

What if every person is forgiven and they just don’t know it, so they walk through life trying to deal with guilt and shame?

What if all humanity has been adopted into God’s family and every child of God has been raised to the highest rank and are sitting next to our Father in heaven right now and don’t know it?

What if God has written an emancipation proclamation freeing all slaves of religious legalism and opened the gates of the death camps of addictions, loneliness, fear, worry, and depression, but have never heard of the decree.

What if our stolen identity has been returned and we no longer have to live what we aren’t, but who we are, and just don’t see it.

Impossible? Too unbelievable? Well, it’s true on the authority of our Father who never lies.

The cross of Christ reconciled everything and everyone in heaven and earth to God. In Jesus’ words, “It is finished.” The restoration of all things is completed at the cross and the only thing left is to see it with the eyes of our heart.

Evangelical Christianity has emphasized the sacrificial nature of the cross and this is certainly a beginning. The cross is where our Lord Jesus suffered death by crucifixion not only on our behalf and for our good, but in our place. “Christ died for us.” [Rom 5:8] We carried the sentence of death because of our sin, but Jesus died in our place. In the words of a song, “Like a rose trampled on the ground, he took the fall and thought of me above all.”

This was good news to cultures that used sacrifices to try and get the favor of the gods for rain, or sun or victory in battle. It was also good news to the Jews who grew up killing bulls, slitting lamb’s throats, and twisting the heads off birds to get the favor of God’s forgiveness. “He entered once for all into the Holy of Holies, having found and procured eternal redemption.” (Heb 9:11)  What an economy of words: “once for all.” No more bloody sacrifices to get God’s favor. All have the grace and mercy of God.

Limiting the cross to just a sacrifice, however, hides the expanse of what happened. This is just the beginning of the story. There is much more…

Have you ever seen the agony of parents who are trying to find their missing child? I have seen the tears on those crime programs on TV. Loving parents will do anything to get their child home, and the entire focus of their lives. Our Father wanted us home so badly, He sent His Son to die in our place to bring us back to Him.

The cross shows the full extent of God’s love.  “We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.” (Rom. 5:8 Msg.)

Through the cross, our Father was able to receive his family back from the kidnapper – Satan. He paid the ransom price – death – to get his children back. Now he could say, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters.” [II Cor. 6:18]

Not only does he get us home, but He puts us in the highest position in the universe. “He has raised us up and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us.” [Eph. 2:6,7] He is proud of us and wants to show us off to all the angels of heaven. It’s like when we go to dinner with old friends we have not seen for a while. The moms say, “Did you bring the pictures of the kids?” And we pull them out and explain what is happening with each one. Our Father says, “This is my son, Jim, he is becoming like my Son Jesus.”  [Rom. 8:29]

Not only did our Father get his family back home, Jesus found his bride. We became the bride of Christ because of the cross. “I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven, as ready for God as a bride for her husband..” (Rev 21:2 Msg.) The new city is a bride!

Totally incomprehensible! How can this be? The world builds cities, God builds relationships. The most important thing to man is a taller building, a tower of Babel to reach the sky, and make a name for himself. Man is interested in the beauty of the office. God is interested in the beauty of the people in the office. Jesus is our husband adoring the beauty of his bride – God’s people – coming down the aisle of the universe.

Not only does the cross
Tell us of infinite love,
Bring us home to our Father and family,
Seat is with God in the best room in the house,
Made us the bride of Jesus,
We become God’s home.

God had his choice of any home into the universe and he picked our hearts as the best place to live!  “You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you?” (1 Cor 3:16) “But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives. God himself put it this way: ‘I’ll live in them, move into them; I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people.’”(2 Cor 6:16)

This is all good news, but it gets even better…

Have you seen the pictures of the emaciated prisoners in Hitler’s death camps staring through the barbed wire? Their faces were pleading for help, but when it came they couldn’t believe it. They had to be carried to freedom, and so do we.

At first, we wonder if He really means it, if He really will liberate us. We have been in prison so long we can’t believe it’s true. But He stands at the gate telling his reluctant children, “Don’t be afraid, I’ve redeemed you. I’ve called your name. You’re mine. When you’re in over your head, I’ll be there with you. When you’re in rough waters, you will not go down. When you’re between a rock and a hard place, it won’t be a dead end —  Because I am your personal God.” (Isa 43:1-4 Msg.) When we take that first step out of the gates, we find everything He said was true.

The cross “redeemed” us from slavery. What a word of anguish “slave” is. We wince when we hear of the slaves in Siberia, the slaves in the death camps of the holocaust, the slaves on the galley ships, the slaves on the plantations, and the sex slaves of Thailand (and the world). These are all slaves of man’s lust for power and sex. Then the slavery goes deeper in our souls: slaves of addictions to drugs, food, porn, and alcohol; and slaves to loneliness, depression, worry, condemnation, and fear. We were sold under sin, dominated by Satan, and condemned. We needed a redeemer. Someone who would buy us out from the death camps of sin. Jesus did it. He walked up to our prison, opened the gates, and said, “Come out, you’re free.”

Jesus stands at the gate and reads every name because, “He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world.” (1 John 2:1-2) Everyone is set free – including you reading this.

But free from what? Not just sins, but the whole legalistic system! We don’t have to play the game of phony religion, pretending to be holy to be accepted in the “in group.” We were freed from the law code. “For sin shall have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law, but under grace.” [Rom. 6:14] We can be “real.” God loves “real.” That’s why God liked David so much. He was “real” in the Psalms. We are no longer under a merit system – earning God’s approval by trying to do good. We work from approval, not for approval.

We get our stolen identity back. The old man we constructed to deal with our hurts and pain is gone. The old guy we invented to look good to the religious crowd is dead. “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing.” [Rom 6:6] Now we are free to become the new creation and true person God intended. The phony life is over.

We have been “completely changed.” That’s what “reconciled” means. It’s about restored relationships.

Spiritually, we were alienated from God, but now we are his friends. We are adopted into his family.“In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ.” (Eph 1:5) God is our “Daddy.” “God sent forth his Son. . . so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying, ‘Abba!(“Daddy”) Father! [Gal. 4:46]

Psychologically we were alienated from ourselves, now we “have it together.” Our inside is the same as our outside. We can “stop assuming an outward expression that does not come from within you and is not representative of what you are in your inner being but is patterned after this age.” (Rom 12:1 Wuest)

Sociologically we were alienated from others, now the love of God unites us. Most of the New Testament teaching is about restoring relationships. “You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness.” (Eph 4:4-6)

Ecologically we were alienated from nature, because nature obeys God and man doesn’t. When man obeys God he is made one with nature again. This is what the “tree huggers’ are looking for in all the wrong places.

The ecological problem is a sin problem. “If you defile the land (by unlawful sexual relations), the land will vomit you out.” (Lev 18:28)   “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bonds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land dries up, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea are swept away.”(Hosea 4:1-3) Nature is waiting for the revealing of the sons of God. (Rom. 8:19)

So the cross makes us:
One with God,
One with ourselves,
One with others,
One with nature.
And it gets even better…

The enemy who stole our life is defeated. “The Son of God entered the scene to abolish the Devil’s ways.” (1 John 3:8) And He did it!

We have a new country. “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.” (Col. 1:13)

We are accepted, we don’t have to try to impress God. (Eph. 1:3)He is already impressed with us.

“So let’s summarize what the cross has done. “ Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love.

“Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.”

“Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people — free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.” (Eph. 1:6-10)