Life Ministries

Views of the cross
Romans 3:21-26

Now the death of the Lord Jesus Christ can be viewed in several different ways and from several different perspectives, as you well know. Most frequently when we examine the death of Jesus Christ we do it from our viewpoint. We come to the cross and see it through man's eyes. We see the cross of Jesus Christ as that act by which Christ provided salvation for us, by which He saved us from sin and death and hell and the power of the flesh, by which He delivered us from the kingdom of darkness and put us in the kingdom of His dear Son, by which He ushered us into that place where we're blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies; by which He delivered us from the wrath to come, by which He took us who were enemies and made us friends of God, by which He granted to us eternal life and all that it involves. We see it from our viewpoint. It could be looked at that way and legitimately so.

    We also could come to the cross and look at it from the viewpoint of the holy angels. The angels, by the way, look at the cross and they are searching over the cross and they're examining it and looking into the atoning work of Christ, trying to comprehend and understand its great profound mysteries, mysteries which they cannot fully understand and they will not fully experience because holy angels need no redemption. And they see in it the wonder and the majesty and the glory of the mind of God and the goodness of God and the love of God as He provides for unworthy sinners. Theirs is a fascinating perspective.
    We could look at the cross from the standpoint of Satan and his demons. They see the cross as that point in which the Son bruised the serpent's head, that point in which the one who had the power of death, Satan, was destroyed by the One who now carries the power of death, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Demons see the cross through their own eyes. They thought it was their moment of victory and in one split second Jesus showed up in the pit to announce His triumph over them and He has openly displayed His victory over principalities and powers and rulers and so forth. We could look at the cross from the vantage point of demons.
    We might even look at the cross through the eyes of Jesus Christ. We might even see it as He must have seen it. There it was that He was to bear the sins of the world in His own body and we could go through the excruciating agony of that kind of sin bearing and that rejection and hear Him cry, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
    We could also see the cross as the moment of His glory for He said, "If I be lifted up, I'll draw all men to Myself." We could also see it as the verification of His word because He promised that He was going to die and there His promise came to pass. We could also see it as the moment of His greatest triumph when He indeed bruised the serpent's head. We could see it as the great demonstration of His love for He said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
    You can look at the cross, as it were, through your own eyes. You could look at it through the eyes of holy angels, fallen angels, through the eyes of Christ Himself and you will see its glory.
    But for today, I want us to look at the cross in its relationship to God, to God Himself, God the Father. What did it mean to God? We know what Jesus' death meant to us. We know what it meant to the holy angels, it gave them a new verse to their great hymns of praise. We know what it meant to the demons, it was the end of their control of their own destiny. We know what it meant to Christ. But what did it mean to God? What did the death of Christ mean to God? How did it represent God? How did it glorify God? What is His perspective on that great event?
And to understand that, look again at Romans chapter 3:21-26….
    Now that great text tells us what the cross meant to God. What the death of Christ, the atoning work of Christ, the blood- shedding sacrifice of Christ meant to God. Four things stand out. It declared God's righteousness, it exalted God's grace, it revealed God's consistency and it confirmed God's Word.
    Christ died on the cross to demonstrate or to reveal or to declare God's righteousness. This is a very, very essential, a very, very important issue. Men have always struggled with this matter. Why? Because when you understand God to be a righteous God and you understand yourself to be a sinner, it puts you in a very difficult position. How can a sinful man be right with God? This is man's age-old longing, how can I know God, how can I be forgiven by God, how can I be right with God...it is that very question that has spawned religion. Religion is in every sense an attempt to answer that question, to solve the cry of the heart of man to appease whatever deity he may believe in, under whose authority he feels himself and under whose judgment he is afraid. How can I be right with God? Is God a righteous, holy, just God? And if indeed He is, then how can I appease Him? How can I satisfy His requirement for holiness, perfection, justice and righteousness and be right with Him?
    Many suggestions are made about how man can be right with God, we call them religion. But apart from Christianity, all of them involve human achievement and works, and they don't satisfy God. They don't make provision for us and they don't make us right with Him.
    You remember Bildad, the friend of Job, echoed Job's cry? How can a man be right with God? How can he be clean? And you remember Paul on the Damascus road, "What will you have me to do?" And you remember those who heard Peter cry, "What shall we do?" And you remember those in hearing Jesus who said, "What do we do to work the works of God?" And you remember the Philippian jailor who said, "What must I do to be saved?" …How can I connect up with a righteous, holy, and just God? That has always been the cry of man's heart.
    And so, God says, "Look, I'm going to give you the gift of a right relationship with Me, the gift of forgive-ness of sins, the gift of eternal life, but the price will be paid." And it was paid, He says, in my son Christ Jesus.
    No amount of optimism, no amount of love or grace or mercy can put sin aside and stop requiring its penalty. A holy God could never bypass sin and be complacent about evil. And even though He loved the sinner deeply, He cannot forgive the sinner unless His justice is satisfied. The death of Christ then was not only an act of grace, it was an act of justice.
How great is the love of God for His creation!