The Wonder of the Cross
The Wonder of the Cross
Text: Acts 20:28 “...the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.”
What would be the result if a person fully comprehended the wonder of the cross? He would be totally transformed. He would be continually amazed and grateful. He would talk of Christ to anyone who would listen. He would become a compulsive worshiper. Worldly ambitions would perish. His life would be devoted to Christ, not self.
Beloved, let me speak plainly now. The unevangelized world is evidence that the church has lost the wonder of the cross. With some happy exceptions, the church generally has become comfortable, complacent and self-pleasing. We need to be awakened and moved afresh by the wonder of the cross. Dare we take this great work for granted, or just smile and say, "that's nice"? Of course not! We should make the words of this hymn our prayer,
“Oh make me understand it, help me to take it in,
What it meant to Thee, the Holy One, to take away my sin.”
Such a person is never the same. The world thinks he has lost his mind. He has! But he has found the mind of Christ. People like that can never again be satisfied with a bland Christian life. They realize that the Christianity they see around them is not the Christianity of the Bible, but a watered-down and often cheap imitation of that faith and devotion that blazed in the hearts of early believers. We are living in the last days, when men have become lovers of their own selves, lovers of money, and lovers of pleasure instead of lovers of God. We know about the cross, we even sing about it, but it doesn’t impact us as it should. What marks people who live in the wonder of the cross? They see who the Lord Jesus really is. They see what He did for them. They see who they are by nature, and they see the blessings that have flowed to them through Calvary.
1. Who He Is
This is not a mere point of doctrinal orthodoxy, but a life-changing truth. Someone said, "Life is a sick joke without the Lord Jesus Christ," and it's true. He is the hub of history. People are born to live, but not Him; He was born to die. We're commanded to remember His death, not His birth, and to show forth His death til He come. The cradle was on the road to the cross. His life was different, unique, and so was His death. There is no middle ground concerning Christ. Either we are for Him, or against Him.
He was truly man, genuinely human, and yet sinless and divine. This distinguishes Him from all other men. He could not sin. This and nothing less is what the doctrine of the impeccability of Christ means. In John 8:29 He said, “I do always those things that please Him,” (the Father). That precludes sin, even in thoughts and desires. Think about it. Even those who were not His friends testified to His sinlessness. Pilate said, “I find no fault in this man” (Lk. 23:4). Pilate’s wife said, “Have thou nothing to do with that just man” (Matt. 27:19). In Luke 23:15 Pilate tells us that even Herod found “nothing worthy of death” in Him. The traitor Judas Iscariot admitted, “I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood” (Matt. 27:4). One of the dying thieves said, “this man hath done nothing amiss” (Lk. 23:41). When He died, the attending centurion declared, “certainly this was a righteous man” (Lk. 23:47). That’s who He is.
He is God. Let it sink into your soul. God incarnate hung on the cross. Isaiah 9:6 refers to Him, the child that was given, the Son that was born, as “the mighty God.” Think of it! In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Charles Wesley expressed it thus:
“Our God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man.”
Down from His glory, ever living story,
My God and Saviour came, and Jesus was His name.
Born in a manger, to His own a stranger,
A Man of sorrows, tears and agony.
O how I love Him! How I adore Him!
My breath, my sunshine, my all in all!
The great Creator became my Saviour,
And all God’s fulness dwelleth in Him.
My God and Saviour came down from glory. The one who came to save me was God Himself. He descended, He became a man.
Without reluctance, flesh and blood His substance,
He took the form of man, revealed the hidden plan,
O glorious mystery sacrifice of Calv’ry,
And now I know Thou art the great "I Am."
Who is He? The Eternal Son of God. He never laid aside His divinity, not even His glory. Some hymns say He laid aside His glory, but they're wrong. He veiled it in a body of flesh. The Lord Jesus is not God minus something, but God plus something. He never was for even an instant less that fully God with all the powers and prerogatives of divinity. In the incarnation, in marvelous grace, He added humanity to divinity. There is no dichotomy, no dividing between the divine and human in Him, for they were and are eternally united. He is not one part God and one part man, but wholly God and wholly man. Genuine, yet sinless humanity, holy humanity. Adam was innocent. Christ was holy (Lk. 1:35). He is the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45), a quickening spirit. His link to us is through Mary, but His conception was through the power of the Almighty, and thus He was conceived without sin. His is the immaculate conception. Christ is the second man (1 Cor. 15:47), “the Lord from heaven.”
The Son of God, the great Creator, came to earth. He created the optic nerves for the man born blind, in John 9. He commanded and instantly calmed the wind and sea in Galilee (Mk. 4:37-41). He raised Lazarus to life after he had been dead and buried for four days (Jn. 11:39-44). These were just a few of His credentials presented to demonstrate His identity. He is God!
2. What He Did
If we really were to understand fully what He did, it would be enough to crush us with sensory overload. It is enough to stagger our imagination. He gave Himself for us. Do we really understand it? We may think we do, but one day we’ll see Him face to face and say with astonishment, like the queen of Sheba, “behold, the half was not told me” (1 Ki. 10:7). When we look on that beautiful, glorious face, we’ll realize fully who He is, and how little we gave Him in our earthly life. We’ll say like G. R. Adkins,
By and by when I look on His face,
Beautiful face, thorn shadowed face;
By and by when I look on His face,
I'll wish I had given Him more.
More, so much more,
More of my life than I e'er gave before
By and by when I look on His face,
I'll wish I had given Him more.
The Scriptures repeatedly link the deity of Christ to His work of redemption. For example, Colossians 1 emphasizes His deity. Verses 15-19 declare, “Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.” And in verse 14 we read, “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” Verse 20 says, “having made peace through the blood of his cross....” God died on a cross. That’s the reason we began with Acts 20:28 as our text. It reminds us that we are “the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.” The blood of God! It’s true that Darby revised the translation in his version to read, “...with the blood of his own,” but the other versions have it just as we read it. It is stated that way for its shock value. God became a man and shed His blood to save us and make us His own.
Hebrews 1:3 identifies Him and His work in this way. “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Who purged our sins? The One who is the brightness of the glory of God. The One who is the express image of His person. It doesn’t mean He is like God; it means He IS God! He who upholds all things by the word of His power, died on the cross to save us. By Himself He purged our sins. The One who did that is now sitting on the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Philippians 2 again brings together His identity and His work. “...Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God” (Phil. 2:5-6). We are told in verses 7 and 8 that the One who was equal with God, “took upon himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
Some see a problem in this. Could God really die? God is immortal, and that means, not subject to death. So how could God die? But the incarnation solves that problem. He took a human body. It was prepared for Him in order for Him to offer it as the one perfect sacrifice for sin forever (Heb. 10:5-10).
In 1738 Charles Wesley wrote,
’Tis mystery all: th’Immortal dies:
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the firstborn seraph tries
To sound the depths of love divine.
’Tis mercy all! Let earth adore,
Let angel minds inquire no more.
We should repeat with him, “Amazing love! How can it be, that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?” How can we sing it, and not gasp or weep? Can we sing it and go through the motions of remembering it on Sunday, and then return to selfish, worldly living the rest of the week? What has happened to us? In all too many cases, I fear we have lost the wonder of the Cross! We live in the days of the curse of dry-eyed Christianity. Some may even think it was the jolly good thing for Him to do, as if He ought to have done it. The wonder and amazement of this great sacrifice are lost on our generation of self-loving, pleasure-seeking Christians. We have learned little, or forgotten who He is and what He did, or else we would be changed.
What kind of death was His? Not homicide, where one man kills another. Not suicide, where a man kills himself. Not genocide where an ethnic group is erased. It was deicide, the killing of God, the murder of God. It was only possible because He humbled Himself. On Pentecost Peter declared, “Him...ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain” (Acts 2:23). F. W. Pitt wrote,
The Maker of the universe, as Man,
for man was made a curse.
The claims of law which He had made,
The claims of law which He had made,
unto the uttermost He paid.
His holy fingers made the bough
His holy fingers made the bough
which grew the thorns that crowned His brow.
The nails that pierced His hands were mined
The nails that pierced His hands were mined
in secret places He designed.
He made the forest whence there sprung
He made the forest whence there sprung
the tree on which His body hung.
He died upon a cross of wood,
He died upon a cross of wood,
yet made the hill on which it stood.
The sky that darkened o’er His head
The sky that darkened o’er His head
by Him above the earth was spread.
The sun that hid from Him its face
The sun that hid from Him its face
by His decree was poised in space.
The spear which spilled His precious blood
The spear which spilled His precious blood
was tempered in the fires of God.
The grave in which His form was laid
The grave in which His form was laid
was hewn in rocks His hands had made.
The throne on which He now appears
The throne on which He now appears
was His from everlasting years.
But a new glory crowns His brow,
and every knee to Him shall bow:But a new glory crowns His brow,
The Maker of the universe.
May we realize afresh who He is, and what He did, and
may these profound truths revolutionize and energize our lives so that
we each may say, “for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). Such a sacrifice by such a One demands a personal, practical response from every believer. May we prostrate ourselves before Him in loving worship and say with awe and wonder, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”
Carl Knott, based on notes taken on a message preached by William MacDonald in 1997
