Surveying the Wondrous Cross

This week, in preparation for the Friday night Cities Institute on Christology, I have been freshly encouraged by the sheer wonder of the cross of Christ.

There is an expected but breathtaking vastness to the study of God, even in one topic like the person and work of Christ. My focus, though, narrowed in on two questions, What did Jesus do when he died?, and Who did Jesus do it for?

The Bible gives us two main answers, which in theological terms are called “penal substitutionary atonement” and “particular redemption.” These terms mean, respectively, that Jesus’s death satisfied the penalty of sin in the place of someone else, and his death fully secured the salvation of his people. 

In other words, the “what” of his death was sin-bearing substitution; the “who was it for” is everyone who believes in him. 

Those who reject Jesus and suffer “the punishment of eternal destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:9) do not have their sins paid for, which is why they must pay themselves. Only the believer, the one in Christ, can say: “There is therefore now no condemnation.” Because Jesus was condemned in our place.

And that is the confidence that the cross gives us. If we trust Jesus, if we turn to him, not away from him … if we want, with God’s help, to obey his teaching and follow him as our Lord, Savior, and Treasure — simply put, if we believe — then we can say with the apostle Paul, that Jesus “loved me and gave himself for me” (see Galatians 2:20). And we can bask in the beauty of God’s salvation. John Stott captures the wonder: 

For in order to save us in such a way as to satisfy himself, God through Christ substituted himself for us. Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice. The cross was an act simultaneously of punishment and amnesty, severity and grace, justice and mercy. …

For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone. (The Cross of Christ, 159–160)

Wow! Wow! Wow! 

The heart of man has not imagined the glory that awaits us when we, in the 1707 words of Isaac Watts, “survey the wondrous the cross.” What better response could there be than to sing 

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.