THE POWER OF THE CROSS

Richard Burgess
1 Cor 1:18-25

Paul says, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the power of God to us who are being saved” (1 Cor 1:18).

The question is, What is the power of the cross and why? How can someone who lived 2000 years ago save us by dying on a cross? The world looks at it and can’t make sense of it. Why? Because you need the whole story.

To understand the power of the cross we need to understand the problem.
The problem is the sinfulness of humanity, the fact that we all do wrong, that we’ve all sinned, and no matter how hard we try, no amount of trying or being religious, we’re unable to do anything about it, it’s beyond us. As Paul said in Romans 7, “The good that I would I do not and the bad I don’t want to do that I keep doing… What a wretched person I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Now, some argue that if God is God, and God is love, surely he can just forgive us and welcome us into his family.

If only, but not so. One of my favourite quotes comes from Carnegie Simpson who said: “Forgiveness to man is the plainest of duties, but to God it is the profoundest of problems.”

We should forgive because we are all in the same boat and let’s be honest, even then, we don’t always find it easy to forgive, we hold out wanting some kind of justice. But God is in another category altogether, he is supremely holy, true and just. In order to forgive us, God must be true to Himself.

The fact is, we have not simply done something wrong, as if it were a minor offense, a mistake, we have rebelled and come under the power of Satan and sin.

More still, as Athanasius, the Church Father, put it, “The human race then was wasting, God’s image was being effaced, and his work ruined.” In other words, the human race had pressed the self destruct button, and what God had created was rapidly being undone. Athanasius goes on to say, “What then was God, being Good to do?”

More still, the administrative rights God had bestowed on humanity, to be administered under God in fidelity to His word, were handed over to the Adversary and the world was now as Paul describes it, in the grip of the devil, the “prince of the power of the air”.

To simply have mercy and forgive would not solve the problem – There was a deeper work to be done. There was the need, to quote C. S. Lewis, for a “deeper magic…”

How then could a loving, holy, just, good God, forgive and reconcile us to himself? What was God who was holy and just to do?

The answer was Jesus and a Roman cross.

Now, some argue that the power of the cross is in the moral example or influence it provides. And surely there is none like it, yet, that falls way short of the predicament and need of fallen humanity, therefore it falls way short of the purpose and power of the cross.

What was needed was something far more powerful, so much so, scripture uses different words and pictures to describe it, summed up in the word, atonement: at-one-ment.

For first century Romans crucifixion was a shameful and horrific form of torture reserved for the lowest of the criminal class – Romans were exempt; they even avoided use of the word in social gatherings.

For the Jew crucifixion was viewed as a curse (Deut 21:23; Gal 3:13), and yet it becomes the central to the message of the gospel (1 Cor 2:2; Gal 3:1; 6:14).
So for either there was nothing about the cross that would endear them to it.
But Paul says it is both the wisdom and power of God.

So what was and is the power of the cross?

1. The power of the cross is found first of all in the obedience of Christ and the undoing of the Fall. His identification with us and complete obedience. Without it the cross would mean nothing. As Gregory of Nazianzus an early Church father, said, “The unassumed is the unhealed.”  In his birth Jesus assumed flesh like ours, and in his baptism Jesus identified himself with us (Matt 3:15), Hebrews 2 tells he was made like us in every respect and tempted in every way as we are. In flesh just like ours, he defeated Satan and sin. Every day he said “no” to Satan and sin, and “yes” to the Father and righteousness. So he was able to declare on the cross, “It is finished!” “Job done!” The cross then is first of all INVESTED WITH THE POWER OF CHRIST’S LIFE. Without it it has no power.

2. The cross has atoning power (propitiation). Focus: God’s justice. It deals with our guilt before a holy and just God. Sin was more than a mistake, it was rebellion and leaves us guilty before God. God to be true to Himself, could not simply turn a blind eye. Sin had consequences. The law must be satisfied. So it involves the taking away of guilt by paying the penalty. So Jesus came and offered himself, “the just for the unjust…” In so doing he satisfied the law, paying the price for our sin, enabling God to look at us favourably (not love us, he already did!). As Paul put it, “For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past” (Romans 3:25; 1 John 2:2; 4:9,10). In doing so, “He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it away nailing it to the cross” (Col 2:14). The price is paid, the guilt removed. Relationship with God is restored! The Bible word for it is Atonement. Isaiah 53 speaks to it.

3. The cross has cleansing power (expiation). Focus: us. The pollution and stain of sin runs deep, but there’s power in the cross to remove it all. The cross involves a removal or taking away not only of our sin but the pollution and stain of it. So the writer to the Hebrews tells us that the blood of Jesus will “cleanse our conscience from dead works so that we can serve the living God” (Heb 9:14) and John says, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Not only that, it will never lose its power “till all the ransomed church of God are saved to sin no more!” There’s still “power in the blood, wonder working power…”

4. The cross has delivering power (Christus-Victor). Focus: us – sees us as victims. Deliverance was needed. As the hymn Rock of Ages expresses it, “Be of sin the double cure, cleanse me from its guilt and power.” Involves defeating the powers of Satan, sin, death and hell. “The Son of God was revealed for this very purpose: to destroy the devil’s works” (1 John 3:8). He is the victorious one. “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; he triumphed over them in him” (Col 2:15). “He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves” (Col 1:13) . He has defeated Satan and sin.

In doing so, Christ has also delivered us from the fear of death and provided us with a sure and certain hope. Hebrews 2:14,15. Death is not the end… As the song says, “Death is defeated the King is alive!” The power of the cross gives us a sure and certain hope because there’s a Man in the Glory!

“Who the Son sets free is free indeed” (John 8:36). Satan and sin are no longer our master. In the words of the song, “My chains are gone, I’ve been set free, my God my Saviour has ransomed me…”

5. The cross restores administrative rights. God created humanity in his image to be co-regents stewarding his creation, reigning in life. We lost that right through the Fall. The cross is the beginning of God’s recovery plan. What was lost at the Fall was restored at the cross. That’s big! Throughout the gospel we see that it’s far more than making us right with God and having a home in heaven when we die – as right and good as that is it’s a renewing and recommissioning of us to serve the purpose of God in our generation to see God’s kingdom come.

As we live into the power of the cross not only are we saved from sin and Satan but we are given once again the administrative rights to live into God’s blessing and to co-work with him in extending his intention in the lives of multitudes. 

“If by the one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive the overflow of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ… where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Rom 5:17-21.

It is now our privilege to invoke the will of God… To invoke what he would do…

In the words of C.S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”