“The Case for Jesus Christ: His Excllencies in meeting the                           
                     forces of sin and love at the Cross.”
 
Again, I remind you: Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever!

He, Jesus, is the Son of Man, the Christ, the Lord!

Last week, we saw how it is He Who spoke to the moral dilemmas of life as One Who, through sharing the temptations and burdens of man, is the true representation of the Divine nature.

The history of the Cross - through and through - proved the strength of that truth when God’s mind was revealed in the work of the Cross.

And, I posed the question: do we see any way of escaping the conclusion that Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness during His lifetime and His actual forgiveness on the Cross when He prayed: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’ confirmed the power of that forgiving love of God?

The forgiving love shown by Jesus was not just a good example or even an inspiring act of martyrdom that He illustrated.

Neither was it just a practical and essential part of our life of faith in Him.

No - it was far, far more - so much more than is possible in words to convey.

His pattern of forgiveness uncovered the continuation of God’s love in perfect reconciliation.

Reconciliation is probably one of the greatest needs in
our social and political lives today.

It is needed on every level of human existence - we find no argument with that, I am sure.

Generally, when we talk about reconciliation today, we do make the natural assumption that there are two warring factions who need to resolve their differences.

But - the work of Jesus Christ has brought this assumption into a new and significant realm that takes its driving force from the two opposites - of people’s sin and of God’s love.

When He met these two opposing forces at the Cross, He changed the face of reconciliation.

From Col 1:21, we know that humanity, since the Fall, has been in bondage ‘alienated from God’, enemies - hostile towards Him, at war with Him in its thoughts and ‘evil behavior’, that intent on a life of sin.

How many times do we hear of those today who are ‘mad’ at God? How many times is He blamed for all kinds of things?

Sin - the power of it - the hold it has on humanity - is the underlying problem there.

Before Christ came, man was powerless, the object of God’s wrath - yes - His malicious enemies, no less. (See Rom 5:6,9-10 for verification of that.)

Sin is always the ultimate problem!
 
This is the burden of the Old Testament - that tension between what man has made of his life and what he has seen in moments of insight and divine revelation.

It was made very certain that reconciliation with God is something that man could never achieve by his own resources - impossible!

Effective and perfect reconciliation could have only been carried through by Someone far more superior, much more significant than any mere man.

Just as Jesus sought to reconcile His accusers and His enemies to God as He prayed ‘Father forgive them...’ so God, in this work having been done at the Cross, took the first step of reconciling the world unto Himself.

Now - that reconciliation has been made.

And - let it be known that it is not a process that keeps going on and on until the end of time - this was a once-for-all achievement by Christ.

Let me repeat: man’s reconciliation to God is done - it is complete - it was achieved when Jesus Christ went to the Cross - it is not a process that is to be repeated over and over again. 

Let that ring into our hearts forever.

‘It is finished’, Jesus cried out - and He meant just exactly that! 

Humankind has been delivered from death and sin - the forgiveness is available, and has been available, for each and every individual who has ever lived, lives, and will live to accept and receive for his own, as he so chooses.

It remains the same, yesterday, today and forever.

And - it is still in Jesus Christ, Who is the same, yesterday, today, and forever - never, ever does that change!

Having established that, now - we ask, ‘Was this all necessary? What is the point of Christ at the Cross?

Sometimes, when we look at the Cross in our human reasoning, it seems almost meaningless, so senseless, 
so foolish.

The preaching of the Cross is, ‘...unto the Jews, a stumbling block, unto the Greeks, foolishness...’ - yes!

To think that someone or something has to stand between me and God for me to connect with Him is senseless.

‘However bad sin is, or however desperate we humans may be, surely God could have found another way to do all of this’, we reason.

Besides - the Cross is so unappealing, so repulsive to we who are so sophisticated!

True - there is no reason why the non-Christian would accept Christ’s death as the center of God’s purpose for mankind - as the place where reconciliation has been made.

It is sheer ‘nonsense’ to them.

It is very obvious that sin is not being looked at as it should be - neither very accurately nor properly.

Not everyone realizes, in a vital and personal sense, that he is a sinner. 

Our society has come to the point of acknowledging imperfections - ‘We all have them - so what?’, it says.

It is being seen as something external, something that can be forgiven or not forgiven, whatever the case may be.

It is not being seen as something inside of humanity, as  something that has penetrated it, that has affected it and infected it.

It is not being seen as something that is like poison buried in the core of a being that needs extraction - roots and all!

But - it is only when the burden and shame of one’s own weakness and guilt is known and felt as a personal fact that sin can be properly appreciated.

How deeply have we really felt Paul’s sense of it when he said, ‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God’?

And, of, ‘in me dwelleth no good thing’?

We know what sin is only when we know about it ourselves.

The greatness and the terror of it never really grips us until we know - until we truly know - sin to be, not only a violation of the divine law, but the repudiation of divine love as well.

Sin and evil have to be seen as that first before we can embrace God’s forgiveness.

For, you see, only God can properly announce to be just those who actually are just.

But - who can really stand before Him already just?

How could anyone achieve such a standing before Him?

Let me quickly take you over to the passage in 1 Sam, chapter 11, of Nathan’s story of the violence of a rich man who owned a pasture full of sheep, yet who took the one little lamb that his poor neighbor had and killed it for himself.

Nathan, the prophet, was confronting David, the king, with this incident, and we know, it referred to David’s treatment of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, who David had ordered to be killed on the battlefront.

Of course, David, not recognizing this as he being the guilty one, was enraged that anyone would do such a brutal, evil thing.

‘As the Lord is a living God, that man deserves to die’, he spouted in his anger.

We do not need to look very far to find people who are exactly like that - who react in exactly the same way - guilty themselves, yet so willing to demand just retribution from others for doing something wrong or evil.

David, fortunately, did not turn upon Nathan when the prophet pointed the finger toward the king, as he said to him, ‘Thou art the man’.

Instead, he humbly accepted the accusation for himself and meekly cried out, ‘I have sinned against the Lord’ - that’s all - ‘I have sinned against the Lord’. 

He saw - he saw what sin was - he saw himself as he really was in the sight of God’s holiness - so unjust!

He knew his sin to be a violation of the divine law - a breach of God’s rule.

There is a similar illustration in the New Testament of the Pharisee and the publican.

On the one side is the ‘self-righteous, the self-satisfied, the judging, the quick-to-condemn-his-neighbor, the-slow-to- honestly-appraise-his-own-faults-before-the-Lord’ Pharisee.

On the other hand is the publican, the truly, contrite man whose main concern certainly was not examining those around him to look for their faults and wrongs.

No - in his main interest and occupation, he was too busy crying out to the Lord for mercy - ‘Lord, have mercy on me.’

‘O God, be propitiated unto me, the sinner’, he petitioned.

The publican knew his sinful self to be a repudiation of God’s divine love, and only God, in His infinite mercies, could cover him.

You see, there were those who persuaded themselves that they met the required standard of uprightness.

They were firm believers in the sufficiency of their own efforts!

And there were those who made no claims or pretensions, who - in the secret places of their heart - knew they could not establish their own merits.

The Lord Jesus was highlighting the fact that the harvest of sin is to be seen in what a man misses more than what he suffers; and in what he is in his mind and his heart more than what he is externally. 

Here are the two opposites, two forces brought together - sin - blatant and condeming sin - and - on the opposing side, the loving mercies of God. 

It was Christ Who willingly gave Himself to swallow one up, the breach of sin, into the Cross; the other force, His forgiving love, was set in motion to cover by the Cross.

Yes - yes, God extended His blanket of love as the shield for the fierceness sin exerted there. 

Yes - love, in the work of forgiveness, - the love of Christ, the love of God, applied its power over sin!

Hosea gave the blueprint for effective and perfect reconciliation for the violation of divine law and the covering of divine love.

There is the unfaithful wife who had sinned against the love of her husband.

The moral standard of the marriage was so lofty to Hosea that he was willing to pay the price by the gift of forgiveness towards her.

So - he forgave and she is brought to repentance. 

Just visualize the cost to Hosea, the one offended.
 
He knew that the instinct to forgive was from above.

‘How can I give you up,...? how can I let you go...?, was his woeful cry.
 
He must love the unlovely. He must ‘ransom’ her from the auction block. He must ‘redeem’ her.

He must endure the memory of a great shame, the indignity of a broken covenant.

He must carry a broken heart, and yet love the one who broke his heart.

He must enter into her shame and share it, yet without the surrender of his own pure love for her.

He found in his heart, not resentment, but forgiveness.

He is bearing ‘a cross’ because true forgiveness involves 
the taking of that person’s wrong upon one’s self.

The love of God is applying its power over sin!

It is easy to write off those who offend us and put them outside the bounds of our Christian charge to love them.

But - what a far greater thing it is to draw a circle of love around them that takes them into the heart and then leads them to their full inheritance in Christ.

It is a loving, forgiving action, a costly giving - no question about it.
And it is an action that speaks volumes of the love and the personal, deep concern the offended has for the offender.

It speaks volumes of the one who was insulted and wounded so deeply by the transgression.

Oh - how much more is this so when a righteous, loving God forgives and He must ransom and He must forgive and has done it through His Son.

Yes - we are told to be saturated with the love of Christ because it is His love that does not need to justify itself -    He poured Himself out in His self-giving.

The Lord Jesus does not need to be God to set for me a moral example - any one in this world can do that, and many have!

He does not need to be God to be a brilliant and inspiring teacher - we see many who fit that category!

But He does need to be God in the form of a Savior - a Savior Whose love covered all sin, Whose death achieved the perfect and effective reconciliation with God.

I close with a passage from Col 1:20-22: ‘And having made peace through the blood of His Cross, by Him to reconcile, all things unto Himself;

[It was through His Son that God cleared a path for everything to come to Him.] 

And you, who once were estranged from Him, and with your mind at war with Him, when you lived in a life of sin, now has He reconciled, has brought you back as His friends.’
Amen!

Will you earnestly ponder these things once again this week?

And - let us just yield our hearts quietly and carefully before the Lord Jesus Christ as we do.

Let Him continue to do His wonderful and gracious work in each of us by His power available in His effective forgiveness and perfect restoration!

The Lord bless you very richly as you go about your daily walk this week.

So be it!

Let us pray.