The Cross of Christ is the current Challies' choice for his "Reading Classics Together" series. As I read through the book, I thought I'd share highlights from each chapter with you and include a link to Challies' full review. After having a taste, I hope you will want to spend time in this influential book yourself.
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"Why Did Jesus Die?" (Chapter 2)
"... we ourselves are also guilty.
Indeed, we have done it. For whenever we turn away from Christ, we 'are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace' (Heb.6:6). We too sacrifice Jesus to our greed like Judas, to our envy like the priests, to our ambition like Pilate. 'Were you there when they crucified my Lord?' the old spiritual asks. And we must answer, 'Yes, we were there.' Not as spectators only but as participants, guilty participants, plotting, scheming, betraying, bargaining, and handing him over to be crucified. We may wish to wash our hands of responsibility like Pilate. But our attempt will be as futile as his. For there is blood on our hands. Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us (leading us to faith and worship), we have to see it as something done by us (leading us to repentance). Indeed, 'only the man who is prepared to own his share in the guilt of the cross', wrote Canon Peter Green, 'may claim his share in its grace.' (Watchers by the Cross)
...although Jesus was brought to his death by human sins, he did not die as a martyr.
On the contrary, he went to the cross voluntarily, even deliberately. From the beginning of his public ministry he consecrated himself to this destiny... 'The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,' he said. Then, dropping the metaphor, 'I lay down my life ... No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord' (Jn.10:11, 17-18).
Moreover, when the apostles took up in their letters the voluntary nature of the dying of Jesus, they several times used the very verb (paradidomi) which the evangelists used of his being 'handed over' to death by others. Thus Paul could write 'the Son of God...loved me and gave himself for me' (Gal.2:20). It was perhaps a conscious echo of Isaiah 53:12, which says that 'he poured out (LXX paredothe) his life unto death'. Paul also used the same verb when he looked behind the voluntary self-surrender of the Son to the Father's surrender of him. For example, 'he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? (Rom.8:32). Octavius Winslow summed it up in a neat statement: 'Who delivered up Jesus to die? Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy; - but the Father, for love!" (No Condemnation in Christ Jesus)
It is essential to keep together these two complementary ways of looking at the cross.
On the human level, Judas gave him up to the priests, who gave him up to Pilate, who gave him up to the soldiers, who crucified him. But on the divine level, the Father gave him up, and he gave himself up, to die for us. As we face the cross, then, we can say to ourselves both, 'I did it, my sins sent him there' and 'he did it, his love took him there'. The apostle Peter brought the two truths together in his remarkable statement on the Day of Pentecost, both that 'this man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge' and that 'you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross'. Peter thus attributed Jesus' death simultaneously to the plan of God and to the wickedness of men. For the cross which ... is an exposure of human evil, is at the same time a revelation of the divine purpose to overcome the human evil thus exposed."
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"But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. ... But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering..." (Isa.53:5, 10)
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