In Christ alone
II Corinthians 5:18-21
I had a phone call last week from a friend of mine who was very upset at the reception a preacher had experienced at a local Methodist chapel. The speaker had done a good job on the sermon and had worked hard to set it the context of worship which bore all the marks of having been put together very thoughtfully. The final hymn was “In Christ alone” – here’s the second verse:
In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev'ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live.
After the close of the service one of the senior members of the congregation tore into the preacher. What made him angry was the thought that Jesus’ death had satisfied the wrath of God. “Methodists don’t believe in the wrath of God” he said. I would have been interested to hear the response if he had tried that line out on John or Charles Wesley!
It is worth remembering that the first Christians found the cross to be profoundly offensive to their generation. This was Paul’s experience: “When we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say its all nonsense” [1] . Nothing new there, then!
Jewish people were expecting a Messiah who enjoyed God’s permanent blessing, but crucifixion was, to them, a sure sign of God’s curse. Gentiles were just revolted by the whole process – it is interesting to note that crucifixion scenes only became popular in churches once the last eye-witness to a real crucifixion had gone to his grave. But why is the cross offensive today? What is it about the cross that makes senior churchmen go berserk?
The cross makes God’s love visible. It makes his passion tangible and real. “God so loved the world”, remember, “That he gave his one and only Son…” And if God is love then the cross is love’s ultimate expression. What could be offensive about that? I have never met anyone who was upset by the suggestion that God loved them. But I did once read that famous verse from John’s gospel to a woman I met after a Christian concert. She thought for a moment and then said, “Well that’s not very Christian!” She was an intelligent woman who immediately sensed the offense of God’s love… “Someone had to die for me so that I can be rescued from perishing!” She was furious!
The cross makes it clear that I am a sinner, a spiritual failure who deserves to be at the receiving end of God’s righteous wrath against sin. The cross underscores the fact that only the flawless Son of God could die in my place: it is an eternal insult to my self-reliance and my pride. The cross exposes the painful truth that God and I are on opposite sides of a spiritual divide. It is upsetting when someone suggests that I may be lining up with the wrong side. The cross is God’s ultimatum: a great billboard in history telling us which side we must choose.
To nice liberal-minded middle class English churchgoers who think of God and Paddington bear as occupying the same corner of the nursery this is very frightening indeed, and so we take offense. The thought that God is not cuddly – that he is not even safe - makes people angry. The cross shows us what we would like to do to God; if only we could get our hands on him.
It is time we heard from one of the first Christians, this is Paul explaining what happened that first Easter:
For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
II Corinthians 5:19-21
If the thought of God’s anger upsets you, look carefully at the first sentence. “God was in Christ”. The God who hates sin but loves you entered the world in the person of his Son, lived with us for thirty odd years, and set out to reconcile us to himself.
Now look at the last verse: the sinless Christ hung on a cross and was made sin itself so that we might be reconciled. If you, on this Good Friday know the love of God in your heart and the closeness of his Spirit in your life it is only because the wrath of God against your sin has been satisfied and, because of Christ, it is no longer a problem for you. Hallelujah!
We know God loves us, not because Jesus died as some kind of symbolic gesture, but because he was made an actual sacrifice for actual sin and that, when we believe this for ourselves we are actually set free and actually forgiven.
Which leaves us with two joyful jobs to do: the first is to worship the God who loves us more than we can imagine and who expressed his extreme love on the cross. The second is to tell our friends that this is true, that it works and that it is for them as well as us!
We are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”
[1] 1 Corinthians 1:23