The Cross Comes From Love

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. . . (John 3:16).

The Cross of Christ does not make God love us; it is the outcome and measure of His love for us. (Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer, 6th Lesson)

Perhaps for a lot of people it goes without saying, but for myself I was moved by this thought: God loved me before Jesus died on the cross. He does not need the cross in order to love me, long for me, and be a Father to me.

Somehow the idea of the cross bringing peace between God and myself gave me the idea that he was angry with me and wanted to do me harm. This, of course, does not line up even with the most elementary of Bible verses, John 3:16. Fortunately it does not read, "For God was so fed up with the world that he gave his one and only Son. . . ." The cross is not the antidote for God's scorn and hatred of me, but the outcome of his love for me.

The peace he bought with the cross was not to relieve his anger by punishing Jesus, but the peace of bringing a rebellious and empty soul like mine into his good grace. I needed peacemaking, not God. He always loved me, but now his love has been made known completely through the finished work of Jesus, who suffered becoming a man, living with men, and dying at the hands of men. As Dallas Willard puts it, "The very best people put to death the very best man."

The cross is indeed necessary for my coming to God, but not because of a problem with God. He loved me and the world, so he sent his Son. Certainly God gets angry. Certainly there is wrath. Like me, God hates the things that come between himself and his children and threaten to destroy them. The cross is powerful medicine to cure the illness I have. The cross is triumph over the evil in and around me. The cross is what I need to live in its example as well as in its reality. The message of the cross is not this: "Someone needs a beating."

So I am even more grateful for this sacrifice of Jesus and his Father. Jesus did not take a beating from his Father; he took one from us. I could not come to him by any other means.

Lord, because you loved me so much, you had to humble yourself before me and my kind, even to the point of being shamefully put to death. This is the story of your love and the most poignant picture of it. You have laid yourself down so low so that even I could find you. There is no other way. Without understanding and living out of the knowledge and trust in this love, I am hopelessly ignorant of the kind of God that you are. Open my eyes more. Guide me further in this love. Amen.