Christmas and the Cross

Christmas 2019 is almost here. Another year is coming to an end. It is hard to believe. The older I get, the more I am becoming aware that each day is precious. Am I letting them slip by too fast; do I take my day-to-day life for granted? Am I allowing myself to be carried along each day by busyness? Do I make the main thing the main thing? And what is the main thing? Relationships are the main thing, at least for me. My wife, my children and their spouses, my grandchildren (of course), friends, people I pray with, men that I mentor, members of my church, and even people I randomly meet in the store or on the street. These are all important. But, for me, the most important relationship is with Jesus. He is alive in my life; the foundation on which all other relationships rest. He is my hope, joy, peace, and strength. It is not my joy or peace. It is the joy and peace of Jesus in me that makes my life full.

At this time of the year we Christians are focused on His birth. “Happy birthday, Jesus”, we say. Woven into this time of the year is the recognition of the importance of these other relationships. For many, it is a time of joy. For others, a time of sadness and depression. Yes, the season is filled with rampant commercialism and things like Christmas trees, ornaments, decorations (some of the houses in my town must be using prodigious amounts of electricity, but the lights are incredible), gifts, parties, and a lot of food. But one thing you rarely hear mentioned during the Christmas season is that this baby, whose birth we celebrate, was born to die.

I am team teaching the gospel of John in my Sunday school class. It so happened, quite by chance, that it was my turn to teach last Sunday, December 8. We are teaching one chapter each week. This Sunday I was scheduled to teach John 19. As you probably know, John 19 deals with Jesus’ flogging or scourging, crucifixion, death, and burial – appropriate teaching for Easter and the Passion week, but not for Christmas. There is enough time to focus on the terrible end of His life. Let’s focus on the joy of His birth. We sing, “Joy to the world, the Lord has come. Let earth receive her King.”

And I agree with that sentiment, up to a point. But we should never forget that Jesus, the baby, was born to die. Of course, the same could be said for us. We are all going to die. But His death was different. He was God. And at the moment of His death, the universe was shaken, history crossed a threshold and entered into a time and space dimension never seen since the Garden of Eden, and will never be seen again until the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven. His death was planned, down to the minute, from before the creation of the world.

His death was particularly brutal. First the skin was ripped off of His back with a whip of leather thongs with embedded pieces of metal or glass. Probably his bones and possibly some organs were exposed. Then He carried His own instrument of death – the cross, or part of it – to Golgotha, also known as the Skull. Laid on the cross, spikes or nails at least 8 inches long were driven through His hands or wrists and then through the bones of His ankles, one laid on top of the other. When He was lifted up on the cross He immediately began to suffocate. On top of all that, He was mocked, jeered, and scorned.

“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not” (Isaiah 53: 3).

Of course, Jesus was innocent of any wrongdoing. He did not deserve to die, and certainly not in this way, the epitome of brutality and suffering. But we know why Jesus had to die. Not because He was guilty, but because we were and are, even today. Pilate and the Jews did not kill Jesus, we did. In the halls of Justice, one of the bedrock principles is that the punishment must fit the crime. That is why there are degrees of punishments – misdemeanors and felonies, for example.

 In the case of Jesus, the punishment was the most severe that could be inflicted on a person in the first century. This tells me that the crimes for which He died must have been especially horrendous. What were those crimes? Well, they were mine (and yours). They were our sins.

“The emphasis of Scripture, however, is on the godless self-centeredness of sin. Every sin is a breach of what Jesus called, “The first and great commandment,” not just by failing to love God with all our being but by actively refusing to acknowledge and obey Him as our creator and Lord. We have rejected the position of dependence that our createdness inevitably involves and made a bid for independence. Worse still, we have dared to proclaim our self-dependence, our autonomy, which is to claim the position occupied by God alone. Sin is not a regrettable lapse from conventional standards; its essence is hostility to God issuing in active rebellion against Him.” (Stott, Christ and the Cross, pg. 92).

Sin is defiance, rebellion, and arrogant selfishness underlain by autonomous reason, culture, and a desire to be equal with God or do away with God altogether. Sin is the denial of our dependence upon God; it is hatred of God. Every sin we commit is the consequence of this revolt against God and hatred of Him.

Our crimes against God and His creation are so heinous that only the bloody, brutal death of Jesus can save us from eternal damnation. The punishment must fit the crime. But Jesus,

“was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities: the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him and by His wounds we are healed. We all like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53: 5, 6).

Why did God do this? Why did He send His son to die like this for you and for me? For that matter, why did God Himself die on the cross? There are thousands of books, written over thousands of years, that answer or attempt to answer these questions. But one answer stands out, at least for me. Because He loves us. God loves us – you and me. We are His precious possessions. Even in His wrath, He loves because that is who He is – God is love. His love does not depend upon my loveliness or anything that I do, right or wrong, in His eyes. His love for us – you and me – is wider, longer, higher, and deeper than you can ever imagine or understand – His love for us surpasses knowledge. And I am convinced that you will only be able to glimpse a fraction of His love as you “turn your eyes upon Jesus and look full in His wonderful face” through the power of the Holy Spirit, who lives in the heart of every believer.

Jesus and His love, culminating in His atoning death on the cross, can set us free from sin and the effects of sin, death, evil, and darkness if we repent and receive all that He has done for us and died to give us.  

That love, bought at such a profoundly disturbing cost, is the greatest gift of Christmas. It is why, I think, even during this time of the year when we put fears and worries on hold for a few days, we should not stop thinking about the cross.

Remember Paul’s words, “For I resolved to know nothing . . . except Jesus and Him crucified”.

Merry Christmas,

John