We have said that these eight aspects, or
‘notes’, in the scale of redemption, succeed
one another in a harmonious sequence, each one following
the other and leading to the next. Our answer to the
first question —Why the incarnation? was threefold:
the redemption of man, the reconstitution of man, and the
perfecting and glorifying of man. In seeking to answer
the second question—Why the earthly life?—we
sought to indicate the end in view in this whole
redemptive process, as exemplified in the earthly life of
our Lord as Son of Man—the model. The earthly life,
so fully lived under every test, was intended, in the
purpose of God, to set forth the different kind of person
that God has in view through redemption and
reconstitution and perfecting to final glorification. It
is necessary for us to take up the inclusive issue of all
these phases, seeing how one leads to the other, and at
the same time what each one represents.
But, before I go further, let me say this. The point is
that God has put right down into this world, into the
midst of mankind, a new kind of Man, Who is not just
better, more or less, than other men, but different
altogether from other men; and has, in effect, said,
‘That is the Man that I have in view, and
eternally it has been My purpose to conform to that
image.’ How important it is, therefore, for us to
understand the real nature and meaning of the life of our
Lord Jesus as lived here on this earth. It is not just a
beautiful story, about a man living and working and
teaching, in a country somewhere in this world, far away
and long ago. But, right up to date, a Man is presented
to us, as altogether different from us in constitution
and yet as God’s pattern for His working in us. That
is something very important.The
On-Drive Of Evil At The Crucifixion
So, then, those two points lead us to the third: Why
the Cross? Let us approach this by looking for a moment
at the record, and trying to get into the very
atmosphere, evil as it was, of what took place on that
day which we commemorate as Good Friday. We will take two
verses from Peter’s discourse on the day of
Pentecost.
“Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of
Nazareth, a Man approved of God unto you by mighty works
and wonders and signs which God did by Him in the midst
of you, even as ye yourselves know; Him, being delivered
up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God,
ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay” (Acts
2:22–23; A.S.V.).
If we could, as it were, get inside those words, and
really grasp their significance, we should have the
answer to our question: Why the Cross?
Let us try to sense what was happening. If you have
recently read in the Gospels the accounts of the events
leading to the crucifixion, you will be able to recall
the scene. On the one side, it is impossible, taking
everything into account, to fail to recognize a
tremendous on-drive over this matter of crucifying Jesus.
This is not just human. There is something here of an
impelling force—an impelling, evil force—behind
it. No argument will stem it, no appeal will weaken it;
it will be influenced by no consideration whatsoever.
When they cried: “His blood be on us, and on our
children” (Matt. 27:25), it was as though there was
an implacable determination, set upon carrying this thing
through—no matter what it meant—to the last
degree, to the very uttermost. From that side, there was
a fierce, awful, terrible on-drive of the evil powers to
do Him to death, and it seemed that nothing whatever
could stem that tidal wave of evil.
On the other side, there is Pilate—Pilate seeking,
by every recourse conceivable to him, both personally to
get out of this and officially to avoid it, to stop it.
See how much there is that comes in to give him a case,
to make his position a strong one, even to the message
from his wife: “Have thou nothing to do with that
righteous Man” (Matt. 27:19). But it is as though a
hidden voice says: ‘Pilate, it is no good: wriggle,
argue, say and do what you like—it is no good: it is
going to happen. You may be held responsible from one
standpoint, but you cannot help yourself.’ The
on-drive of evil forces, the helplessness of man and
office and temporal powers, and so many other factors,
might have come in to weigh in this issue.
“The Determinate Counsel
And Foreknowledge Of God”
But behind it all is another factor. The Devil may be
blindly forging on, and man may be helplessly trying to
counter; but behind Devil and man lies the
“determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God”
(Acts 2:23). The Cross is God’s crisis in which He
says: ‘We are going to have this thing out, we are
going to settle this issue at long last, once and for
all. Nothing is going either to misconstrue it or to
prevent it. The Devil may mean murder; I know what I mean
by this. The Devil may be blindly driving on to destroy
Him, but I know what I mean by it. I will take that up in
relation to eternal counsels and foreknowledge. Man may
try to stop it, prevent it: but no—the hour has
come, and we are going to settle this thing. This is the
Crisis of the Ages; the whole issue is going to be
settled today.’
But what issue? Of course, the whole thing is far, far
too great and many-sided for us to cover. It reaches so
far up and so far down, so far back and so far on. All
that we know about the Cross is only a fragment compared
with what we shall know through eternity. We can only say
a very little about this, compressing it into one or two
things which answer the question, Why the Cross? The
answer, as I have said, is inherent in the words which we
have read in Acts 2.
What is the issue? What is the crisis? Why the Cross?
Whenever we find ourselves in the presence of the Cross,
whether in type in the Old Testament—the altar, the
sacrifice, the fire, and so on—or in reality in the
New Testament, we are always in the presence of three
things: sin, righteousness and judgment.
(1) Sin
What do we mean by sin? What does the Bible mean by
sin?—this far-reaching thing, like an octopus but
with countless limbs and suckers—this thing called
‘sin’. What does the Bible mean by sin? If the
Cross of the Lord Jesus was the crisis, and God was going
to settle this thing once and for all, what was it that
had reached the point of the crisis, what was it that He
was going to settle? Let us here get away from sins—we
are not talking about sins. Sins are only the fruit, or
the outcrop, of the root—sin. Sin does not begin
with the things that we do or do not do. Sin is something
far deeper than our wrong-doings—our commissions or
our omissions. Sins may be forgiven, sins may be
remitted; but sin is another thing.
Now let us trace this thing as far as we can. In the Old
Testament, sin, even before Adam’s act, centred in God
and His alternative. God, or His
alternative—that is the focal point of sin. There is
an inclusive word in the Old Testament, a word which
includes and covers all other words used for sin, and
that word is ‘iniquity’. That covers such words
as ‘transgression’, ‘trespass’, and
others. The inclusive, comprehensive word for sin is
‘iniquity’, and not until we understand that
word do we really understand what sin is. This word
‘iniquity’ at its very root means
‘perversity’, ‘lawlessness’. It is
not just the violation of certain laws, but a spirit of
lawlessness and rebellion. That found its first
expression, as the Bible tells us, before Adam sinned.
Adam was only caught in something that had already
started. The rebellion took place somewhere where God is,
in relation to God’s purposes—His purposes, as
we have reasons to believe, concerning His Son, Jesus
Christ, as Heir, the ‘appointed heir of all
things’. Rebellion was found in the heart of one
exalted being, and then disseminated by that one amongst
angels; and so a whole rebellious hierarchy arose, and
was cast out, and we are told that they are reserved in
everlasting bonds unto judgment (Jude 6).
Iniquity, then, is rebellion, it is lawlessness. “Ye
by the hand of lawless men....” We have got
right to the heart of the thing, you see. This drive is
from Hell itself. No appeal is heeded to law, reason,
argument, consideration, sympathy, wisdom, or anything
else—not even to the very children’s
well-being. No, this thing has run amok, it has broken
loose, it has come out at last. There has come into the
centre of the earthly, human stage One Who is the focal
point of it all, and He has drawn it right out. No longer
can it go masked, no longer can it work secretly; it is
out. He has drawn it out, He is the
occasion of it. The hosts of evil surge round Him: to use
the prophetical words of the Psalm, “they compassed
me about like bees” (Ps. 118:12); but, in the words
of the Apostle, ‘He stripped off principalities and
powers’ (Col. 2:15). He has drawn them out.
Yes, in the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God
the thing is up for decision—this whole matter of
basic, fundamental rebellion, which started in Satan,
spread to a host of angels who entered into complicity
with him, and came down into this world. By man opening
the door, the door of his soul, as we saw earlier, the
thing came into him, and now every child of Adam has that
deep-rooted thing in his or her nature: rebellion against
God. Sooner or later you will discover it, if you have
never yet done so. Let God put you to some of the tests
to which He put His Son, and see whether there is any
rebellion in your heart, in your nature, against God.
Under testing, trial, opposition, or suffering, we find
that it is there, ready to come up. It is in us.
Very well; that was taken account of by God. He said,
‘We are going to settle this’; and that is the
meaning of the Cross. Firstly, this spirit of lawlessness
and rebellion, in all its ugliness, all its evil, all its
sinister character, is dragged out into the open; and
then, in the Cross, not just the evil in abstract, but
the person responsible for it, is met and dealt with.
Ground For Satan
For sin is never looked upon just as something
abstract; it is always personal—it is always a
matter of Satan. The whole question is always this: Is
Satan getting an advantage, is Satan being given ground?
Too often we make light of these things. We think of
‘failure’, we speak about ‘weakness’
and ‘imperfections’. We get offended, we get
upset; we lose love, perhaps we lose our temper; and then
we say that that is our weakness, our failing, our
imperfection, our fault. Well, that may be so, but God
always says: ‘That is ground for Satan’; and
that is what makes it so heinous, so much more evil.
Because, you see, it is Satan who is all the time trying
to work upon our ‘weaknesses’ and produce such
ground, and then to come upon it and use it—both as
an accusation against us, to bring us back into that
bondage from which we are redeemed, and to have an
accusation to God. Always remember that it is this
personal thing that is the essence of iniquity, that
constitutes sin. God does not look at sin apart from the
person of Satan: it is always that one that He has in
view. And He would say to us: ‘Now, don’t
forget: if you slipped up, that is not just something in
itself—that is very good ground for Satan; and
unless you take it away from him, and get it cleared up
and covered, he is going to enlarge it, establish it, and
consolidate it, and it is going to be very much more
difficult for you presently to clear it up. This is not
just an incident, a mistake, a mishap: there is a person,
there is a whole evil system at work in relation to
it.’
Yes, and what is the effect that he is seeking to bring
about? Something antagonistic to God—rebellion,
lawlessness. The Lord Jesus, while He bore our sins in
His own body on the tree, was the Lamb of God, that took
away the sin of the world (1 Pet. 2:24; John 1:29). Do
you not think it is very wonderful—seeing that sin
is iniquity, rebellion, lawlessness, is this thing that
is always breaking away and running riot against
God—that a Lamb should deal with it? A lamb
is the very symbol of yieldedness, is it not? “He
was led as a lamb to the slaughter” (Is.
53:7): no rebellion there, no lawlessness there. “He
was led as a lamb to the slaughter”:
exactly the other extreme from this lawless, rebellious
thing. The Lamb of God took away sin by the utterness of
His yieldedness to God. He undid the unyieldedness of
Satan. I think it is impressive. You see the principles
that are at work, mighty principles embodied in two
persons: the principle of lawlessness in Satan, the
principle of yieldedness in Christ. These two things are
in mortal combat, and the Lamb overcomes.
Does it not say much for the work of the Cross, the
effect of the Cross? Do you see why the Cross, and why
the Cross in you and me? What we are to inherit from the
Cross—what it means as an abiding principle of
activity in us? If the Cross really does work in us, we
shall become more and ever more yielded to God,
unresisting, compliant, of the spirit of the Lamb. What a
conflict that was! It was the conflict between two
natures: the conflict between sin, in the particular
sense of rebellion and lawlessness, on the one side; and
the spirit of—“Lo, I am come to do Thy will, O
God”, and “a body hast Thou prepared for
Me” (Heb. 10:7, 5), on the other; and by that body
on the tree He dealt with that other thing—with the
embodied iniquity of this universe in Satan. “Now is
the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this
world be cast out” (John 12:31).
We feel our helplessness in trying to cope with this
matter of the Cross; it was such an immense thing that
happened then. I come back to this: God said, ‘We
will settle this here and now, once and for all.’
Sin, in the sense in which we have spoken of it, was met
there in its full tide—‘Jordan overflowing all
its banks’—what a tide!—and was fully and
finally exhausted.
(2) Righteousness
If we said that righteousness was just the opposite of
sin, we should, of course, have said in a word nearly all
that could be said about it. But let us look at it more
closely, and begin by examining the word itself.
Righteousness is an inclusive word. Just as
‘iniquity’ is inclusive of other aspects of
sin, so ‘righteousness’ is inclusive of other
concepts. There is the word ‘holiness’, for
instance; there is the word ‘sanctification’;
there is the word ‘consecration’. All these are
gathered into this word ‘righteousness’. What
does it mean?
I am sure we shall not forget sin. It is written now in
deep, dark, black letters. Sin is rebellion; sin is
lawlessness; sin is that which throws off the government
of God and puts Him out of His place and makes choice of
the alternative to God. Of course, when we sin we do not
consciously mean that—that is not thought
out and intended; but that is what is implied and what is
involved in reality.
What, then, is the essence of this word
‘righteousness’? Righteousness is that nature
of God which is perfectly consistent, perfectly pure,
perfectly transparent. Different symbols are used in the
Bible for the nature of God, such as the crystal, and the
jasper. It is that in which there is absolutely no
mixture, in which there are no two things contrary to
each other. For the Bible makes it perfectly clear that
mixture, or contradiction, is what is most abhorrent to
God. More than anything else, God abhors mixture—two
contrary elements brought together, two different realms
brought into association, the two being different in
constitution. We recall some of the Old Testament types
of that: ‘Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an
ass together. Thou shalt not wear a mingled stuff, wool
and linen together’ (Deut. 22:10–11). These are
two different realms. Linen draws off bodily warmth; wool
keeps it in: so there is a conflict in the two things.
These are only simple illustrations or figures of
something very deep. God hates mixture; His very nature
is against contrary elements. His nature is absolutely
transparent, consistent, pure. And that is righteousness.
It was for that that the prophets were always appealing.
Unrighteousness was found in dealings; that is, people
were being robbed by deceitful methods. They were not
fair, not square, not straight. Satan is the great mixer,
the great deceiver, the great corrupter, the great
polluter. There is nothing transparent about him, nothing
straight about him; he is always coming round, in some
way, to get an advantage by unfairness, by cowardice.
Now, the Cross of the Lord Jesus was the crisis of this
matter of righteousness. It was the other side. He
“offered Himself without spot unto God” (Heb.
9:14). Here is something pure: there is no mixture here,
no blemish here, no two things here; this is all one
thing; this is all straight, this is all clear, this is
all absolutely pure, transparent. You cannot find in Him
any blemish of corruption. There is no clouding film; in
Him there is no darkness. He had settled this matter of
righteousness in His own Person and body, and established
righteousness for ever, in type, as He came to His
baptism, which was prefiguring His Cross. He said:
“Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil
all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15). He satisfied God on
this matter of His own nature, as something absolutely
pure. When Jesus said, “Thus it becometh us to
fulfil all righteousness”, God responded immediately
and said, “My beloved Son, in Whom I am well
pleased”. ‘It is the offering that I want, the
offering that I seek: the offering satisfies Me.’ He
“offered Himself without spot unto God”. The
question of righteousness is settled in Him, in the
Cross.
(3) Judgment
Sin, righteousness; and now judgment. What is that? We
usually limit the idea of judgment to one
thought—that is, penalty. The word
‘judgment’ is a larger word than that in the
Bible. Judgment, we could say, has three parts. To take
an illustration from the Book of Daniel: you remember
Belshazzar’s feast, and the handwriting on the wall,
and how Daniel was brought in to interpret (Dan.
5:1–28). First of all, it means bringing something
to have a decision given upon it, as to what it is. The
first part here is: “Thou art weighed in the
balances”. That is the first part of judgment: being
brought to be weighed up. Secondly, the putting of it
into its proper category: “found wanting”. When
it has been determined what it is, that is the place to
which it belongs. Thirdly, there is the pronouncement and
execution of the sentence.
That is judgment in its threefold meaning. It is a big
word. The Cross was that. God was saying, ‘We will
settle what this thing is in its nature; we will put it
into its proper place to which it belongs; and we will
deal with it fully and finally.’ The thing was
determined as to what it is: sin is not called by other
names; it is called by its proper name—lawlessness,
rebellion. For that is what sin is. It is against God.
And it belongs to a realm that is away from God—the
wilderness, the desolation, the place of the scapegoat,
the place of the driven-away creature, driven from the
very presence of God to where it belongs. When He bore
our sins, when He was made sin for us, when, in that dire
moment, He was made a curse for us, He was put in the
place to which you and I belong. The thing was settled as
to what it was, and driven out from the presence of God;
the door was closed upon it, and the face of God for ever
turned away from it. The judgment was carried out.
Yes, there are two sides to the Cross, but that was the
judgment side. Of what? No, not the judgment of our
sins—that may be included—but the judgment of
our sin. “Him Who knew no sin He made to be sin on
our behalf; that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21); that is, that we
might be brought to the place where there are no two
things in conflict, no two contradictory elements. And
that begins on the very day when we—to use familiar,
homely language—come to the Cross. When we come to
the Lord Jesus and accept the work of His Cross for
ourselves, there is given to us, there is brought into
us, that transparent, pure, holy, righteous life of the
Lord Jesus. It is a thing without mixture. We are all
mixture, but that life has no mixture.
Clear As Crystal
And then, when we live by that life—and this is
not only a statement of fact, but a very searching
test—if you and I live by the life of the Son of
God, we are going to become more and more transparent
people, absolutely honest, absolutely straightforward,
absolutely square. Anything that is not like that about
us says that somehow or other we are countering or not
moving with the life. The Cross involves us in that. So
the end of the Bible gives us the picture of the City, as
one of the symbols of the Church. In its entire
constitution it is, as it says, like pure gold, or glass,
or jasper (Rev. 21:11,18), and its river is the water of
life, free and clear as crystal (22:1). It is all
clear—that is the end of the work. This is a truly
practical thing. About true Christians—Christians
who are truly crucified with Christ—there ought to
be a steady progressiveness in transparency, further and
further away from duplicity, from deception, from
murkiness, from everything of that kind. They should be
clear as the light.
That is the answer, so very imperfectly, to—Why the
Cross? Sin, righteousness, and the determination as to
what is what: judgment determining, judgment placing.
“Thou art weighed in the balances”—that is
the first thing. “Thou art found
wanting”—that is the second stage. “Thy
kingdom is divided”—the third stage. It is all
judgment. In the Cross the Lord Jesus effected all that.
That is, perhaps, the darker side. But it is a wonderful
deliverance that the Lord Jesus has wrought for us in His
Cross. Just think of what we were involved in! We were
involved in Satan’s sin, we were involved in his
rebellion, our very natures were involved in it: but by
His Cross He has saved us—“delivered us out of
the authority of darkness, and translated us into the
kingdom of the Son of His love” (Col. 1:13)—set
us free, given us another nature, set us on the way to
the City of God. That, as we know, is not geography, but
spiritual condition; not an objective thing, but an
inward, subjective state. What a day it will be when we
are like that—absolutely free of the last trace of
Satan’s touch, the touch of the serpent, upon our
human nature! What a great day that will be! But He
started us on that way on the day in which we came to the
Cross. And “He Who began a good work in you will
perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil.
1:6; A.S.V.).