Sometimes, when we reflect
on Scripture a light flashes on and we understand and see things that we missed
before. That happened this week. The light went on and I discovered something
about the cross of Christ that I have never heard preached, never read in a
book, never learned in seminary and that never entered my mind before. The
cross of Christ is two-sided, not one-sided. The cross has a flip side. Let me
explain.
THE CROSS AS SALVATION
First, let me take you to 1
Corin. 2:1-5, where Paul says that during his year-and-a-half with the
Corinthians (see Acts 18:11), he preached “Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” How
much could Paul have really said about the crucifixion? How much are you
willing to hear about the crucifixion?
When we contemplate the
cross, it is almost always from the perspective of saints, as people who know
that we were dead in our sin, but Jesus showed us His love by taking our sin
and punishment for our sin on Himself on the cross. God’s wrath at our sin was
applied to Jesus, and it was excruciating. For the first time in eternity,
there was a separation between God the Father and God the Son. As 2 Corin. 5:21
says, “For our sake He (God the Father) made Him (God the Son) to be sin
(wow) Who knew no sin (Jesus is perfect), so that in Him (Jesus) we might
become the righteousness of God.” Thus, Jesus didn’t just take our sin and
punishment on Himself, but He enabled us to receive His righteousness. We
receive that gift through faith – wholehearted trust in what Jesus accomplished
for us.
No surprises yet. This is
what we believe when we repent and trust Jesus to be the only means for our
salvation and to give us an eternally right relationship with our Heavenly
Father.
Now, let’s rethink the
cross. Was God sending any other message through Jesus’ suffering on the cross?
This is what occurred to me as I reflected on the cross this week.
THE CROSS IS A PICTURE OF THE ETERNAL
SUFFERING OF THE GODLESS
The affliction of Jesus on
the cross also represents a picture of what every person who dies in their sins
will face for all eternity. This is the flip side of the cross. Jesus was
separated from God, crying out, “my God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”
(Matt. 27:46.) Jesus was terribly afflicted, bearing the marks/stripes of the
cat of nine tails whip used by the Romans. The cross was a long-enduring death,
often taking days, and even as long as a week. The cross was slow torture,
where people longed for a death that was slow to come. In their struggle to
breath, as their lungs slowly collapsed, the cursed man on the cross became
terribly thirsty, gasping for both air and moisture. The statement of
Deuteronomy 21:23 came true – cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. (See
Gal. 3:13.)
Jesus took the sin of the
world on Himself so that God’s enemies could become His friends through trust
in Jesus’ atonement. God did not want anyone to perish, but for everyone to
come to knowledge of the truth about their need to repent and trust Jesus. (1
Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9.) Jesus experienced hell on the cross in order to give
everyone the opportunity to escape hell. Jesus embodied the curse that we might be freed from the curse.
Jesus’ suffering and death
is a picture of what life will be eternally like in hell for those who reject
Christ’s sacrifice on their behalf. For them, the curse of sin is never lifted and separation from God becomes their permanent status. In fact, Jesus describes hell in Luke 16,
when He portrays the fate of the unsympathetic rich man, who was separated from God, eternally tortured
by flames, and longed for just one drop of water. Jesus lived out that
picture briefly on the cross, portraying to a lost world the fate that He was
saving them from. That is the flip side of the cross.
In other words, the cross as
the means of salvation is also a picture of the eternal punishment of those who
reject the cross. The flip side of the salvation offered through the cross of
Christ is the eternal punishment of those who reject the cross. Paul says that "the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." (1 Corin. 1:18.) The image of
salvation is at the same time the image of condemnation for those who don’t
believe. God has done everything necessary for all people to have salvation, but they
have loved evil and rebellion more than the mercy and grace of God’s call for them to repent and trust Jesus.
Our world is surrounded by
the cross – it is prolific in much of the western world, standing as a reminder
of both eternal salvation and eternal curse. For example, Paris is one of the most secular
cities in the world. Yet, at the same time, it is a city filled with crosses –
they populate the skyline. The Louvre,
in the heart of Paris, contains a multitude of images of the Gospel story in
pictures and statues. The cross is visible everywhere as a reminder of the
salvation offered through Jesus and of the condemnation awaiting those who
enter eternity without trusting in God’s generous grace and mercy through Jesus. Somehow, people still miss it – they
miss both sides of the cross.