andrew dodson

In honor of Good Friday, I am posting the April 6th entry from Oswald Chambers’s My Utmost for His Highest:

The Collision of God and Sin
“… who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree …” (

1 Peter 2:24 (Listen)

24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

).
The Cross of Christ is the revealed truth of God’s judgment on sin. Never associate the idea of martyrdom with the Cross of Christ. It was the supreme triumph, and it shook the very foundations of hell. There is nothing in time or eternity more absolutely certain and irrefutable than what Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross—He made it possible for the entire human race to be brought back into a right-standing relationship with God. He made redemption the foundation of human life; that is, He made a way for every person to have fellowship with God.
The Cross was not something that happened to Jesus—He came to die; the Cross was His purpose in coming. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (

Revelation 13:8 (Listen)

8 and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.

). The incarnation of Christ would have no meaning without the Cross. Beware of separating “God was manifested in the flesh …” from “… He made Him … to be sin for us …” (

1 Timothy 3:16 (Listen)

16 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:

He was manifested in the flesh,
vindicated by the Spirit,
seen by angels,
proclaimed among the nations,
believed on in the world,
taken up in glory.

;

2 Corinthians 5:21 (Listen)

21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

). The purpose of the incarnation was redemption. God came in the flesh to take sin away, not to accomplish something for Himself. The Cross is the central event in time and eternity, and the answer to all the problems of both.

The Cross is not the cross of a man, but the Cross of God, and it can never be fully comprehended through human experience. The Cross is God exhibiting His nature. It is the gate through which any and every individual can enter into oneness with God. But it is not a gate we pass right through; it is one where we abide in the life that is found there.

The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God.

Powered by ScribeFire.