Crucifixion # 4

Four Spans in the Bridge of Salvation

Would He voluntarily offer Himself as the sinner's Substitute and thereby assume all responsibility for the removal of the penalty, the power and the presence of sin in man knowing as He did that the penalty of sin was death, that the power of sin meant anguish of suffering consummating in crucifixion, and that the presence of sin involved even separation from God? Would He who never knew sin willingly be made sin on the sinner's behalf knowing full well that all the wrath of a holy God against sin would be spent on Him?


Yes, He would do it. For the very purpose of becoming the sinner's Substitute the eternal Son had become the incarnate Son. But have we not discovered in this truth the secret of His dread of that "hour," His shrinking from the "cup"? It was not death He dreaded but the death of the Cross which was "the wages of sin." What else could the thrice repeated pleading to the Father to remove "the cup" mean but that, in the death He was about to die as the sinner's Substitute, all the sin of the whole race of sinners with all its stain and stench would be upon Him? It is no wonder that the soul of the sinless Son of God cried out in an agony of suffering at the thought!

But the weight and wickedness of the world's sin was not all the "cup". Sin separates from God. God cannot stay in the presence of sin even when that sin is upon His own beloved Son. The Son of Man in the garden faces this awful consequence of Saviourhood. Could He assume this consequence of sin for the sinner's sake? Could He, who through all eternity in glory had rested in the intimate fellowship of the Father's bosom and who in His life on earth had enjoyed the vivid consciousness of His Father's abiding presence, consent to the inevitable even though momentary separation from His Father which the presence of the world's sin on Him would cause? Death is separation from God and separation from God is hell (2 Thess. 1:7-9).

This, then, is the "cup" He could not drink were there any other possible way for the Father's will in man's salvation to be accomplished. This is "the cup" that caused the agony of soul in Gethsemane - an agony so terrible that His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground; an agony so awful it took Him back three times to the Father to cry out for release; an agony so intense that an heaven-sent angel appeared to strengthen Him. This is "the cup" that caused the intolerable anguish of spirit, which wrung from the sufferer upon Calvary that heart-breaking cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Could He drink that "cup"? Yet, even that if it were the Father's will and there were no other way in which sin could be dealt with to God's satisfaction and man's salvation. He who had been obedient to the will of His Father every moment of His earthly life would be "obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross."

There evidently was no other way for "while He yet spake, lo, Judas one of the twelve came and with him a great multitude with sword and staves." In quick succession follow the betrayal, arrest and trial of the Lord Jesus and then - the crucifixion of the Lord of glory.

The "hour" had come. The event foretold and foreshadowed for centuries had taken place; "the most stupendous event in the history of man, the only event in the history of God." The noon hour not only of time but of eternity had come; indeed it was the pivotal hour in the life both of heaven and of earth. "The Son of God has died by the hands of men. This astounding fact is the moral center of all things. A bygone eternity knew no other future; an eternity to come shall know no other past. That death was this world's crisis."

The death of Jesus Christ is the pivotal fact in Christianity. It is its very heart-beat; its life's blood. Without it Christianity would not be. His worth lay not in the life He lived but in the death He died. His death was not so much the culmination of the victorious, obedient, holy life as its coronation. His incarnation was but paving the way for death; His death was the goal of incarnation.

It is not merely the fact that Christ died that is vital but that He died the death of the Cross. The prophecy of Genesis 3:15 foretold a bruising and it was in the bruising of the heel of the woman's seed that the promise of the sinner's salvation was to be found. The Old Testament sacrifices made for the sake of sins year by year required the blood of goats and calves. These sacrifices and this blood-shedding were the foreshadowing of the one perfect sacrifice of the Son of God as He poured out His life's blood on Calvary for the salvation of sinners. While the prophets of old did tell us something of the circumstances that would attend the birth of Jesus Christ yet the burden of their message was of One who would be "wounded," "bruised," "scourged," "oppressed," "afflicted." By the mouth of all the prophets God foretold that Christ should suffer. Over and over again the Lord Jesus told the disciples that He "must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and be raised again." On the way to Emmaus as He walked and talked with the two disciples who were recounting to Him the tragedy of His crucifixion said unto them,

Luke 24:26, "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?"

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 5)