"The Cross: Jesus on Display"

The Cross: Jesus On Display – Part 1

If someone should ask you what is the greatest need in your life, how would you respond?

Well you may say, the greatest need in my life is a job or finances or a house, an automobile or a husband or a wife or children, whatever it might be. There’s only one real answer to that question. The greatest need in your life is the same as it is in everyone else’s life, and that need is the need for Jesus.

Jesus is kind and gracious toward us without regard to merit on our part or our worth, and in spite of what you and I deserve, that’s what the love of Jesus is. And all of us need Jesus, not only for the forgiveness of our sin, but we need Jesus for everyday living. Because, you see, everything that comes our way comes through Jesus. Because at no time in all of human history did God display His love for us as He did the day Jesus Christ died at Calvary. And I want you to turn, if you will, to Romans chapter 3.

And in this passage, one of the most important passages of scripture in all the Bible, is the explanation of the foundational truth. The bottom line of everything you and I believe about God is to be found in this passage, and it is absolutely related to the cross of Jesus Christ. Because apart from the cross, you and I have no promise of anything. And my friends, you may not even be a believer, and you say, “Well, the only thing I know about a cross is I see them on church steeples and hanging around people’s necks, and I see them here and there.” Well, if that’s all you know about the cross, then somewhere along the way you’ve missed the real truth.

But many people who sit in church pews week after week, they sing about the cross, and you may be one of those persons. You can name some hymns that you love. But let me ask you this, do you understand what really happened at the cross? Do you understand that the cross is the means by which God expresses all of His goodness and kindness and love toward us in spite of what we deserve? Do you realize that apart from the cross, there’s not a single solitary hope of eternal life whatsoever? You realize that apart from the cross, there is no forgiveness of sin? In fact, there isn’t anything in life worth having that cannot be traced back to the cross of Jesus Christ.

And it is my prayer in this message that you will understand the simple truth of the cross, that you’ll understand what happened, why it had to happen the way it happened, and its effect in your life and my life, not on the past, but today and forever. And it is my deep yearning prayer today that you will listen carefully and that you will understand clearly and that you will apply to your heart immediately. Romans chapter 3 isn’t the simplest passage of scripture in the Bible, but it is absolutely one of the most essential parts.

Romans 3:21-27 (NKJV)

Now, you might respond, how in the world could something like that be such a vital, pivotal part of the whole foundation of the believer’s faith? And how could that be the bottom line and the foundation of the whole Christian church and everything we believe?

Well, it is, and I want to show you how. What he’s saying here first of all is this. When we say, “The Cross: Jesus On Display,” that is exactly what it is. And what happens is the cross, first of all, displayed our need for Jesus. You’ll notice in verse 23, he says, “For all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

He says, “there is none good, no, not one.” There is none that are that are righteous. He says, “for the wages of sin is death.” The Bible says that “sin is a part of all of our life.” If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar. He says, “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” So, the basic problem that calls for Jesus is the sin problem, that we’ve rebelled against God, we’ve separated ourselves from Him by our sin, and we came into this world with a sinful nature. The Bible says that the cross reveals to us several things about God’s attitude about sin. God hates sin. There is no compromise with sin with God. He judges sin, He punishes sin, and the truth is that sin requires death.

Because, you see, when you think about what goes on in the mind of God, when He looks at the cross and why there is a cross, the cross declares to us and reveals to us the holiness of God. Now, our very lighthearted attitude about sin causes us to think very little about the holiness of God or the real nature of sin. But because of the nature of sin, God hates it. One of the things He hates about it is this, that sin by nature a separator. It tears people apart, it tears nations apart, it tears churches apart, it tears families apart, it tears friends apart, but most of all, it tears people away from God. That is, sin has separated us from God.

Sin has separated God from His creation, which He loves. And having separated us from it, the wrath of God, the judgment of God, the condemnation of God must come upon sin. Now, think about this. The holiness of God is so absolutely important to Him that God is willing to send His only begotten Son Jesus to the cross to die for our sins as a substitute because of the conflict which God had between His holiness on the one hand and His loving compassion on the other. And God in His holiness must judge sin. God in His compassion and love desires to forgive the sinner. So, how does God reconcile this holiness which demands, requires, absolutely requires judgment on sin?

Because you see, He said, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” The wages of sin are death. And He said to Adam and Eve in the garden, “The day that you eat the fruit of this tree, you shall surely die.” And so all sin requires death, and all sin requires that God deal with that sin with death. So, here’s the conflict. A holy God, who must live according to His own principles, His own attributes, His own character is that He cannot tolerate sin, cannot compromise sin, cannot agree with sin, must judge sin. The holiness of God, He says in Him there is no darkness at all.

No one has ever looked on the face of God and lived. The holiness of God is absolutely beyond our comprehension, that anyone could be so holy and so righteous and so perfectly pure that in the presence of this holy God, we would just evaporate. Because the holiness of God cannot tolerate the presence of sin. So here’s a loving God, on the one hand, who is the holy God, and His holiness demands justice and punishment for sin. On the other hand, His love wants to reach out and take care of and forgive and pardon and reconcile the sinner back to himself.

Well, that brings us to the second thing I want to say here, and that’s this. The cross not only displays for us and shows us the need for Jesus because of the sin problem, but it also, listen, it also displays for us the cost that Jesus paid that took care of this problem. Now, here is the heart of the whole Christian life, and here’s what the cross is all about, and if you understand what I’m about to say, you understand the nature of the cross.

Now, you say, “Well, how could God have a conflict?” Well, the truth is, He did. That is, humanly speaking, now of course, predetermined, predestined before the foundation of the world, He settled the whole issue.

But here is the conflict: a holy God dealing with unholy people, and a holy God whose righteousness and whose justice and whose law demands that every sinner suffer the penalty of their sin, which is death. But on the other hand, here’s this loving God over here. Now, once in a while, you’ll hear somebody say, “Well, I believe in God, but my God is the God of love.”

Amen, we agree with that. What about the justice of God? “Well, I don’t believe in all that judgment business.” Well, my friend, listen to me carefully. If you will listen, you will understand why God, who is the God of love, is also a God of righteousness and judgment, because you see, if He were not, if God was not a righteous God, all these loving and wonderful promises He offers you over here, you wouldn’t know whether he’s going keep them. He’s so holy that He cannot violate a single law of His own.
You say, “You mean to tell me there’s something God can’t do?” Absolutely. God cannot act in contradiction to His very nature, and His nature is that He’s holy. He is absolutely righteous and holy in character and cannot act otherwise. And so the person who says, “Well, now, I believe in God, but my God is the God of all love.” You don’t even want a God like that.

Because God must be holy, must be righteous, and must be just, or He wouldn’t be trustworthy. And so God is both just, He is both holy, and He’s both merciful.

Now, here’s the question, how does God bring together His absolute holiness and His absolute love? How does He bring the two of these together, reconcile them, save, forgive, reconcile, pardon guilty sinners, and at the same time remain this holy God that He is? So here’s what He did. God’s solution, listen, God’s solution to this conflict between His righteousness, His holiness, and sinful man, it is the most expensive solution ever given to a problem x 2. The cross is God’s solution to the problem. The conflict between His holiness, His righteousness, and His mercy toward sinful man.

Now, I want you to look at this passage, because this is what this is all about when he says here in Romans 3:24-25, “Being justified as a gift by His grace to the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly.” On the cross, God the Father reached the pinnacle of His expression and His love for us when He crucified His only begotten Son, Jesus. Now, why did that take place? And what was it all about? Well, what I want us to see here first of all is God’s goal.

God’s goal on the cross was, listen carefully, was to justify ungodly, unrighteous, sinful, rebellious, transgressing human beings. Notice, if you will, he says in verse 24, having just said that we’d all sinned against Him, he says, “Being justified as a gift.” So, whatever this word “justify” means, it was given to us as a gift, and if you’ll notice he says, “A gift by His grace through the redemption that came in Christ.” Now, justification, listen carefully, justification means not only that my sin is forgiven, it not only means that I have been pardoned of my sin. It also means that all of my sin has been blotted out forever, absolutely, totally pardoned. But it means something even more important than that.

Not only has our sin been forgiven, not only has our sin debt been paid in full, not only has all of our past been blotted out, but he says now justification puts us in a position of being declared by Almighty God as righteous. That is by your name is the word “righteous.” That means that God has given us a new standing. Before we were sinners, lost, doomed under the wrath of God, but now we have been made and declared righteous.

It is a declaration of God. This holy God, looking down upon sinful human beings, has been able to say, even with all of His holiness and all of our sinfulness, He says, “Sins forgiven, you’ve been pardoned, I make you a child of mine, I now position you as righteous before Me.”

Look at two passages of scripture because He had to do this. We’ll talk about how in a moment, for him to say this about us. Look in Ephesians 1:4 (NKJV).

He says, “Just as He,” God, “chose us in Him,” in Christ, “before the foundation of the world,” that we should be what? Look at this. He chose us “that you and I would be holy and blameless before Him.”

Well, how many of us can live holy and blameless in this world in which you and I live? How can we be holy and blameless in a world that is so full of sin?

Look at Colossians 1:21-22 (NKJV)…similar scripture

“Yet He,” that is Jesus, “has now reconciled you,” brought you back into a right relationship, listen, with God in His fleshly body, that’s the cross, the crucifixion, “through death, in order to “do what? “Present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.”

My friend, then only way you and I can be presented before God the Father when we stand before Him holy, blameless, and without reproach is that somebody do something about us and in us to make us that way. That is exactly what justification is. Justification is God so declaring us righteous that, in His eyes, we are now as if we had never sinned as far as our relationship to Him is concerned. I didn’t say that’s the way we’ve lived every day. I didn’t say we never make mistakes and that we don’t sin against God. But God has declared us righteous on the basis of justification. Justification is a declaration of a new standing with God, all sin having been pardoned. And so that’s what we’re talking about when He says here that we are justified by His gift. Now, what is the gift?

It is something that God does for us that we cannot do for ourselves. The only person who can deal with our sin problem is God, and if God doesn’t deal with your sin problem and mine, there are only two places your sin and mind can be. They’re either on the Lord Jesus Christ in His crucifixion, or they’re on us. If they’re on Him, they’ve been paid for. If my sin is still on me, I’ve got to pay for it.

There’s only one way you and I can pay for sin, and that is in our own death. So the penalty that rests upon all humanity is, listen, not only physical death, spiritual death, but eternal death. The only way you and I could ever be redeemed or rescued from that is by Jesus because he was willing to pay our sin debt for us. That’s what the whole Christian life is about.
Now, listen, the next time you think, God, I don’t feel saved, I feel terrible, I feel sinful, I feel this, I feel that, remember this, that you may have committed sin against God, but your sins have been pardoned by Jesus, and you stand righteous before God.
Listen to what he says in this passage. He says in Romans 3:24, “Being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption that is in His Son.” So first of all, His goal is to justify us. When you received the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior, God, at that moment, wiped all your sin away, declared you righteous, a child of God. Now, what was His method of doing that? His method of doing that is, again, found in verse 24, “Being justified as a gift,” something He gives us, can’t work for it, “by His grace,” His unmerited love and favor toward us, “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

I want to look at two words: redemption and propitiation. Redemption, now watch this, redemption is a word that means a ransom. A ransom is an amount paid for someone else’s release. Jesus said, “I came to give My life a ransom for many.” He says, “I came to be the price paid for someone else’s release.”

So what happens when you and I are saved? When you and I receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, here’s what we do. We agree with God the Father that the death of His Son is adequate, sufficient payment for our sin, and the moment we accept Him as our personal Savior, we are released from the penalty of sin. That means we become the child of God. Sin no longer has a hold upon us.

It doesn’t mean we won’t sin, it doesn’t mean we won’t commit acts of sin, but the death penalty of sin is rendered null and void forever in our lives. Now, somebody says, “Well now, if redemption means a price paid and Jesus Christ died, who did He pay this price to?” That is, was Jesus Christ’s death, if He was the payment for our sin, was this paid off to the devil? Never. Was it paid to God? No!

It was the satisfaction of the requirement of God, that is, God being holy, the only way for this holy God to deal with sinful man and render Him forgiven of His sin and declared righteous is something had to happen. It was an act. God wasn’t getting paid off. This was His only begotten Son, this was God the Son dying on the cross, so this wasn’t a payoff. It was an act that transpired that satisfied the requirements of God, which meant in order for God to remain holy and at the same time save unholy people, something had to happen. A substitute had to be given, and that substitute was the Lord Jesus Christ.