The Meaning Of The Cross:
Why was it necessary that God come in the form of man and die. Why can't God just forgive us? Proverb 17:15 He that justified the wicked, and he that condemned the just, even both are abomination to the Lord. What happened on the cross to cause God to forgive us of our sins?
Why was it necessary that God come in the form of man and die. Why can't God just forgive us? Proverb 17:15 He that justified the wicked, and he that condemned the just, even both are abomination to the Lord. What happened on the cross to cause God to forgive us of our sins?
Therefore if God is a just God He can't just forgive... He must punish the wicked. Through the Old Testament we see animals dying.. symbolically the final and ultimate sacrifice. Since God made the law, He had to satisfy the law. It had to be God and only God who could have pay the price. In order to forgive the wicked and still be just, God had to die in the place of the wicked. The blood that was required by God's wrath was paid for by Christ. We have been saved from the wrath of God, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God through him. Romans 5:9.
There are abundant examples in history where most of the ancient cultures utilized the cross as an execution instrument. The Phoenicians, Egyptians, Persians, Carthaginians, Greeks and Romans all employed this death device. Although the Jews employed stoning as their primary method of execution, they were well acquainted with the use of the cross by other cultures to execute their own people.
Death by crucifixion was an especially cruel and agonizing way to die. The Romans employed this form of execution primarily for slaves, although it was also used for foreigners, traitors and the most despicable of criminals. It was generally regarded as too degrading to be utilized for Roman citizens.
Execution on a cross was a public display of capital punishment. Crosses were quite visible on the hills surrounding major towns and alongside the Roman roads. The visibility of these executions was considered to be a deterrent to further crime in the society. The condemned criminal was often forced to carry the wooden timber, or at least the cross-beam, the patibulum, to the site of his own execution.
This was the tree on which Christ destroyed the devil and freed the human race from his tyranny. This was the tree upon which the Lord like a fearless warrior wounded in hands, feet and side, healed the wounds created because of sin infection on mankind. A tree that caused death, now bring life. Once deceived by a tree, we have now repelled the cunning serpent by a tree.
What an astonishing transformation! That death should become life, that decay should become immortality, that shame should become glory! Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world! The supreme wisdom that flowered on the cross has shown the folly of worldly wisdom's pride. The knowledge of all good, which is the fruit of the cross, has cut away the shoots of wickedness.
How could Jesus legally die for the sins of the world? According to the Bible, the father is not to be punished for the sins of the son and neither is the son to be punished for the sins of the father (Deuteronomy 24:16; Ezekiel 18:20).
This is the great ethical issue that surrounds the cross of Christ; (John 12:31-33) at the cross mankind was executed or judged in Christ.
God could do this because Christ was the second Adam or mankind. Just as God created all humanity in Adam so that by his representative sin he ruined all his posterity. God uniting all humanity to Christ at the incarnation so that He could be the Savior of the world.
II Corinthians 5:21 when Christ assumed our corporate sinful humanity at His incarnation He became the second Adam (mankind) qualifying Him to be man's representative and substitute.
Galatians 2:19 because we are all sinners, we must all die. Jesus did not come to do away with the death sentence that hangs over our heads but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17).
Since "all died" in the death of Christ (II Corinthians 5:14), Paul acknowledges that he died to the law in Christ so that now he may live for God.
"I challenge you to take up your cross and endure to the end"
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