The Christ & His Cross
| BY SEAN CAVENDER |
Immediately after Peter testified of the identity of Jesus of Nazareth and the truth that Jesus was the Christ, Jesus began to teach of His death (Matthew 16:16-21). Jesus understood that His whole purpose in being sent to earth involved His death. Death was certain, yet it was not something that He ran away from. In fact, His death on the cross was the ultimate display of obedience to God the Father (Philippians 2:8; Hebrews 5:8).
It is at the cross of Jesus that great blessings came for mankind. The sacrifice that the Lord made continues to make an impact upon folks today. The Hebrew writer stated, “…that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9). It was through the death upon the cross that grace and salvation were brought into effect.
Justification, redemption, and the remission of sins were made possible through the death of the Lord Jesus. “Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God,” (Romans 3:24, 25).
By the grace of God and through our faith in Christ and His death upon the cross at Calvary we are made to live. The apostle Paul once wrote, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me,” (Galatians 2:20).
Jesus knew the importance of His death and that is why He went to the cross willingly and obediently. It was based upon His understanding of the atonement and forgiveness of sins that He carried His cross, suffered, and died. He went to the cross to become the sacrifice for our sins.
