The religious leaders who dialogued with Jesus as well as the people who overheard those exchanges, just couldn’t seem to grasp what he’d said about his relationship with the Father. He’d made several attempts to explain that he’d been sent by God and was in all ways and at all times representing him. But their hardened and sin-scarred hearts were deaf to those truths. So, in verse 28 of John chapter 8, he lamented that they wouldn’t understand until after they’d lifted him up, or in other words, crucified him.
How sad that it would require the aftermath of his sacrifice to open their eyes to see who he was and why he’d come. But the reality is, much about Jesus can’t be fully grasped except in the light of the cross. That icon memorializes the loving Father and submitting Son settling the sin issue and purchasing our salvation. It possesses the power to penetrate our spiritual blindness and illuminate the magnitude of God’s gift of grace in Christ.
The cross defines God’s strategy and story of redemption as he purposefully pursued the rescue of our fallen race. It confirms the identity of the Seed of the woman described in Genesis 3:15 as the one who would crush the serpent’s head. It’s what elevates John 3:16 to towering heights as a majestic expression of God’s love. It’s what empowers the offer of complete forgiveness recorded in 1 John 1:9. And it’s the key that unlocks chains of bondage and sets free the souls of repentant sinners like me.
When viewed through its lens, the life, words, and ministry of Jesus come into a focus that ignites understanding, overwhelms with humility, releases faith, and inspires the kind of worship captured in these words penned in 1912 by the hymnist, George Bennard.
On a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross
The emblem of suffering and shame
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain
The cross of Christ stands forever as the unique and unparalleled symbol of a saving God. And if you, like me, stand today within its glow as a lost-one-now-found, let’s pause together at the foot of that beacon of hope and offer there our humble praise.