The Cross of Christ

by John R.W. Stott

First, we are told to resist the devil.

Secondly, we are told to proclaim Jesus Christ.

the cross revolutionizes our attitudes to God, to ourselves, to other people both inside and outside the Christian fellowship, and to the grave problems of violence and suffering.

This intimate relationship to God, which has replaced the old and painful estrangement, has several characteristics.

First, it is marked by boldness.

The second characteristic of our new relationship with God is love.

Joy is a third mark of those who have been redeemed by the cross.

Boldness, love and joy are not to be thought of as purely private and interior experiences, however; they are to distinguish our public worship.

W. M. Clow was right to draw our attention to singing as a unique feature of Christian worship, and to the reason for it: There is no forgiveness in this world, or in that which is to come, except through the cross of Christ. ‘Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.’ The religions of paganism scarcely knew the word....The great faiths of the Buddhist and the Mohammedan give no place either to the need or the grace of reconciliation. The clearest proof of this is the simplest. It lies in the hymns of Christian worship. A Buddhist temple never resounds with a cry of praise. Mohammedan worshippers never sing. Their prayers are, at the highest, prayers of submission and of request. They seldom reach the gladder note of thanksgiving. They are never jubilant with the songs of the forgiven.7 By contrast, whenever Christian people come together it is impossible to stop them singing. The Christian community is a community of celebration.

in both sacraments we are more or less passive, recipients not donors, beneficiaries not benefactors.

five ways in which what we do at the Lord’s Supper is related to the self-sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

First, we remember his sacrifice: ‘do this in remembrance of me’, he said (1 Cor. 11:24–25).

Secondly, we partake of its benefits. The purpose of the service goes beyond ‘commemoration’ to ‘communion’ (koinōnia): ‘Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that...

Thirdly, we proclaim his sacrifice: ‘For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes’ (1 Cor. 11:26).

Fourthly, we attribute our unity to his sacrifice. For we never partake of the Lord’s Supper alone, in the privacy of our own room. No, we ‘come together’ (1 Cor. 11:20) in order to celebrate.

Fifthly, we give thanks for his sacrifice, and in token of our thanksgiving offer ourselves, our souls and bodies as ‘living sacrifices’ to his service (Rom. 12:1).

all the Reformers were united in rejecting the sacrifice of the mass, and were concerned to make a clear distinction between the cross and the sacrament, between Christ’s sacrifice offered for us and our sacrifices offered through him.

What spiritual sacrifices, then, do the people of God as a ‘holy priesthood’ offer to him? Eight are mentioned in Scripture.

First, we are to present our bodies to him for his service, as ‘living sacrifices’.

Secondly, we offer God our praise, worship and thanksgiving,

third sacrifice is prayer,

fourth ‘a broken and contrite heart’,

Fifthly, faith is called a ‘sacrifice and service’.

sixthly, are our gifts and good deeds,

seventh sacrifice is our life poured out like a drink offering

eighth is the special offering of the evangelist,

But the New Testament does not represent Christ as eternally offering himself to the Father.

But, according to his teaching and that of his apostles, the climax of his incarnation and ministry was his self-giving on the cross as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).

That is why Christ does not have his altar in heaven, but only his throne. On it he sits, reigning, his atoning work done, and intercedes for us on the basis of what has been done and finished.

The first is that, as a matter of fact, the New Testament authors never express the concept of our offering being united to Christ’s.

second objection, which is surely the reason why the New Testament refrains from describing our worship as offered ‘in and with’ Christ. It is that the self-offerings of the Redeemer and of the redeemed are so qualitatively different from one another that it would be a glaring anomaly to attempt to mingle them.

We never outgrow the fact that we are sinners still, totally dependent each day on the grace of God to the underserving. We do not come to offer; in the first place we come to receive. The very nature of a supper declares this. We are the hungry, coming to be fed. We are the undeserving, welcomed freely at the Lord’s Table.36

First, and grammatically, Jesus did not say ‘the first commandment is to love the Lord your God, the second to love your neighbour, and the third to love yourself’.

Secondly, and linguistically, the verb is agapaō, and agapē love means self-sacrifice in the service of others. It cannot therefore be self-directed.

Thirdly, and theologically, self-love is the biblical understanding of sin.

How can we renounce the two extremes of self-hatred and self-love, and neither despise nor flatter ourselves? How can we avoid a self-evaluation which is either too low or too high, and instead obey Paul’s admonition, ‘think of yourself with sober judgment’ (Rom. 12:3)?

The cross of Christ supplies the answer, for it calls us both to self-denial and to self-affirmation.

Paul writes in his letters of three different deaths and resurrections, which are part and parcel of our Christian experience.

The first (which we have already considered) is the death to sin and subsequent life to God, which happens to all Christians by virtue of our union with Christ in his death and resurrection.

The second is the death to self, called variously taking up the cross, or denying, crucifying or mortifying ourselves.

The third kind of death and resurrection I mentioned in chapter 9. It is the carrying about in our bodies of the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our bodies (2 Cor. 4:9–10).

the first death is legal;

The second death is moral;

The third death is physical;

Alongside Jesus’ explicit call to self-denial is his implicit call to self-affirmation (which is not at all the same thing as self-love).

Consider, first, his teaching about people.

They are ‘much more valuable’ than birds or beasts, he said.11

Secondly, there was Jesus’ attitude to people.

Thirdly, and in particular, we must remember Jesus’ mission and death for human beings.

‘My worth is what I am worth to God; and that is a marvellous great deal, for Christ died for me.’12