At the very heart and core of New Testament preaching stood the cross of Christ. Especially was this true for the apostle Paul, the greatest preacher, evangelist, and theologian of the New Testament. Notice this sublime statement he made about the cross: "For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." (1 Corinthians 1:17, 18)
I want you to pay attention to two significant points Paul makes in these verses:
First, as far as he is concerned, preaching the cross and preaching the gospel are one and the same thing. Adventists should always keep this in mind—we who "of all professing Christians ... should be foremost in uplifting Christ before the world." (Ellen White, Evangelism, 188). We Adventists need to keep this in mind because too often in our evangelistic meetings, we preach many things in the name of the gospel that are really the fruits of the gospel or the hope of the gospel. Important as these things are, the gospel is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
Second, Paul says that the cross is where the power of God resides. He hammers home the point even more clearly in Romans 1:16. "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ," he insists, "for it is the power of God to salvation." God's power of salvation is in the cross of Christ.
For Paul, the cross of Christ was central. "We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews [the legalists] a stumbling block and to the Greeks [the philosophers] foolishness, but to those who are called [those who are justified by faith in Jesus Christ and Him crucified], both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:23, 24). He goes on to say, "I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2). And to the Galatians he wrote, "God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Galatians 6:14).
Does the gospel provide a solution for the principle of sin that has humanity in its grip and that makes it impossible for us, in and of ourselves, to live the Christian life? Can the power of the cross deliver us from our slavery to sin? The answer is a most definite YES! In fact, these Pauline statements emphasize that we need to discover how the cross of Christ is able to save us completely from sin—not just from its guilt and punishment, but also from its power and slavery. We need to experience the full power of the gospel against the power of sin. This is the topic we will examine in this chapter and the two that follow.
The cross of Christ exposed Satan as a murderer (see John 8:44), saved humanity from the guilt and punishment of sin (see 1 John 1:7, 9), reconciled the world to God (see 2 Corinthians 5:19), removed all barriers between different classes and races of human beings (see Ephesians 2:14, 15), and demonstrated God's unconditional love for sinful humanity (see Romans 5:6-10). But perhaps even more importantly, it also set humanity free from the law (or principle) of sin and death (see Romans 8:2, 3).
As we saw in the second chapter of this book, sin is more than an act, a choice, or even a mental assent to a temptation. It is also a power that has us in its grip. Here is what Jesus told the Jews who failed to understand this aspect of sin: "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin" (John 8:34). This is precisely the problem Paul deals with in Romans 7, which we will be considering in detail in the next chapter of this book. But first we must discover how the cross of Christ delivers us from this predicament—the power of sin in the life.
God can forgive sinful acts because Christ's shed blood is able to cleanse us from all sins. But sinfulness—sin as a power that controls our lives—cannot be merely forgiven; it must be destroyed. When we first come to Christ, our main concern is to be saved from our many sins which condemn us. Only after being a Christian for some time, do we discover that sin is more than just an act that we commit. We discover that sin is also a power that dominates us. And if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we can do nothing to escape this power. Like Paul, we have to admit "O wretched man [or woman] that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24).
One of the mistakes most of us make when we become Christians is to think that, through God's help, we can change our sinful nature so that it will become pleasing to God. Well, I have bad news for you. Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:6: "That which is born of the flesh is [always] flesh." God's answer for our sinful flesh is not to make it better, but to crucify it (see Galatians 5:24).
The flesh must die. That is God's solution to our sinful flesh. God forgives you for your sinful acts through the blood of Christ, but He doesn't forgive the sinfulness that dominates our lives. He strikes the tree down at the roots! If you have an apple tree that produces nothing but sour apples and can produce nothing but sour apples, the only solution is to cut it down and plant a new apple tree. Paul says that is exactly what the cross of Christ accomplishes. "If any man be in Christ he is a new creation; old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17.)
The power of the gospel does not lie in making us good, but in the principle of "not I, but Christ." This is how Paul expressed it to the Galatian Christians: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).
The famous modern martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died at the age of thirty-nine in Germany under Hitler, said, "When God calls you, He calls you to die." If you have not died, if you have not surrendered your old life of sin to the cross of Christ when you were baptized, you were buried alive by your pastor—you "did not rise to newness of life in Christ" (Ellen White, SDA Bible Commentary, 6:1075).
According to Paul, the death of Christ was not one man dying instead of all men (vicarious substitution), rather His death was all men dying in one man (actual substitution). He explained it to the Corinthian Christians this way: "We are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died" (2 Corinthians 5:14, NIV). This is the true meaning of biblical substitution. Yes, Christ did die for us, or in our place, in the sense that He tasted death instead of all mankind (see Hebrews 2:9). You and I, as Christians, will never have to experience the second death which Christ tasted on the cross on behalf of all humanity (see Revelation 20:6). Thank God for that!
But when Christ died, it wasn't just one Man dying instead of all men. That would be illegal, since no law, God's or man's, would allow it (see Ezekiel 18:20). Rather, according to the New Testament, all mankind died in one Man. The death of Christ was a corporate death. "If One died for all, then all died" (2 Corinthians 5:14). When an American wins an Olympic gold medal, who is happy, who rejoices? Not just one person, but the whole nation rejoices because that one represents America. So when Christ died, He died as us. Just as all humanity sinned in Adam, so also all humanity died in Christ, the second Adam. We saw all this in chapters 4 and 5 dealing with the "in Christ" motif and the two Adams.
What did Christ say concerning His own death on the cross? "Now is the judgment of this world [the human race]" (John 12:31). When Adam sinned, his condemnation came upon all mankind because all men and women were implicated in his sin (see Romans 5:12,18). Likewise, the entire human race was put into Christ at the incarnation so that when He died, we died in Him. This is what Jesus means when He says the whole world was judged by His cross.
When you accept this truth by faith, the cross of Christ becomes your cross. Jesus says, "When you follow Me, you must deny self and take up your cross daily" (see Luke 9:23). But many have failed to see what He is talking about. They define the Christian's cross as an individual cross separate from the cross of Christ. After all, didn't Jesus say, "Take up your cross"? Doesn't this mean that God has given every one of us an individual cross to bear? And because we identify the believer's cross with the hardships of life, they naturally differ for each of us. Some of us have big crosses to bear, and some have small crosses. Some have heavy crosses, and some have light crosses depending on our individual circumstances. That's why when we go through difficult times, we say, "The Lord has given me a very heavy cross to bear."
But that is not at all what the Bible teaches. God doesn't give each of us an individual cross. There is only one cross that saves—the cross of Christ, and that cross is a corporate cross. When you become a Christian, the cross of Christ becomes your cross (see Galatians 6:14). We must not equate the hardships of life with the cross of Christ. After all, unbelievers also have to face the hardships of life. We Christians are not the only ones who have to face problems in this sinful world. We identify ourselves with the cross of Christ when we accept Him as our Saviour. His cross becomes my cross, your cross, the moment we join ourselves to Him by faith.
The repentant thief on the cross, literally carried his own cross to the place of execution, but that cross could never save him. Christ's cross saved him. When we realize that our cross, as believers, is the cross of Christ, we understand that by faith we have identified ourselves with His death. And since Christ died to sin, we must likewise consider ourselves "to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:10,11).
In Christ I have freedom, not only from my many sins which condemn me, but also freedom from the source and power of sin in my life. John the Baptist introduced Jesus as the promised Messiah in these words: "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). Note that the word sin is in the singular. Jesus didn't come simply to forgive you. He came to take away the sin of the world, to eradicate sin as a power in the world. On the cross, "He condemned sin [singular] in the flesh" (Romans 8:3). That is to say, He condemned the law of sin in His flesh, which was the corporate flesh of the human race He came to redeem. He executed the law of sin—the power of sin—and put it to death in order that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in you and me who walk no longer after the flesh but after the Spirit (see Romans 8:4).
The solution God has for us in regard to the principle of sin is found in Christ and Him crucified. Because Christ accepted the wages of sin, our sins, His blood cleanses us from all sins. But because we died in Him, God struck at the very foundation, the very root, of the sin problem—the power or principle of sin. Peter says of Christ, "who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree [the cross], that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed" (1 Peter 2:24, emphasis supplied).
Now, let us sum up this glorious truth of the cross. Our death in Christ is essential for two reasons, because sin is a twofold problem. In the first place, it is essential that we died in Christ in order for our justification to be legally acceptable. "He who has died," wrote Paul to the Roman Christians who were baptized into Christ, "has been freed [Greek, justified] from sin" (Romans 6:7). It is true that objectively all men and women died in Christ; but if you reject or refuse to acknowledge that death as your death, if you refuse to identify yourself with the cross of Christ by your faith obedience, the blood of Christ cannot lawfully forgive you. That is why Jesus said, "He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned" (Mark 16:16). "If we walk in the light as He is in the light [the truth of the cross], we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sins" (1 John 1:7).
Second, it is essential that we died in Christ in order to deal with the root of our sin problem. Our death in Him brings to an end the principle of sin that is in our flesh. "Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:11). Have you ever taken a can of beer to a funeral of an alcoholic? As you pass by his casket at the funeral service, have you ever held out this can of beer and said, "Why don't you have one for the road?" Would he accept it? Or has he finished with alcohol? Because he is dead, he is no longer alive to alcohol. Similarly, God's solution for the sin problem is not to make you better. God's solution for the power of sin is to strike at it's very root by the cross of Christ and His death to sin. The cross of Christ, therefore, becomes the power of God unto salvation.
The flesh with all its desires belongs to the cross of Christ. "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lust" (Romans 13:14). The basis for such counsel is founded on the objective fact that our sin in the flesh was condemned in Christ some 2,000 years ago.
Do you want victory over the power of sin in the flesh? You will find it in the cross of Christ, not in your promises, not in your resolutions. They are like ropes of sand. Christ makes it clear, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain" (John 12:24).
I enjoy gardening, but I know that keeping the packet of tomato seeds on my shelf will not produce anything. Those seeds have to be planted in the ground and die. When they die, they sprout up—not as seeds but as shoots— and they grow and produce many tomatoes. Further, if I were to chop down the apple tree in my garden because the apples it produces are sour, and in its stead plant a new apple tree that is capable of producing sweet apples, it may take five years to produce apples, but when it does, you can be sure it will produce sweet apples because it is the right tree.
When you and I die in Christ and accept His life of righteousness in exchange for our life of sin, we will bear fruit. In the parable of the sower, Jesus said the seeds that fell on good ground produced results—some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, and some one-hundredfold. The amount doesn't matter. That is the message of the cross for today. It is the power of God unto salvation from sin.
The greatest truth men and women of the world need to know is that Christ shed His blood for their sins. That's what the unbeliever needs to know. But the greatest need of the Christian who is already forgiven, who is standing justified by faith and who has peace with God, who is standing before God as if he had never sinned, is not that Christ shed His blood for him. He knows that already. He needs to know that he died in Christ that he might "bear fruit to God" (Romans 7:4). I repeat, God's method of bearing fruit is not to make you better. God's method is to do away with your life entirely and to give you the life of His Son in exchange, a life that is well-pleasing to Him (see John 15:1-8).
This glorious truth of the cross of Christ becomes meaningful only when we identify the humanity of Christ with the sinful humanity of the human race He came to redeem. It may be possible for Christ to bear our many sins vicariously on His cross—although that would be illegal—but it is impossible for Him vicariously to overcome and condemn the principle of sin that resides in our sinful flesh. The fact is that Christ could not bear our sins without bearing us (see 1 Peter 2:24). When you cut down the sour apple tree, the sour apples that the tree produced also come down with it. So also when Christ bore us on the cross, our sins (our sinful actions) were included in what He did.
In the next chapter, we will see more clearly that the only way Christ could redeem the fallen human race from the principle of sin and death was by assuming our sinful human nature at the incarnation and condemning it at the cross, after He produced a perfect righteousness through the power of the indwelling Spirit. When our eyes are opened to this glorious truth, we will join the apostle Paul in confessing: "God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Galatians 6:14). By the word world, the Bible means "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16).
Key Points in Chapter Seven The Cross of Christ