Meanings of the Cross

[chess]

Last Sunday was the Easter 'Interactive Multimedia Experience' at the church I go to (City Church Cambridge). It was a guest service, and there were lots of decorations and an easter egg hunt and children singing and the usual things you get, but there was also a very well-edited and moving video of carefully non-gory bits from The Passion of The Christ, which got me thinking.

While I'm generally willing to accept the standard 'evangelical' line on the meaning and purpose of Jesus' death - 'penal substitutionary atonement', or 'He suffered and died for our sins because it is a property of (the universe + God) that somebody had to, so God made it a part of Him that did it rather than having to do it to us' - I've also always been on the lookout for more meanings. After all, almost every part of the Bible and everything God does is stacked with multiple lessons and meanings that God wants to convey to different people at different times - why would the central event of history be any different?

There are some standard 'other meanings' I've had in my model for a while now:

There's the meaning where God gets to say 'no, no, I *really* understand' to people who are suffering, and especially people who He is asking to do difficult things and give things up, because He suffered (in many ways - this links into the temptation in the desert too), and He sacrificed His only Son (important because parents are often willing to suffer themselves for God but worry about doing God's work if it might cause their children to suffer, which is commendable but sometimes wrong).

There's the meaning where Jesus showed the world that there were different ways to win. That apparent defeat could in fact be spiritual victory. That it was no longer the correct solution to gather an army and defeat the enemies of Israel in the physical world, on the ground, with the sword. And also to show the world that there was life after death, that bodily death was not the end, and to give some small idea of the flavour of that which is eternal within us with His appearances to people after His death.

While watching the video, though, another possible meaning came to me. I haven't heard it so widely from other people who I trust, so I'm not entirely certain in it, but I thought it was worth sharing.

One of the major 'problems' in Christianity is one that Paul addresses in Romans 6:1 - 'What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?'. If forgiveness, if grace is a free gift that God gives us, why should we worry about sinning? God will make everything come right in the end whatever we do, right? There are lots of warnings about being accidentally asleep when the day comes, and getting to Heaven by escaping through the fire rather than having built your house there. But still the question often remains.

People often ask of the Cross, 'Why did God bother?'. If God is all-powerful, why did he choose to have this brutal and traumatic event happen rather than just forgiving us outright? One answer is, of course, that He *can't*, that God does have certain fixed properties and one of them is that He is just and He cannot let wrongdoing go unpunished. But another reason, the reason that came to me while watching the artful evocation of Jesus' suffering, was that God didn't want us to disregard sin. We often find ourselves disregarding our sin, because God forgives us and makes it all better. We ask, 'Is it really a problem if we don't do what God wants, if we embrace this sin just for a moment? How serious is it that we disobey God?'.

And Jesus stretches out His arms on the cross, beaten and bloodied, spiritually and mentally anguished in His sudden removal from the comforting presence of God the Father, and says, "This serious. This is how serious it is."

I don't know about you, but that makes me go, "Oh." And think quite hard about some of the ways that I sin, and how they *are* serious, and that I should do something about them.

(Note: I'm off to Maelstrom at 10am and won't be back until Monday, so please don't expect comment replies until then if you have any comments...)

Comments

[lupie-stardust.livejournal.com]

"And Jesus stretches out His arms on the cross, beaten and bloodied, spiritually and mentally anguished in His sudden removal from the comforting presence of God the Father, and says, "This serious. This is how serious it is.""

I have to say, that is actually how I always thought of it, with other meanings being secondary. I wonder if that is a heresy? I don't know. But I do know that that's what I thought.

[rachelprince.livejournal.com]

I don't think I ever consciously thought of it that way. However, it makes a lot of sense to me.

[(Anonymous)]

Have you ever tried reading 'Cafe Theology'? It has a line in it which summarises your above point rather neatly (to the effect of 'if God decided this was the solution then the problem must have been serious') and it is a fairly good (if at times mildly irritating read).
Abner

[miriammoules.livejournal.com]

Please consider posting this to wildgodcomm at some point, it's fascinating.

[passage.livejournal.com]

I don't think it can stand as primary in the sense of logically primary - if there are less serious ways to solve sin then sin isn't really that serious, and Jesus is only pretending it's serious when he dies on the cross.

These 'other meanings' all work, but only if there is already a primary reason why it had to be done this way, and why this way works - penal substitutionary atonement is Michelle's explanation, and it's a good one (if only it were possible to be precise without suffering an attack of jargon).

For example the cross is only a demonstration that there are 'other ways to win' if it is, for a prior reason, a win.

While this may be logically important it doesn't in any way stop 'sin is serious' being the point which has the most impact on you or how you live.

"Meanings" of the Cross

[(Anonymous)]

Actually there are no meanings but there is a correct explanation for it. Gen. 9:5 NIV assures that substitutionary atonement is one of the explanations that is not correct. For no matter which man's life is taken by bloodshed the result is that an account must be given to God.