We See

John 19:16–18

“…So they took Jesus, [17] and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. [18] There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.”

In the cross, we see the glory of Jesus Christ. We see the humility of the eternal God. We see the sovereign Lord of all use His authority, not to crush His enemies, but to suffer for them. We see the rightful King who deserves the worship of every creature full of patient love. We see the rejected Messiah losing His life to bring sinners into His family. There is no other God like this. None so good. None so worthy of our trust and our worship.

The Figure of the Crucified

Bonhoeffer
Eric Metaxas  

Hitler, to whom mercy was a sign of subhuman weakness, arranged for the French to sign the terms of their surrender in the forest of Compiegne on the very spot where they had the Germans sign the armistice in 1918…

Hitler and Germany had waited twenty-three years for this triumphant moment, and if ever Adolf Hitler became the Savior of the German nation, this was it. Many Germans who had reservations and misgivings about Hitler now changed their opinions. He had healed the unhealable wound of the First War and Versailles. He had restored a broken Germany to her former greatness. The old had passed way, and behold, he had made all things new. In many people’s eyes he was suddenly something like a god, the messiah for whom they had waited and prayed, and whose reign would last a thousand years…   

In his book Ethics, which he worked on during this time, Bonhoeffer wrote about the way people worship success:

In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done…With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means…The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard. God was interested not in success, but in obedience.

The Attraction

A Chance to Die
Elisabeth Elliot

In a statement written a few years later, Amy Carmichael put it briefly: Do not come [to India] unless you can say to your Lord and to us, The Cross is the attraction.

The Cross

Carl Henry

How can anyone be arrogant when he stands beside the cross?

At the Beginning

The Cost of Discipleship
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death–we give over our lives to death.  Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.  When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

Costly Grace

The Cost of Discipleship
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate…

Grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

You Don’t Need Jesus

Christless Christianity
Michael Horton

As heretical as it sounds today, it is probably worth telling Americans that you don’t need Jesus to have better families, finances, health, or even morality. Coming to the cross means repentance–not adding Jesus as a supporting character for an otherwise decent script but throwing away the script in order to be written into God’s drama. It is death and resurrection, not coaching and makeovers. When we try to fit God into our life movie, the plot is all wrong–and not just wrong but trivial. When we are pulled out of our own drama and cast as characters in his unfolding plot, we become part of the greatest story ever told. It is through God’s Word of judgment (law) and salvation (gospel) that we are transferred from our own pointless scripts and inserted into the grand narrative that revolves around Jesus Christ.

Persecuted Majority

Christless Christianity
Michael Horton

Although professing Christians are in the majority, we often like to pretend we are a persecuted flock being prepared for an imminent slaughter though the combined energies of Hollywood and the Democratic Party. But if we ever were really persecuted, would it be because of our offensive posturing and self-righteousness or because we would not weaken the offense of the cross?

Life & Death

Leviticus 11:39

“And if any animal which you may eat dies, whoever touches its carcass shall be unclean until the evening…

There is a difference between life and death.

According to Leviticus 11:39, even the animals that Israel is allowed to eat can make them unclean. If any animal dies of natural causes and an Israelite touches its body, they become unclean. A similar idea is expressed in Leviticus 11:13. All the birds of prey are considered unclean.

We are used to the idea that death is a natural part of life, but when God originally created the world there was no death. Death entered the world when Adam and Eve rejected the tree of life and instead chose to experience evil for themselves.

This theme of life and death can be seen further along in Leviticus. In chapter 12, childbirth makes women unclean. This is not because there is something wrong with babies but with childbirth comes a loss of blood, which is a symbol of death. In Leviticus chapter 13, those with skin diseases are unclean. Likely this is not referring to modern day leprosy but to a skin disease that makes the skin become white and flakey, essentially giving the appearance of a living death.

God is drawing attention to the fact that death is not normal. It is unnatural, yet worldwide 16,000 children under the age of five die every day. When I lived in Cincinnati, nearly everyone I knew had lost a loved one who had died at a young age. This is not the way the world was meant to be.

Now in Jesus’s day, the religious leaders knew that death spread the pollution of sin. Their solution was to avoid it at all costs. In Luke 10, Jesus tells a parable about a man who is robbed, beaten, and left for dead. A priest and Levite see the man but do not help him. Are they just selfish, evil men? More than likely they were on their way to the temple to minister to God’s people and they could not afford to touch a dead body and become unclean. The men in this parable did not realize that being ritually unclean was bad but allowing death was much worse.

Jesus is the creator and sustainer of life. In Himself alone, there is life abundant and He hates death. Yet He did not flee from death. He did not conquer death from afar. No, instead He humbled Himself and He was obedient even unto the point of death, even death on a cross, that He might destroy death once and for all.

The Only Way

Psalm 24:3

Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD?
And who shall stand in his holy place?



God created us to be in His presence and we want to be in His presence so it seems like it should be pretty easy to come into His presence

. But it’s not. We cannot come to Him however we want.

In Leviticus 10, Nadab and Abihu, two of Israel’s first priests, offer the Lord “unauthorized fire” and He kills them. In 2 Samuel 6, the Levites are moving the ark of the covenant, a wooden box which represents the presence of God. The ark begins to fall off a cart and Uzzah reaches out to steady it. He means well. He doesn’t want it to fall.  But God strikes him down.

In moments like these, God might appear to be a petty, controlling deity. If my daughter brings me a picture she drew, I’m not going to crumple it up and then punish her because it’s not perfect. But this metaphor doesn’t carry over to God. We are not cute, little kids giving our daddy our best. Our major problem is not that we are a finite creation made from dust approaching an infinite, eternal God. In other words, our problem is not that we cannot give God a perfect gift. Our problem is moral. We are sinners who care first and foremost about ourselves, attempting to approach a holy, worthy God.

The most common words in the book of Leviticus are holy, clean, and unclean. Three times in Leviticus God says, “Be holy, for I am holy.” And if there’s any room for doubt as to what God demands, Jesus makes things crystal clear in Matthew 5:48 when He says, “Be perfect.” But what if we’re not perfect? What if we’re like Peter, whose mouth is always bigger than his faithfulness? What if we’re like a man like Matthew who longed for God but not as much as he longed for money? What if we’re like Jonah – gifted and knowledgable about God but proud, unforgiving and unloving? What hope do we have? Who can ascend the hill of the Lord? Is it even possible?

God is not surprised by our lack of holiness and the book of Leviticus tells us how those who are not holy or clean can become clean. The answer is sacrifice.

Hebrews 9:22

Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

In Leviticus, God instructs the people to use blood to purify the priests, ordinary people, lepers, altars, and even the entire nation from its sin. This is not man’s best guess at what might work. The Lord Himself tells His people the way into His presence and this is, in fact, the only way into His presence. Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross is the only way for people to enter into the presence of God.