The Crucified God

"It is the cross that gives God his credibility. The only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche (the nineteenth-century German philosopher) ridiculed as ‘God on the cross.’ In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?

In the course of my travels I have entered a number of Buddhist temples in different Asian countries. I have stood respectfully before a statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing around his mouth, serene and silent, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time, after a while, I have had to turn away. And in my imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness.

The crucified one is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us, dying in our place in order that we might be forgiven. Our sufferings become more manageable in light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross, which symbolizes divine suffering."

— John Stott,  Why I Am a Christian,  page 63


HT: Of First Importance

The Exact Date?

Did Jesus die on April 3, 33 AD, exactly 1,981 years ago today? From Justin Taylor and Andreas Kostenberger:

In our new book, The Final Days of Jesus: The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived, we assume but do not argue for a precise date of Jesus’s crucifixion. Virtually all scholars believe, for various reasons, that Jesus was crucified in the spring of either A.D. 30 or A.D. 33, with the majority opting for the former. (The evidence from astronomynarrows the possibilities to A.D. 27, 30, 33, or 36). However, we want to set forth our case for the date of Friday, April 3, A.D. 33 as the exact day that Christ died for our sins.

To be clear, the Bible does not explicitly specify the precise date of Jesus’s crucifixion and it is not an essential salvation truth. But that does not make it unknowable or unimportant. Because Christianity is a historical religion and the events of Christ’s life did take place in human history alongside other known events, it is helpful to locate Jesus’s death—as precisely as the available evidence allows—within the larger context of human history.

Among the Gospel writers, no one makes this point more strongly than Luke, the Gentile physician turned historian and inspired chronicler of early Christianity.

Luke implies that John the Baptist began his public ministry shortly before Jesus did, and he gives us a historical reference point for when the Baptist’s ministry began: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar . . .” (Luke 3:1)....

Read more about it here.

Cursed For Us

 RC Sproul explains the curse motif of Good Friday and the Crucifixion of Christ. Amazing Love!

 HT: Kevin DeYoung

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

"I preach as though Christ was crucified yesterday, rose from the dead today and was coming back tomorrow."
                            —Martin Luther

Maybe we should live that way also.

By Nothing Else Except the Cross...

By nothing else except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ has death been brought low:
The sin of our first parents destroyed
Hell plundered,
Resurrection bestowed,
The power given us to despise the things of the world,
Even death itself,
The road back to the former blessedness made smooth,
The gates of paradise opened,
Our nature seated at the right hand of God,
And we made children and heirs of God.
By the cross all these things have been set aright…
It is a seal that the destroyer may not strike us,
A raising up of those who lie fallen,
A support for those who stand,
A staff for the infirm,
A crook for the shepherded,
A guide for the wandering,
A perfecting of the advanced,
Salvation for soul and body,
A deflector of all evils,
A cause for all goods,
A destruction of sin,
A plant of resurrection,
And a tree of eternal life.

- St. John of Damascus

Hat Tip: Kingdom People:

Ugliness Transformed to Beauty

"Don't miss this miracle! The miracle of the redeemed Roman cross! Ugliness transformed into beauty.  A miracle achieved not by erasing its history but be transforming its identity. The miracle of forgiving grace! And if the forgiveness of Christ can save a symbol from its ugly association with torture and death and transform it into a symbol of grace and beauty, then no sinner is beyond the reach and saving grace of God's love.  The history of the cross is not obliterated through forgiveness - it retains its history of death - but the identity of the cross is transformed by forgiveness."

 - Brian Zahnd, Unconditional, pages 193-194

The Fact of Evil Transformed

“God did not abolish the fact of evil: He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion: He rose from the dead.”
— Dorothy Sayers Letters to a Diminished Church
(Nashville, Tn.: W Publishing Group, 2004), 122-23

Hat Tip: Of First Importance