Chapter 7. The Death of Christ

Part Three. Christ's Work

Chapter 7. The Death of Christ

Christianity is a rescue religion. It declares that God has taken the initiative in Jesus Christ to deliver us from our sins. This is the main theme of the Bible.

"You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." "The Son of man came to seek and to save the lost."

"The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."

"We have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world."^[1] Matthew 1:21; Luke 19:10; 1 Timothy 1:15; 1 John 4:14.

More particularly, since sin has three principal consequences, as we have seen, "salvation" includes man's liberation from them all. Through Jesus Christ the Savior we can be brought out of exile and reconciled to God; we can be born again, receive a new nature and be set free from our moral bondage; and we can have the old discords replaced by a fellowship of love. The first aspect of salvation Christ made possible by his suffering of death, the second by the gift of his Spirit and the third by the building of his church. The first will occupy our thought in this chapter; the second and third in the next.

Paul described his work as a "ministry of reconciliation" and his gospel as a "message of reconciliation." He also made it quite clear where this reconciliation comes from. God is its author, he says, and Christ its agent. "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself." Again, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." All that was achieved through the death of Jesus on the cross had its origin in the mind and heart of the eternal God. No explanation of Christ's death or man's salvation which fails to do justice to this fact is loyal to the teaching of the Bible. "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." Again, "in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross."^[2] John 3:16; Colossians 1:19-20.

But what does this "reconciliation" mean? The same word is translated "atonement" in Romans 5:11 (AV), and an "atonement" denotes either an action by which two conflicting parts are made "at one" or the state in which their oneness is enjoyed and expressed. This "atonement," Paul says, we have "received" through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We have not ourselves achieved it by our own effort; we have received it from him as a gift. Sin caused an estrangement; the cross, the crucifixion of Christ, has accomplished an atonement. Sin bred enmity; the cross has brought peace. Sin created a gulf between man and God; the cross has bridged it. Sin broke the fellowship; the cross has restored it. To state the same truth in different words, as Paul did to the Romans, "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

But why was the cross necessary for our salvation? Is it really vital to Christianity? What exactly did it achieve? The centrality and meaning of the cross are what we must now go on to consider.

The Centrality of the Cross

In order to grasp that the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for sin is central to the message of the

Bible we must first go back to the Old Testament. Old Testament religion was sacrificial from the beginning. Ever since Abel brought lambs from his flock and "the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering," worshipers of Jehovah brought sacrifices to him. Altars were built, animals were killed and blood was shed long before the laws of Moses. But under Moses, after the covenant had been ratified between God and the people at Mount Sinai, what had been somewhat haphazard was regularized by divine ordinance.

The great prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. protested against the formalism and immorality of the worshipers, but the sacrificial system continued without interruption until the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. Every Jew was familiar with the ritual attached to burnt offering, trespass offering and their appropriate drink offerings, as well as with the special occasions, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly when they had to be offered. No Jew could have failed to learn the fundamental lessons of all this educative process that "the life of the flesh is in the blood" and that "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins."^[3] Leviticus 17:11; Hebrews 9:22.

The Old Testament sacrifices foreshadowed the sacrifice of Christ in visible symbol; the prophets and psalmists foretold it in words. We can see him in the persecuted but innocent victim described in certain psalms which were later applied to Jesus. We detect him in Zechariah's shepherd who is smitten and whose sheep are scattered abroad, and in Daniel's prince or "anointed one" who is "cut off." Above all, we can find him in the noble figure who appears in the Servant Songs toward the end of the prophecy of Isaiah, the suffering servant of Jehovah, the despised "man of sorrows," who is wounded for the transgressions of others, is led like a lamb to the slaughter and bears the sins of many. Truly, "thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer."^[4] Zechariah 13:7; cf. Mark 14:27; Daniel 9:25-26; Isaiah 53; Luke 24:46.

When Jesus came, he knew himself to be a son of destiny. He recognized that the Scriptures were bearing witness to him and that it was in him that their expectation was to be fulfilled. This is particularly clear in reference to his coming sufferings. The turning point of his ministry came at Caesarea Philippi when, immediately after Simon Peter had confessed him to be the Christ, "he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things."

It is this "must," this sense of compulsion laid on him by the Scriptures as revealing the Father's will, which continually re-curs in his teaching. He had "a baptism to be baptized with" and felt himself constrained until it was accomplished. He kept moving steadily toward what he called his "hour," which in the Gospel narrative is said several times not to have come, and of which at last, shortly before his arrest, with the cross in sight, he could say, "Father, the hour has come."

The prospect of the ordeal before him filled him with foreboding. "Now is my soul troubled," he cried out. "And what shall I say, 'Father, save me from this hour? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify thy name." When at last the moment of his arrest arrived, and Simon lunged out with his sword to protect him, slashing the ear of the high priest's servant, Jesus rebuked him, "Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup which the Father has given me?" According to Matthew, Jesus added, "Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?"^[5] Mark 8:31; Luke 12:50; John 17:1; 12:27-28; 18:11; Matthew 26:53-54.

The supreme importance of the cross which the Old Testament foretold and Jesus taught is fully recognized by the New Testament authors. The writers of the four Gospels devote a disproportionate amount of space to Christ's last week and death in comparison to the rest of his life and ministry. Two-fifths of the first Gospel, three-fifths of the second, one-third of the third and almost one-half of the fourth, are given to an account of the events between his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his triumphant ascension into heaven. It is particularly striking in the case of John, whose Gospel has sometimes been divided into two equal halves which have been titled "The Book of the Signs" and "The Book of the Passion."

What is implied in the Gospels is stated explicitly in the epistles, and most notably by Paul. The apostle never grew tired of reminding his readers of the cross. He had himself a vivid sense of indebtedness to the Savior who had died for him. "The Son of God... loved me," he could write, "and gave himself for me," and therefore, "far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

To the Corinthians, who were in danger of being entangled in the subtleties of Greek philosophy, the apostle wrote, "Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." This was what Paul had in fact proclaimed when he first came to Corinth from Athens on his second missionary journey, "I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified," and again, "I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures."^[6] Galatians 2:20, 6:14; 1 Corinthians 1:22-24:2:2, 15:3.

The same emphasis on the cross is to be found in the rest of the New Testament. What Peter thought and wrote about it we shall see later. In the epistle to the Hebrews comes the unequivocal statement that Christ "has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." When we reach the mysterious and wonderful book of the Revelation, we catch a glimpse of the glorified Jesus in heaven not only as "the Lion of the tribe of Judah" but as "a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain," and we hear the countless multitude of saints and angels singing his praise, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!"^[7] Hebrews 9:26; Revelation 5:5-6, 12. So from the early chapters of Genesis to the final chapters of the Revelation we can trace what some writers have called a scarlet thread. It is in fact like the thread of Theseus which enables us to find our way through the labyrinth of Scripture.

And what the Bible teaches concerning the centrality of the cross, the Christian church has recognized. Many churches mark us with the sign of a cross at our baptism and erect a cross over our grave when we are dead. Church buildings have often been constructed on a cruciform ground plan, with nave and transepts forming a cross, while some Christians wear a cross on lapel, necklace or chain. None of this is accidental. The cross is the symbol of our faith. The Christian faith is "the faith of Christ crucified." What the Emperor Constantine is said to have seen in the sky, we can see ourselves in the pages of the Bible: "In hoc signo vinces." There is no conquest without the cross. There is no Christianity without the cross. But why? What does it mean?

The Meaning of the Cross

I cannot begin to unfold the meaning of the death of Christ without first confessing that much remains a mystery. Christians believe that the cross is the pivotal event in history. Small wonder that our puny minds cannot fully take it in! One day the veil will be altogether removed, and all riddles will be solved. We shall see Christ as he is and worship him through eternity for what he has done. "Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood." So said the great apostle Paul with his massive intellect and his many revelations; and if he said it, how much more should we? I shall confine myself to what Simon Peter wrote about the death of Jesus in his first epistle. I turn to his writings on purpose. I have three reasons.

The first reason is that Peter was one of the inner and intimate group of three apostles. "Peter, James and John" form a trio who enjoyed a closer fellowship with Jesus than the rest of the Twelve. So Peter is as likely as anyone to have grasped what Jesus thought and taught concerning his death. In fact we find in his first letter several clear reminiscences of his Master's teaching.

Second, I turn to Peter with confidence, because at the beginning he was himself very reluctant to accept the necessity of Christ's sufferings. He had been the first to acknowledge the uniqueness

of Christ's person, but he was also the first to deny the need for his death. He who had declared, "Thou art the Christ" shouted, "No, Lord" when Jesus began to teach that the Christ must suffer. Throughout the remaining days of Jesus' ministry, Peter retained his dogged hostility to the idea of a Christ who would die. He tried to defend him in the garden, and, when the arrest was a fait accompli, followed him at a distance. In sullen disillusionment he denied him three times in the courtyard, and the tears he wept were not only of remorse but of despair. Only after the resurrection, when Jesus taught the apostles from Scripture that it was "necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory," did Simon Peter at last begin to understand and believe. Within a few weeks he had laid hold of the truth so firmly that he could address the crowd in the temple cloisters with the words, "what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled," and his first letter contains several references to "the sufferings and glory of the Christ." We too may at first be reluctant to admit the necessity of the cross and slow to fathom its meaning, but if anyone can persuade and teach us it will be Simon Peter.

Third, the references to the cross in Peter's first epistle are asides. If he were deliberately marshaling arguments to prove that the death of Jesus was indispensable, we might suspect him of having some axe to grind. But his allusions are more ethical than doctrinal. He simply urges his readers to live their Christian lives consistently and to bear their sufferings patiently, and then refers them to the cross for their inspiration.

Christ died as our example. Persecution is the background to this epistle. The Emperor Nero was known to be hostile to the Christian church, and the hearts of many Christians were failing them for fear. Already spasmodic outbreaks of violence had occurred. It seemed that worse was to come.

The advice Peter gives is straightforward.^[8] 1 Peter 2:18-25. If Christian servants are ill-treated by pagan masters, let them be sure that they are not receiving a punishment which they deserve. It is no credit to them to accept a beating for wrongdoing. Let them rather suffer for righteousness' sake and welcome reproach for the name of Christ. They are not to resist, still less to retaliate. They must submit. To bear unjust suffering patiently has God's approval. Then at once Peter's mind flies to the cross. Undeserved suffering is part of the Christian's calling, he asserts, "because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps." He was sinless and guileless. Yet when he was insulted, he took no revenge; when he suffered, he uttered no threats. He simply committed himself, or as the text may rather read, he committed them (his tormentors) into the hands of the just judge of all mankind.

Christ has left us an example. The Greek word Peter uses, unique here in the New Testament, denotes a teacher's copybook, the perfect alphabet on which a pupil models his script as he learns to write. So if we would master the ABCs of Christian love, we must trace out our lives according to the pattern of Jesus. We must "follow in his steps." This verb is eloquent as it comes from Peter's pen. He had boasted that he would follow Jesus to prison and to death, but in the event had "followed afar off." Only on the shore of Galilee had Jesus renewed his call and commission to Peter in his familiar terms "Follow me." So Peter was urging his readers to join him as he tried now to follow more obediently in the Master's steps.

The challenge of the cross is as uncomfortable in the twentieth century as it was in the first, and is as relevant today as ever it was. Perhaps nothing is more completely opposed to our natural instincts than this command not to resist, but to bear unjust suffering and overcome evil with good. Yet the cross bids us accept injury, love our enemies and leave the outcome to God.

The death of Jesus is more than an inspiring example, however. If it were not more than this, much in the story of the Gospels would be inexplicable. There are those strange sayings, for instance, in which he said he would "give his life as a ransom for many" and shed his blood— "blood of the covenant," he called it—"for the forgiveness of sins."^[9] Mark 10:45; Matthew 26:28. There is no redemption in an example. A pattern cannot secure our pardon.

Besides, why was he burdened with such heavy and anxious foreboding as the cross

approached? How shall we explain the dreadful agony in the garden, his tears and cries and bloody sweat? "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." Again, "My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done." Was the cup from which he shrank the symbol of death by crucifixion? Was he then afraid of pain and death? If so, his example may have been one of submission and patience, but it was hardly one of courage. Socrates, Plato tells us, drank his cup of hemlock in the prison cell in Athens "quite readily and cheerfully." Was Socrates braver than Jesus? Or were their cups filled with different poison? And what is the meaning of the darkness, and the cry of dereliction, and the rending from top to bottom of the temple curtain before the Holy of Holies? These things have no explanation if Jesus died only as an example. Indeed some of them would seem to make his example less exemplary.

Not only would much in the Gospels remain mysterious if Christ's death were purely an example, but our human need would remain unsatisfied. We need more than an example; we need a Savior. An example can stir our imagination, kindle our idealism and strengthen our resolve, but it cannot cleanse the defilement of our past sins, bring peace to our troubled conscience or reconcile us to God. In any case, the apostles leave us in no doubt about the matter. They regularly associate Christ's coming and death with our sins. "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures." "Christ also died for sins once for all." "You know that he appeared to take away sins." Here are the three great apostolic writers of the New Testament, Paul, Peter and John, unanimous in linking his death with our sins.^[10] 1 Corinthians 15:3; 1 Peter 3:18; 1 John 3:5.

Christ died as our sinbearer. The phrase which Peter uses in his letter (2:24) to describe the relation between Christ's death and our sins is this: "he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree." The expression to "bear sin" has a rather foreign sound in our ears, and we shall need to go back to the Old Testament to understand it. The idea occurs frequently in the books of Leviticus and Numbers. Many times it is written of an offender who infringes one of God's revealed laws that "he shall bear his iniquity" or "he shall bear his sin." For instance, "If anyone sins, doing any of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done... he is guilty and shall bear his iniquity."^[11] Leviticus 5:17. The expression can only mean one thing. To "bear sin" is to suffer the consequences of one's sin, to bear its penalty.

But at times it is implied that somebody else can assume responsibility for the sinner. In the thirtieth chapter of the book of Numbers, which deals with the validity of vows, Moses explains that a vow taken by a man or a widow must stand. A vow, however, taken by an unmarried girl or by a married woman must be validated by her father and her husband respectively. If on the day on which the man hears of the woman's vow he does not invalidate it, and it later proves to be foolish, it is said, "he shall bear her iniquity." Another example comes toward the end of the book of Lamentations, in which after the destruction of Jerusalem the Israelites cry: "Our fathers sinned, and are no more; and we bear their iniquities."

This possibility of somebody else accepting the responsibility for, and bearing the consequences of, our sins was further taught by those Old Testament blood sacrifices in the Mosaic legislation which seem so strange to us today. Of the sin offering it was said that God had given it to "bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the Lord." Similarly, on the annual Day of Atonement, Aaron was instructed to lay his hands on the head of the scapegoat, thus identifying himself and his people with it; he was then to confess the nation's sins, symbolically transferring them to the goat, which was driven out into the wilderness; and next we read, "The goat shall bear all their iniquities upon him to a solitary land."^[12] Leviticus 10:17 AV; 16:22. It is plain from this that to "bear" somebody else's sin is to become his

substitute, to bear the penalty of his sin in his place.

Despite this remarkable temporary provision, "it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins," as the writer to the Hebrews says. So in the longest Servant Song of Isaiah (chapter 53), the innocent sufferer (who foreshadows Christ) is described in terms which are intentionally sacrificial. He was "like a lamb that is led to the slaughter" both because "he opened not his mouth" and because "the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all," so that his soul was made "an offering for sin." We all "like sheep have gone astray," but he also "like a sheep" "was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed." Now all this clear language of substitution, describing him as "stricken for the transgression of my people," is summed up in the chapter in the two phrases with which we have been made familiar by Leviticus, "he shall bear their iniquities" and "he bore the sin of many."

When at last after centuries of preparation Jesus Christ himself arrived, John the Baptist greeted him publicly with the extraordinary words: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" Similarly, when later the New Testament came to be written, its authors have no difficulty in recognizing the death of Jesus as the final sacrifice in which all the Old Testament sacrifices were fulfilled. This truth is an important part of the message of the epistle to the Hebrews. The old sacrifices were of bulls and goats: Christ offered himself. The old sacrifices were interminably repeated: Christ died once and for all. He was "offered once to bear the sins of many." This last phrase brings us back to Peter's expression, "he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree." The Son of God identified himself with the sins of men. He was not content to take our nature upon him; he took our iniquity upon him as well. He was not only "made flesh" in the womb of Mary; he was "made sin" on the cross of Calvary.

These last words are Paul's. They are among the most startling in the whole biblical teaching about the atonement. But we cannot escape their significance. In the previous verses (in 2 Corinthians 5) Paul has affirmed that God refused to impute our sins to us, or count them against us. That is, in his utterly undeserved love for us, he would not make us answerable for our sins. He would not allow it to be said of us as it was of so many in Old Testament days, "they shall bear their iniquity." Then what did he do? "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Jesus Christ had no sins of his own; he was made sin with our sins, on the cross.

As we look at the cross, we can begin to understand the terrible implications of these words. At twelve noon "there was darkness over the whole land" which continued for three hours until Jesus died. With the darkness came silence, for no eye should see, and no lips could tell, the agony of soul which the spotless Lamb of God now endured. The accumulated sins of all human history were laid upon him. Voluntarily he bore them in his own body. He made them his own. He shouldered full responsibility for them.

And then in desolate spiritual abandonment that cry was wrung from his lips, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" It was a quotation from the first verse of Psalm 22. No doubt he had been meditating during his agony on its description of the sufferings and glory of the Christ. But why did he quote that verse? Why not one of the triumphant verses at the end? Why not, "You who fear the Lord, praise him!" or "Dominion belongs to the Lord"? Are we to believe that it was a cry of human weakness and despair, or that the Son of God was imagining things?

No. These words must be taken at their face value. He quoted this verse of Scripture, as he quoted all others, because he believed he was himself fulfilling it. He was bearing our sins. And God who is "of purer eyes than to behold evil" and cannot "look on wrong" turned away his face. Our sins came between the Father and the Son. The Lord Jesus Christ who was eternally with the Father, who enjoyed unbroken communion with him throughout his life on earth, was thus momentarily abandoned. Our sins sent Christ to hell. He tasted the torment of a soul estranged from God. Bearing our sins, he died our death. He endured instead of us the penalty of

separation from God which our sins deserved.

Then at once, emerging from that outer darkness, he cried in triumph, "It is finished," and finally, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit." And so he died. The work he had come to do was completed. The salvation he had come to win was accomplished. The sins of the world were borne. Reconciliation to God was available to all who would trust this Savior for themselves, and receive him as their own. Immediately, as if to demonstrate this truth publicly, the unseen hand of God tore down the curtain of the temple and hurled it aside. It was needed no longer. The way into God's holy presence was no longer barred. Christ had "opened the gate of heaven to all believers." And thirty-six hours later he was raised from death, to prove that he had not died in vain.

This simple and wonderful tale of the sinbearing of the Son of God is strangely unpopular today. That he should have borne our sins and taken our penalty is said to be immoral or unworthy or unjust. And of course it can easily be travestied. We are not suggesting that there is nothing left for us to do. Of course we must return "to the Shepherd and Guardian of our souls," dying to sin and living to righteousness, as Peter went on to say. Above all we do not forget that "all this is from God," issuing from his unimaginable mercy. We are not to think of Jesus Christ as a third party wresting salvation for us from a God unwilling to save. No. The initiative was with God himself. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." Precisely how he can have been in Christ while he made Christ to be sin for us, I cannot explain, but the same apostle states both truths in the same paragraph. And we must accept this paradox along with the equally baffling paradox that Jesus of Nazareth was both God and man, and yet one person. If there was a paradox in his person, it is not surprising that we find one in his work as well. But even if we cannot resolve the paradox or fathom the mystery, we should believe the direct statement of Christ and his apostles, that he bore our sins, understanding the phrase in its biblical meaning that he underwent the penalty of our sins for us.

That Peter meant this is clear from three considerations. First, he says that it was on the "tree" that Christ bore our sins. There can be no doubt he used the word deliberately, just as he did in his early sermons recorded in the Acts, for instance when he said, "The God of our fathers raised Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree." His Jewish listeners would have had no difficulty in grasping his implied reference to Deuteronomy 23, where it was written, "Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree." The fact that Jesus ended his life hanging on a "tree" (for the Jews regarded nailing to a cross and hanging on a tree as equivalents) meant that he was under the divine curse.

Instead of repudiating this idea, the apostles accepted it, and Paul explained it in Galatians 3. He pointed out that it was also written in Deuteronomy: "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them." But then "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, 'Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree.'" The meaning of these verses in the context is plain and inescapable. It is this: the righteous curse of the broken law which rests on transgressors was transferred to Jesus on the cross. He has freed us from the curse by taking it upon himself when he died.

Second, this passage in Peter's first letter contains no fewer than five clear verbal reminiscences of Isaiah 53:

1 PETER 2	ISAIAH 53
He committed no sin; no guile was	He had done no violence, and there was no
found on his lips	deceit in his mouth
He was reviled	He was despised and rejected by men
He himself bore our sins	He bore the sin of many
By his wounds you have been healed	With his stripes we are healed
You were straying like sheep	All we like sheep have gone astray

We have already seen that this chapter portrays an innocent sufferer who in a sacrificial death is wounded for the transgressions of others. It is beyond question that Jesus himself interpreted his mission and death in the light of this chapter, as did his followers after him. For example, when the Ethiopian eunuch asked the evangelist Philip to whom the prophet was referring in this passage which he was reading in his chariot, Philip immediately "told him the good news of Jesus."

Third, Peter has other references to the cross in his letter which confirm our interpretation of his words in the second chapter. He describes his readers as having been "ransomed... with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot," and even as having been "sprinkled" with his blood.^[13] 1 Peter 1:2, 18-19. Both expressions allude to the original Passover sacrifice at the time of the Exodus. Each Israelite family took a lamb, killed it and sprinkled its blood on the lintel and side posts of the house. Only so were they safe from the judgment of God and only so did they escape from the slavery of Egypt. Peter boldly applies the Passover symbolism to Christ (as does Paul also, "Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed"). His blood was shed to redeem us from the judgment of God and the bondage of sin. If we are to benefit from it, it must be sprinkled on our hearts, that is, applied to each of us individually.

Peter's other significant reference to the cross is in 1 Peter 3:18: "Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God." Sin had separated us from God; but Christ desired to bring us back to God. So he suffered for our sins, an innocent Savior dying for guilty sinners. And he did it "once for all," decisively, so that what he did cannot be repeated or improved on or even supplemented.

We must not miss the implication of this. It means that no religious observances or good deeds of ours could ever earn our forgiveness. Yet a great many people in the post-Christian West have fallen for this caricature of Christianity. They then understandably see no fundamental difference between the Christian gospel and the Eastern religions. For they regard all religion as a system of human merit. "God helps those who help themselves," they say. But there is no possibility of reconciling this notion with the cross of Christ. He died to atone for our sins for the simple reason that we cannot atone for them ourselves. If we could, his atoning death would be redundant. Indeed, to claim that we can secure God's favor by our own efforts is an insult to Jesus Christ. For it is tantamount to saying that we can manage without him; he really need not have bothered to die. As Paul put it, "if justification [i.e., acceptance with God] were through the law [i.e., through our obedience], then Christ died to no purpose."^[14] Galatians 2:21. The message of the cross remains, in our day as in Paul's, folly to the wise and a stumbling block to the self-righteous, but it has brought peace to the conscience of millions. As Richard Hooker wrote in a sermon which he preached in 1585 when he was Master of the Temple, Let it be accounted folly, or frenzy, or fury, or whatsoever. It is our wisdom and our comfort; we care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath sinned and God hath suffered; that God hath made himself the sin of men, and that men are made the righteousness of God. Every Christian can echo these words. There is healing through his wounds, life through his death, pardon through his pain, salvation through his suffering.