Foundations 1-1: The Heart of Christian Faith: Christ Crucified

There’s nothing more important than really grasping the key themes of our faith.  In these next posts we’ll be feeding on eight.  I pray this will bless us, but maybe also be helpful (rewritten to suit your personality!) if you’re sharing these themes in leading, say, a homegroup or youth group…

STARTER: How would you answer someone who asked you to summarize in three sentences what your faith is about?

Then: In His Word the Bible – what does God show us is the heart & foundation of everything that matters?

1 Corinthians 1:22-23 gives a clear answer. Read it: `Jews demand miraculous signs; Greeks look for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified.` And 1 Corinthians 2:2: `I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.` And 1 Corinthians 15:3-5: `What I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.`

This is the heart of Christianity, and of everything that will matter in our lives! Christ’s cross is the centre of the whole of human history and human existence. So we’ll grow towards the huge destiny God has for us as we learn to grasp more and more the wonder of what Jesus is like, and more and more the wonder of what the cross is about. Is that the shape of my life?

Ten sessions wouldn’t exhaust the glory of Christ, crucified!- but let’s ask, what does the cross show us about God?… Our answer will include two vital things at least: God is so good, so holy, He never bends the rules, even if it means suffering enormously Himself; and, He loves us so hugely He rescues us, even if it means suffering enormously Himself! (What a reason to worship…)

And what does the cross show us about us? Again, two vital things at least: We were so very lost God had to rescue us, even at enormous cost to Himself; and we are loved so much God came and rescued us, even at enormous cost to Himself…

So the very centre of our faith we see this: God’s massively loving and forgiving grace in Christ’s cross toward us sinners!  We only grasp the Christian faith when we grasp what this means: we so desperately needed to be forgiven that Christ had to be crucified for us; and now, because of the cross, we can have that forgiveness, absolutely freely!

GOD’S HOLINESS AND MY SINFULNESS

As God revealed his ways to the human race, we see He focused first for centuries on this one thing: God is wonderfully holy beyond our imagination!  The early old testament teaches this over and over in different ways (as we’ve been seeing!) But, we aren’t holy; and that is a huge problem. God says `Without holiness no one will see [have a relationship with] the Lord` (Hebrews 12:14). And that’s disastrous, because God is the source of all love, all joy, all peace; and so in the long run we can’t survive if we’re separated from God.

Because God is utterly holy, everything in us that isn’t holy matters: my anger, your pride, my lust, your envy, my spite: above all our selfishness and our deliberate independence of God. These things mean we’re separated catastrophically from God (read Romans 6:23. `The wages [consequences] of sin is death`, God says). So above any other need in our lives, we desperately need God’s forgiveness, so that our indispensable relationship can be restored with him.

And so in the Bible, alongside that holiness emphasis, God soon starts to show us that forgiveness is possible; He will provide a sacrifice for our sins. The first hints are in Genesis; but in fact God built the whole of old testament faith and worship to drum in the lesson that `without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness` (Heb 9:22). At the heart of OT faith are the temple sacrifices, and above all “Passover”, the joyful celebration commemorating just how God sets people free. When God’s judgment came on sin in Exodus, people were safe in one place and one only: in a house that had the blood from a sacrificed lamb plastered over the way in; a lamb that had died in their place…

Why did God choose to shape their faith that way, to make this the centrepiece and central celebration of Jewish worship? Because God is utterly just, and therefore the penalty of sin must always be paid; unless a sacrifice is paid for sin, on our behalf, there can be no forgiveness for us. But there is! Passover is God’s picture of what would happen when Jesus died: read 1 Corinthians 5:7: `Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed`, says Paul. And John 1:29: `Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!`, said John the Baptist about Jesus!

SO THEN…

The closer we draw to God, the more we hear what He’s saying to us and grasp what He’s like, the more we’ll become aware of all this, of our own sinfulness and need to be forgiven. Isaiah’s unavoidable reaction when he actually saw God’s glory is a powerful example: `“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips!”` (Isaiah 6:5). God designed the whole old testament to show us: God is a God who does get angry with sin – with child abuse, racism, economic injustice, sex trafficking – but also with all the things that are unclean in my life too!  We do so need to be forgiven – but – we can be! We all deserve to perish away from God, but when Jesus God’s Lamb died on the cross, God in His love for us was seeing the mess we were in and giving his only, deeply beloved Son to take our place. Instead of us being punished for our sin, Jesus took our punishment, and went Himself through hell (catastrophic separation from God) for us on the cross. `Christ crucified`, in incredible love for us: this is the heart of Christian faith!

So now the price is paid for every sin of ours! This is what “grace” means: we don’t have to do anything to earn salvation, He’s done it all; we just each have to reach out to Him deliberately and receive it from Him personally in humble faith… `For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast!` (Eph 2:8-9)

And if we’ve reached out and said, God I want that forgiveness that Jesus the Lord of all won for me on the cross, then here we are safe, here we are loved enormously, here we are forgiven. God’s saying to us, This is the heart, the foundation of everything that matters!

The difference that grasping this grace can make to the whole way we feel about life is fantastic. Many people think that, if there’s a heaven, you go there if you do good, and if there’s a hell, you go there if you do very bad things. But if we think like that it leads to slavery, because we can never know if we’ve done enough good things. This is where `religion`, trying to earn God’s favour by our good deeds or rituals, is so very different from true Christian faith (a difference we need to be able to explain). `Religion` can only leave us with guilt, and a deep uncertainty as to whether God will have mercy on us; rather than the joyful assurance of being his son or his daughter. (Even those of us who have been Christians for a long time can fall back into the painful trap of trying to earn God’s love and forgiveness through the things we do; and it’s pointless!)

The Bible makes all this clear as it reveals God’s grace to us. Isaiah wrote, `All our righteous acts are like filthy rags’ (64:6); no amount of good actions or religious practices can ever make us fit for God’s holy presence, or earn his forgiveness. We `all fall short of the glory of God`, says Romans 3:23. And we know it in our hearts; we can turn up at church every week, read the Bible every day, sing lots of worship songs, do voluntary work every Wednesday – and all of that’s great… Yet we rightly sense God saying: none of these things make us holy enough to be in His presence, our sin still separates us from Him and leaves us facing His judgment and needing to be forgiven, and we can’t earn that… What we actually need is a whole new life, a whole new identity, a whole new birth: like Jesus said (read John 3:7): `You must be born again!`

As God shows us His grace – and maybe He’s doing that again right now? – , we see that we don’t have to earn forgiveness. We hear God pointing to Jesus’ triumphant cry on the cross (read John 19:30): `It is finished!` There’s nothing I need to add, or can! I don’t have to do, and do, and hope that maybe when I get to heaven they’ll let me in. No; Jesus has done it all; and He will never turn us away! The pressure is off; as we reflect on this and grasp it, the fear goes!

God in His grace loves us colossally as we are. Packer writes, ‘There is tremendous relief in knowing that God’s love for me is based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst in me. No discovery can disillusion Him… He sees all the twisted things about me that others don’t see… Yet He… desires to be my friend, and has given His son to die for me in order for… this.’ That’s grace!

So lastly: as we’ve reached out deliberately, received His forgiveness and asked Jesus in to be in relationship with us, that is, to be the rightful Lord of our lives, He does a wonderful thing: (read Romans 6:5) we become `united with Christ`, he puts His Holy Spirit and His new, joyous, eternal life in us forever. This is what it means to be `born again`, or `born of the Spirit` (read John 3:8 and also Ephesians 1:13).

And He will never leave us! Heaven is to be in God’s presence, and from the moment we are born again, He is in us, and we are, as Paul so often says, `in Him`, `in Christ`. We may not feel it (most of the time anyway), but now we’re actually (read Ephesians 2:6) `seated in the heavenly realms in Christ`; our life in heaven has started! And permanently so: if we’ve reached out, deliberately, received His forgiveness and asked Jesus in to be Lord of our lives, then the door to heaven is shut behind us and we’re safe inside! We can be confident about this, because we know God keeps His promises; we’re locked into a place where we no longer face His judgment, because Jesus carried all that for us; we’re locked safely into the massive love God has for us forever. Therefore, (read Rom 5:1), `since we’ve been justified by faith [that is, faith in His death for us] we have peace with God!`

Have you? Have I?

ABSORB TIME: This may be a good moment for some in your group, if you’re in one, to share how they became followers of Jesus. Anyway for reflection and prayer: Consider what you have been hoping is the basis of your acceptance by God. My good actions? Religious activities? Christ’s cross? (Look again at Ephesians 2:8-9.) Then, thank God that He loves me, in spite of all I have done, and has died in agony to pay for all my sins! Commit yourself afresh to a life of repentance and faith, centred on Christ and his cross!

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