The Cross: Why It Had to Happen

People wear crosses around their necks without thinking about it. Familiarity has worn the edges off, and it is worth restoring them for a moment. A cross was an instrument of execution — the most degrading one the Roman world possessed, reserved for slaves, rebels, and the lowest criminals, and deliberately designed to be slow and public and shameful. Roman citizens were exempt from it by law. Polite people did not mention it.

To wear a small gold cross is roughly equivalent to wearing a gallows or an electric chair. That is how strange the central symbol of the Christian faith actually is — and the strangeness is the point. Something happened on one of those beams that turned the most shameful object in the ancient world into the emblem of hope for millions.

This article asks the question that every honest person eventually asks: why did it have to happen at all? Could God not simply have forgiven?

1. Begin with the problem the cross was solving

To see why the cross was necessary, we must first hold two facts together, and both have been established elsewhere in these pages.

The first is that we are guilty, and not slightly.

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)

The second is that God is righteous, and cannot treat sin as though it did not matter. Our sin has produced a real separation:

"But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear." (Isaiah 59:2)

Now put those together and see the difficulty. God loves the sinner and desires to save him. God is just and must deal with the sin. If He simply overlooks the offence, He ceases to be righteous — a judge who dismisses real crimes is not merciful but corrupt, and every victim is wronged a second time. If He executes the sentence, the sinner is lost.

People often ask why God did not simply forgive without all this. But consider: could a human judge forgive a murderer by an act of goodwill from the bench, with no penalty paid by anyone? We would call that a miscarriage of justice, not mercy. Forgiveness always costs somebody something. The only question is who pays.

2. And blood was always the answer

From the earliest pages of Scripture, God taught one lesson relentlessly through the sacrificial system: sin is answered by death, and by the death of a substitute.

"...and without shedding of blood is no remission." (Hebrews 9:22)

For centuries Israel watched innocent animals die in their place — at the Passover, at the altar, on the day of atonement. It was a strange and bloody education, and it was meant to be. Every lamb was a sentence: something must die for you. But the education was also incomplete, and deliberately so, because an animal is not the equal of a man, and rivers of animal blood could not wash away one human sin. The whole system was a signpost pointing beyond itself.

3. The cross was not an accident

It is sometimes suggested that the crucifixion was a tragedy — a good man caught in political machinery, a movement that ended badly. Scripture does not permit this reading.

Seven centuries beforehand, the prophet Isaiah described it in detail so precise that reading it alongside the Gospel accounts is unsettling:

"Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." (Isaiah 53:4-5)

And the Lord Jesus Christ Himself spoke of His death repeatedly and calmly, long before it came, as the very reason He had come. He said no man took His life from Him, but that He laid it down of Himself. Pilate had no power over Him except what was given. The soldiers did not take Him; He gave Himself.

"And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." (Philippians 2:8)

Obedient unto death. The cross was not something that happened to Him. It was something He accomplished.

4. The substitution: our sins laid on Him

Here is the heart of it, and Isaiah states it in a single sentence that has never been surpassed:

"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:6)

Notice the shape of that verse. It begins with all and it ends with all, and in the middle stands one Person. Every one of us has gone astray — that is the universal problem. And the iniquity of us all was laid on Him — that is the universal provision.

Notice too the phrase every one to his own way. Our straying is not identical. Some wander into open rebellion, others into respectable indifference, others into religion without God. But each of us picked his own direction away from God, and the sum of all those private departures was laid on one back.

And mark who did the laying. Not the soldiers. Not the Jewish leaders. Not Pilate. The LORD hath laid on him. Behind every human actor in that day's events stood the deliberate purpose of God.

5. He was made a curse

The manner of death mattered, and it was not incidental. The law of Moses had declared that a man hanged on a tree was under the curse of God, and Scripture takes hold of that fact deliberately:

"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." (Galatians 3:13)

The law had pronounced a curse on everyone who failed to keep it — which is everyone. That curse had to fall somewhere. It fell on Him, in the one form of death that publicly declared a man accursed. Nothing about Calvary was arbitrary.

6. The great exchange

And now the most astonishing sentence in the Bible, which describes a transaction of two directions in a single breath:

"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Follow both movements carefully.

He who knew no sin — not merely who avoided sin, but who had no acquaintance with it whatever from the inside — was made sin for us. Our guilt was reckoned to His account.

And we — who had no righteousness of our own worth the name — are made the righteousness of God in Him. Not merely forgiven, which would be enough to astonish us; clothed in a righteousness that was never ours.

This is why the gospel is not God lowering His standard. The standard was met completely. The books were balanced exactly. It is simply that Another paid, and Another's record was credited.

7. What was happening in the darkness

For three hours in the middle of that day, darkness covered the land. And out of that darkness came a cry that has never been fully sounded: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

We should be careful here, and reverent. But the Scriptures give us enough to understand the outline. The physical agony of crucifixion was real and terrible, and thousands of men endured it — some, by the accounts, more stoically than He appeared to. That is worth noticing, because it tells us the physical pain was not the worst of it.

What no other man on a cross ever bore was the sin of the world and the judgment due to it. The One who had known unbroken fellowship with the Father from eternity was, in that hour, made sin — and a holy God turned His face away, exactly as He must from sin. That is what the darkness was. That is what the cry was.

The wrath of God against evil did not evaporate at Calvary. It fell — completely, without mitigation — on a willing Substitute. Which means that for those who are His, there is none of it left.

"Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him." (Romans 5:9)

8. "It is finished"

And then, before He died, He said one word. In the original it is a single word, and it was not a whimper of defeat but a shout.

"When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." (John 19:30)

The word He used was the ordinary commercial term written across a bill of debt when the last payment had been received. It meant: paid in full; nothing further is owed. Archaeologists have found receipts bearing that very word.

Consider what that rules out. He did not say it is begun, leaving us to complete it by our efforts. He did not say I have done my part, leaving a balance for us to settle by good works, sacraments, penance, or religious performance. He said the debt was finished — and a finished work cannot be added to. Any attempt to contribute is not humility; it is a denial that the payment was sufficient.

And note the order in that verse: He said it is finished, and then He bowed His head and gave up the spirit. He did not die and thereby finish; He finished, and then chose to die. Even in that moment He was not a victim of the process.

9. What the cross actually accomplished

Scripture uses several pictures for what was achieved there, and each comes from a different corner of ordinary life.

Redemption — a word from the slave market. A price was paid to set a captive free, and the price is named:

"Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." (1 Peter 1:18-19)

Reconciliation — a word from broken relationships. Enemies were made friends, and the war was ended from God's side first:

"And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself." (Colossians 1:20)

Nearness — for those who had been shut out entirely:

"But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." (Ephesians 2:13)

Justification — a word from the courtroom, where the guilty are declared righteous on a legal basis rather than a sentimental one.

And at the moment He died, the veil of the temple — the heavy curtain that had shut men out of the holiest place for centuries — was torn in two from the top downward. Not from the bottom, as a man would tear it. From the top, as God would. The way in had been opened, and God Himself opened it.

10. Why it had to be Him

One question remains: why could no one else have done this?

The payment had to be made by a man, because it was men who owed it. An angel could not have paid our debt; it was not his.

But the payment had to be of infinite worth, because it was owed to an infinite God, and no finite creature possesses that. One good man dying for another might, at the very most, cover one other man.

And the one paying had to be sinless, or He would have been dying for His own account and would have had nothing left over.

Only one Person in history meets all three conditions: truly man, so that He could die and so that the death was ours to offer; truly God, so that the death had infinite worth; and truly sinless, so that He had no debt of His own. Take away His humanity and He could not have died. Take away His deity and the death saves one man at most. Take away His sinlessness and He dies for Himself. This is why the doctrine of who He is and the doctrine of what He did cannot be separated.

11. What the cross asks of you

Everything about this rules out one response, and requires another.

It rules out contribution. If the debt is finished, there is nothing left to pay, and offering our religious performance is not devotion but insult.

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)

And it requires receiving. A payment made on your behalf does you no good until you accept that it was made for you.

"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23)

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)

"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." (John 1:12)

The place where love and justice met

Return to the strangeness of the symbol. Why would anyone wear an instrument of execution?

Because of what happened on that one. There, and nowhere else, the two things that could not be reconciled were reconciled. God did not relax His justice, so He remains good. God did not abandon the sinner, so we may be saved. The penalty was exacted in full, and the guilty went free — because the Judge stepped down and took the sentence Himself.

Nothing else in any religion or philosophy comes close to this, because nothing else has ever had to. Everywhere else, either the standard bends or the sinner burns. Only here does the standard hold and the sinner live.

He said it was finished. The only thing left is to believe Him.

Let us Pray:

Our gracious heavenly Father, we come before Thy throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Thy presence.

We thank Thee for Thy beloved Son, and for the cross, where justice and mercy met and neither was diminished. We praise Thee for Thy preserved Word, which declareth **"It is finished"** (John 19:30), and which cannot be broken.

We confess before Thee that we have looked at that cross so often that we have stopped seeing it. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for Thou art faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

We beseech Thee for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Thy Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Thy Son before this day is done.

Strengthen Thy people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to let no reader leave the cross without seeing what was done there for him, for Thy glory and not for ours.

We pray all of this to Thee, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Most Important Prayer You Will Ever Pray

Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?

You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin — but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.

If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words — but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:

After You Have Prayed

1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).

2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).

3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.

4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved — you already are — but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.

5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).