Love So Amazing

“May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 6:14)

I love to take pictures of crosses. It’s probably because the cross is the central symbol of the Christian faith. I take that back – it’s definitely because the cross is the central symbol of the Christian faith. Crosses are ubiquitous these days – you can see them just about anywhere, and all types. They adorn steeples and sanctuaries. They hang on walls in houses. They arise from the ground in cemeteries. They dangle from ears as earrings. 

I also find crosses in nature. In the spring, when pine branches have new growth, it often looks like a cross. 

One day I was taking a hike in a local park (the same one with the copperhead – see my devotion from April 2), I saw this sapling, and I noticed that the top of it looked just like a cross. 

Last night as I was lying in bed, I looked at the door to the bedroom, and I noticed that the panels of the door form a cross. A beautiful, symmetrical cross.

Like I said, crosses are ubiquitous – they are everywhere. 

I think that the reason I notice crosses so much is because the cross is the expression of God’s love for you and me – for the whole world. It is an enigma, really, because the cross was a gruesome instrument of torture and execution. How can it be a symbol of love? 

Because of the One who died on the cross between two criminals nearly 2000 years ago.

Again, the concept of someone dying a cruel death as an expression of love is an enigma. I get it – it is gross and repulsive to think about what happened on the cross. And yet, that is exactly what we remember and celebrate every time we gather to worship in the church. In the unfathomable mystery of God’s eternal wisdom, an instrument of death was transformed into God’s ultimate expression of love.

"For God so loved the world..."

- John 3:16 

I’m not going to get into all the hows and whys that shed light on the meaning of the cross. Millions pages have been written about the cross over the millennia, I suspect. But no explanation is as clear and concise as the explanation that Jesus gave a couple of years before his death: For God so loved the world that He gave his only-begotten Son…*

We’ve all seen the scenes in the movies or TV shows where a person says to their significant other, “I love you,” for the first time. Then there is that awkward moment in which the other looks bewildered, as if he or she doesn’t know what to say in return. Meanwhile, the one who said “I love you,” is agonizing over whether or not their declaration will be reciprocated by the other. 

The cross isn’t just God’s declaration of love for us. It is also meant to elicit a response from us. God says, “I love you. I always have, and I always will.” What God really wants from us, I believe, is for us to say, “I love you, too. I really do.”

“Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.”  (Isaac Watts, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross)

Love so amazing, so divine, indeed.

*Nerd alert: Scholars are divided over whether Jesus said those words to Nicodemus, or if John wrote them as an aside to explain what Jesus said to Nicodemus (John, chapter 3). But my red-letter Bible has that verse in red, so I’m taking John 3:16 as Jesus’ words.

Don't Forget the Cross

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God… We proclaim Christ crucified.”

- 1 Corinthians 1:18, 23a

This spring, as I have captured some of the beauty of the dogwoods, azaleas, wisteria, and the like, I noticed that crosses kept showing up in my pictures.

O.k., I’ll admit it – the crosses didn’t just “show up” in my pictures; I wanted to frame them into the shots.

There’s something about the cross that keeps drawing my eye… and my heart.

The thing is, we might not notice the cross if we’re not looking for it. It stands front and center in our churches, but where does it stand for you?

Jesus never took his eyes off the cross. It was his purpose. It was the reason he came from heaven to earth in the first place.

We want to shy away from the cross. In modern times, we write it off as a relic of uncivilized times, a device of inhumane torture. The way of the cross doesn’t fit today’s notion of redemption – how can such a thing really save the human race? We want to shy away from the cross.

Don’t. Don’t look the other way. Don’t miss the cross.

“See, from his head, his hands, his feet,

sorrow and love flow mingled down.

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

or thorns compose so rich a crown?”¹

It is the cross that tells both the “what” and the “why” of Jesus’ death. On the cross, Jesus took upon himself the death we deserve. Jesus suffered total abandonment by his Father, so we wouldn’t have to. John R. W. Stott once noted, “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.”² That’s the “what” of Jesus’ death that the cross explains – our sins sent him there.

But it’s not just our sin which we witness on the cross. It’s also love. “See… sorrow and love flow mingled down...” Jesus took our sins upon himself, because he loves us. He loves the world. Every. one. of. us. He did for us that which we are unable to do for ourselves, because he loves us.

Don’t miss the cross. Don’t jump straight ahead to Easter without Good Friday.

Because the cross – and what Jesus accomplished on it – is the reason that we call that Friday “Good.”

There’s something about the cross. Don’t miss the cross.

1Isaac Watts, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”

2John R.W. Stott, Basic Christianity(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996 edition), p. 93.