JESUS
CHRIST-DEATH-GENERAL
The supreme
example of controlling, directing influence which God exerts upon the wicked is
the Cross of Christ with all its attendant circumstances. If ever the
superintending providence of God was witnessed, it was there. From all eternity
God had predestined every detail of that event of all events. Nothing was left
to chance or the caprice of man. God had decreed when and where and how His
blessed Son was to die… Not a thing occurred except as God had ordained, and
all that He had ordained took place exactly as He purposed.
A.W. Pink
Christ died
not in order to make God love us, but because He did love His people. Calvary
is the supreme demonstration of Divine love. Whenever you are tempted to doubt
the love of God, Christian reader, go back to Calvary.
A.W. Pink
The Attributes of God, Baker Book House, p.
81.
Gospellers have much to say about what Christ's death accomplished for those who believe in Him,
but very little is said about what that Death accomplished Godwards.
The fact is that the death of Christ glorified God if never a single sinner had
been saved by virtue of it.
A.W. Pink
I find myself
frequently depressed – perhaps more so than any other person here. And I find
no better cure for that depression than to trust in the Lord with all my heart,
and seek to realize afresh the power of the peace-speaking blood of Jesus, and
His infinite love in dying upon the cross to put away all my transgressions.
C.H. Spurgeon
I
do implore you, do not look upon the sacrifice of
Christ as an act of mere vengeance on the Father’s part. Never imagine, oh! never indulge the idea, that Jesus died to make the Father
complacent towards us. Oh, no, dear friends: Jesus’ death is the effect of
overwhelming and infinite love on the Father’s part; and every blow which
wounds, every infliction which occasions sorrow, and every pang which rends his
heart, speaks of the Father’s love as much as the joy, the everlasting triumph,
which now surrounds His head.
C.H. Spurgeon
Expiation,
Sermon 561, Isa. 53:10.
God did not
demand that we first demonstrate our allegiance to Him before Christ would
agree to die in our place. To demand that we somehow show ourselves deserving
of forgiveness in order to regain our status as His children would have been
futile. What can ungodly, rebellious sinners offer God that would move the holy
Creator of the universe to sacrifice His only Son on their behalf? So God acted
first, motivated solely by his own sovereign love, to grant mercy to His people
as the ultimate expression of His grace (Ex. 33:19; Isa. 63:7; Rom. 9:15-18;
Eph. 2:4; Titus 3:5; 1 Pet. 1:3). Christ died for us because the Father and the
Son loved the unlovable.
Scott Hafemann
The God of Promise and the Life of
Faith. Crossway Books, 2001, p. 125.
Christ
Himself did not say so much about His death. He was making the sacrifice; He
left to others the privilege of explaining it. For two thousand years now the
church has been glorying in His cross and exploring its wondrous meaning.
John H. Gerstner
Theology for Everyman, Moody, 1965, Chapter 6.
The real and
true work of Christ’s passion is to make man conformable to Christ, so that
man’s conscience is tormented by his sins in like measure as Christ was
pitiably tormented in body and soul by our sins.
Martin Luther
A Meditation on Christ’s Passion.
The
death of Jesus Christ is not the end of the story; it is the theme of the story
– beginning to end.
Author Unknown
Who delivered
up Jesus to die? Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for
envy; but the Father, for love (see Romans 8:32)!
Octavius
Winslow
God is not
content to leave all people under His wrath. Nor can he simply sweep sin under
the rug of the universe. Therefore His love and His justice conspire to make a
way for sinners to be saved and God’s justice to be vindicated. The answer is
the death of Jesus Christ.
John
Piper
Jesus Christ is an Advocate for Sinners,
Sermon, February 10, 1985, www.DesiringGod.org,
Used by Permission.
The Bible
says Judas delivered Him over (Mark 3:19), and Pilate delivered Him over (Mark
15:15), and Herod and the Jewish people and the Gentiles delivered Him over
(Acts 4:27-28), and we delivered Him over (1 Corinthians 15:3; Galatians 1:4; 1
Peter 2:24). It even says Jesus delivered Himself over (John 10:17; 19:30). But
Paul said the ultimate thing (in Romans 8:32a). In and behind and beneath and
through all these human deliverings, God was
delivering His Son to death. “He who did not spare His own
Son, but delivered Him up for us all.”
In Judas and Pilate and Herod and Jewish crowds and Gentile soldiers and
our sin and Jesus’ lamblike submission, God delivered over His Son (for our
salvation). Nothing greater has ever happened.
John Piper
The purpose
of Jesus' death was to glorify the Father. To be willing as the Son of God to
suffer the loss of so much glory Himself in order to repair the injury done to
God's glory by our sin showed how infinitely valuable the glory of God is. To
be sure, the death of Christ also shows God's love for us. But we are not at
the center.
John Piper
Desiring God, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 1996, p. 264, used by
permission. www.desiringGOD.org.