God and the Cross

 

‘If it were true it would be cosmic child abuse’ I’ve heard in and outside Christian circles in response to the understanding of God’s love shown in the Cross. The idea of God willing his Son to suffer and die to make things right in the world raises more questions for some people than living agnostic with the wrongs. That there is no official doctrine of atonement - how God and humanity are made one in Christ - makes for another complication. So does the simplification of thinking on the Cross to throw a line to Christian seekers not to mention poetic licence employed in hymns about the passion of Christ. Evangelical songwriter Stuart Townend weathered criticism for these lines in his hymn In Christ Alone: ‘on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied’. At the other side of the Christian spectrum this phrase in a Roman Catholic prayer has detractors: ‘Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church and… the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself’. The same talk of God satisfying justice through sacrificing his Son is found in the middle of the Christian spectrum in an Anglican text, the Book of Common Prayer, which speaks of Christ’s ‘full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world’.

Where is God’s love in the suffering of Jesus? Jesus died in our place to live in our place. Such a sentence is daring, as a throw away line to seekers, linking the death of Christ to his resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit received by repentance, faith and baptism. So much is at stake here there needs to be daring, daring that reflects the divine mind ‘for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (John 3:16). Though words crack speaking of God, the good news of Christianity comes in words unpacking two events and one to come - God’s making, redeeming and completing the cosmos - which all creatures are caught up with willingly or unwillingly. Of the three events only one, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, is fully graspable. The ‘Big Bang’ of creation is less so let alone the promised return of Christ and God’s being made ‘all in all… bringing many children to glory’ (1 Corinthians 15:28, Hebrews 2:10). Because we are actually part of this divinely willed process we have no clear insight on what we or the cosmos are about, save what has been revealed to us by God which is, precisely, the good news of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. 

Seeing God’s love in the suffering of Jesus is inseparable from seeing that action plan in which it is central, providing in the Cross the symbol loved and derided in the world up to today. The derision that such suffering would make God abuser of his Son links to widespread acknowledgement in our society of the evil of child abuse through the ages. Ironically this recognition is not unrelated to Christian insight into human dignity, the valuing of ‘weak brothers and sisters for whom Christ died’ (1 Corinthians 8:11). The loving action of God sending his Son to suffer goes back to the design of creation and its intended redesign in Christ to make eternal friendship with God possible by dealing with what breaks that friendship. Jesus died in our place to live in our place so when we come repeatedly to the Cross our sinful nature is repeatedly put to death and the life of his Holy Spirit repeatedly gains power within us. The conflict of such powers is evident to faith. Priest poet Raneiro Cantalamessa writes: ‘In the Alps in summer, when a mass of cold air from the north clashes with hot air from the south, frightful storms break out disturbing the atmosphere; dark clouds move around, the wind whistles, lightning rends the sky from one end to the other and the thunder makes the mountains tremble. Something similar took place in the Redeemer’s soul where the extreme evil of sin clashed with the supreme holiness of God disturbing it to the point that it caused him to sweat blood and forced the cry from him, “My soul is sorrowful to the point of death… nevertheless Father, not my will but yours be done.”’

God’s willing the suffering of his Son is unintelligible to any human parent unless linked to God’s wishing the best for us as the holy ground of our being. God, who is different to us in holiness, made us, with a sameness to God in love, for eternal friendship. Hence decisive action, at one point in time, to reveal the victory of holiness over sin, opening access to Christ's victory for us here and now. Through prayer and sacrament that victory brings cleansing and renewal into lives and communities. Jesus is seen again and again acting against evil, rescuing people from its destructive power when they seek him at the Cross. The spread of evils such as social inequality, unjust trade, wars and so on are linked to the misuse of free will. A loving God, despite his holiness, is bound to allow evil so as to respect this freedom.  Christians misuse free will just like non-Christians. They get sick and die like anyone else. They also experience a countering of destructive powers such as sin, sickness and death when they seek their Lord. The death and resurrection of Christ are found to counter the powers of evil when the risen Lord is given freedom to do so in lives opened up to him.

Where is God’s love in the suffering of Jesus? When the hymn speaks of ‘the wrath of God being satisfied’ by Christ’s suffering on our behalf it is a wrath against sin not against his Son. It is hate, not wrath, which is the opposite to love, something taught us in family life. A mother had a son she loved very deeply. He was a tearaway and always let her down. One day he commits a shameful act and is filled with guilt at his sin. How does that mother feel at the evil which has gripped her dearest one? What agonies that mother bears at the shame her son has brought upon himself holding wrath against the wrongdoing.  The mother suffers far more than her son who is not holy or loving enough to register the evil. In the suffering and death of Christ God’s heart breaks for us. How can God look into my soul and be my friend? The answer is he can and he will have fellowship with me but that fellowship has come at a price and that price was paid in the loving initiative of the Cross. 

When people outside Christian circles debate with us about the Cross we find common ground in a perception that the world needs putting right by forgiveness. To get beyond the stumbling block of divine love willing suffering requires a vision of God with loving sameness to yet holy difference from us. Attaining such a vision can follow scrutiny of Christian basics where there is readiness to take seriously what God might have said of God, history and the future through scripture and the community of faith. Faith seeming to contradict logic brings an invitation to seek the understanding beyond reason the Holy Spirit supplies seekers. Without the Spirit the Cross of Jesus would not be on the daily agenda of so many 2000 years on.