Growing Down by Michael Kelley

Author:Michael Kelley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion/Christian Life/General
Publisher: BH Publishing Group
Published: 2018-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

God’s Demonstration

The cross is a grand intersection—the cosmic hinge that not only saves sinners, but also proves once and for all who God is. It’s at the cross where we find the demonstration of those three qualities—God’s love, his power, and his wisdom—and it’s therefore at the cross where we find the true antidote for our anxiety. This is why Paul adamantly stated that God not only professes his love for his people, but actually demonstrates it at Calvary: “But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

The death of Jesus is the historical proof of God’s love. God not only said he loved us; he demonstrated it once and for all at the cross so that one might never again call into legitimate question whether or not God is for us.

But the cross does more than show us God’s love; it also shows us God’s power. This might seem counterintuitive at first, for if God were indeed so powerful, surely he would act with all the resources at his disposal to prevent something as tragic as the murder of his own Son. True enough, one might look to the cross and see a God of great weakness. But there is another perspective that we find in Scripture that demonstrates not a God incapable of intervening, but one who is in fact intervening in the most eternal way imaginable. This is what Paul is getting at in the thesis statement of the book of Romans: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16).

In the crucifixion, God displayed his great power and might by accomplishing what no human could ever do on their own. He accomplished righteousness for all who believe, past, present, and future. Why does this require so much power? We can only understand it when we begin to understand that sin is so heinous.

One of the reasons we fail to grasp the gravity of the cross is because, once again, we have such an inflated estimation of ourselves. We refuse, in our sin, to consider ourselves to be “that bad,” and as soon as we begin to treat sin like a simple mistake or a lapse in judgment, we by proxy begin to devalue what God accomplished at the cross.

If, however, we come to glimpse the pure, white-hot holiness of God, and then see the undiluted evil of our sin in its light, we can start to testify in wonder at the power of God at the cross. What power is this indeed whereby a perfect God could not simply pass over our sin and thereby compromise His own perfect justice, but instead, make us righteous so that we can be with him forever? “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the power of God to us who are being saved” (1 Cor.

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