The Cross of Christ by John Stott

Author:John Stott [Stott, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Religion, Christian Theology, Christology, Featuring
ISBN: 9780830866366
Google: uSHC3qDjFS4C
Amazon: 083083320X
Goodreads: 73188
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2012-11-28T22:00:00+00:00

The love of God

It is not only the justice of God which seems to be incompatible with the prevailing injustices of the world, but also his love. Personal tragedies, floods and earthquakes, accidents which cost hundreds of lives, hunger and poverty on a global scale, the cold vastness of the universe, the ferocities of nature, tyranny and torture, disease and death, and the sum total of the misery of the centuries – how can these horrors be reconciled with a God of love? Why does God allow them?

Christianity offers no glib answers to these agonized questions. But it does offer evidence of God’s love, just as historical and objective as the evidence which seems to deny it, in the light of which the world’s calamities need to be viewed. This evidence is the cross. Let me begin with two verses from John’s first letter.

First, ‘this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us’ (3:16). Most people would have no difficulty in telling us what they think love is. They may know that whole books have been written with the purpose of distinguishing between different kinds of love, like Anders Nygren’s Agape and Eros (1930) and C. S. Lewis’ The Four Loves (1960). Nevertheless, they would claim that the meaning of love is self-evident. John would disagree with them, however. He dares to say that, apart from Christ and his cross, the world would never have known what true love is. Of course all human beings have experienced some degree and quality of love. But John is saying that only one act of pure love, unsullied by any taint of ulterior motive, has ever been performed in the history of the world, namely the self-giving of God in Christ on the cross for undeserving sinners. That is why, if we are looking for a definition of love, we should look not in a dictionary, but at Calvary.

John’s second verse is more precise still. ‘This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice (hilasmos) for our sins’ (4:10). In the Romans 3 passage we have just been studying, Paul takes the propitiatory nature of the cross (hilastērion) as the demonstration of God’s justice; here John takes it as the manifestation of God’s love. It is both equally. True love is God’s love, not ours, and he showed it among us (v. 9) by sending his one and only Son into the world that he might die for us and we might live through him. The two words ‘live’ (v. 9) and ‘propitiation’ (v. 10) both betray the extremity of our need. Because we were sinners, we deserved to die under the righteous anger of God. But God sent his only Son, and in sending him came himself, to die that death and bear that wrath instead of us. It was an act of sheer, pure, unmerited love.

We learn from John, then, that although

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