THE CRUCIFIXION OF HUMANITY
2 Corinthians 5:21 says Jesus Christ was “made to be sin.”
1 Corinthians 1:30 says Jesus Christ was made “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.”
Galatians 6:14 sees glory in the event that took place at and on the cross.
Romans 3:21-26 says that God’s righteousness is seen at and on the cross.
If we were to say that this is all the crucified Christ exhibited on the cross Paul would have set us straight right away. He would have said something like, “We can’t grasp all that has been demonstrated and exhibited on that cross. These truths I mention are various aspects of the fathomless truth that finds its source in a God so strange that He purposed to become a human even when He knew that humans would reject Him and turn on one another in unspeakable cruelty and heartlessness.”
On the cross we see the human family crucified!
In becoming one of us—a human as human as any human—and bearing our sins and our sufferings God who came to be one with us in and as the Lord Jesus is not only our fellow human, He is the representative human. He was only one human, there has been only one incarnation of God. He could live only one life and in that one life he tasted trouble and temptation and death for all humans (Hebrews 2:9; 1 John 2:2). See Acts 20:28 where the text that should indeed be followed has, “the church of God which he purchased with His own blood.”
When He died on the cross after living here on earth that life of positive, warm, loving and sinless holiness He exposed “the world” for what it is. As the Bible tells it, we turned loose a cosmic evil, the organized anti-God, anti-life, anti-holiness and anti-humanity force and we built a “world” without God and turned our eyes toward the one we made the prince of this “world” (John 12:31). Jesus would have hurled this accusation into the air as He hung on the cross: “Yes! This is what you are! This is what you do to humans! It is always what you do to them and it is ceaselessly what you do to them.”
It is the god and prince of that “world” that seduced humans into rejecting a God who offered them only glory and dignity and joy in life (2 Corinthians 11:3; Genesis 3:1-19; Romans 3:23). It was that representative of heartless and rapacious evil that crucified and continues to crucify the peoples of the world and use people of the world to do it to one another. And it was the God of Jesus Christ who permanently became one of the sinful human family and came to share all its suffering and to deal with the Sin and sins that lead to its crucifixion.
And it was that God, in and as Jesus Christ, who joined them on that killing tree and exposed and condemned the world of the evil one and has permanently and finally in Himself defeated the prince of this world. And that evil one will not cease to be the enemy of God and the hunter of the souls of humans. But his day is coming and so is the day of all those who make themselves his glad servants and are the hounds with which Satan hunts the souls of their fellow-humans.
He who knows what He knows knows why He has not already brought to a halt things as they are but according to His loving wisdom He went to the cross and from there proclaimed to the tormented world. “I am with you, I am your champion and representative. I am against all that is against you and what you now see as I hang here I mean to be the proof of that. But what is happening here is more than my suffering, it is your suffering too and it is my way to glory and that glory will be yours too.”
The crucifixion of Christ is the crucifixion of humanity! For He came as humanity’s champion and Savior and in His triumph He triumphs for the world against a “world” of evil and against all who choose to be the willing and rejoicing servants of that evil world.
The crucifixion of humanity is the crucifixion of Christ.
On the cross we see the human family crucified!
In becoming one of us—a human as human as any human—and bearing our sins and our sufferings God who came to be one with us in and as the Lord Jesus is not only our fellow human, He is the representative human. He was only one human, there has been only one incarnation of God. He could live only one life and in that one life he tasted trouble and temptation and death for all humans (Hebrews 2:9; 1 John 2:2). See Acts 20:28 where the text that should indeed be followed has, “the church of God which he purchased with His own blood.”
When He died on the cross after living here on earth that life of positive, warm, loving and sinless holiness He exposed “the world” for what it is. As the Bible tells it, we turned loose a cosmic evil, the organized anti-God, anti-life, anti-holiness and anti-humanity force and we built a “world” without God and turned our eyes toward the one we made the prince of this “world” (John 12:31). Jesus would have hurled this accusation into the air as He hung on the cross: “Yes! This is what you are! This is what you do to humans! It is always what you do to them and it is ceaselessly what you do to them.”
It is the god and prince of that “world” that seduced humans into rejecting a God who offered them only glory and dignity and joy in life (2 Corinthians 11:3; Genesis 3:1-19; Romans 3:23). It was that representative of heartless and rapacious evil that crucified and continues to crucify the peoples of the world and use people of the world to do it to one another. And it was the God of Jesus Christ who permanently became one of the sinful human family and came to share all its suffering and to deal with the Sin and sins that lead to its crucifixion.
And it was that God, in and as Jesus Christ, who joined them on that killing tree and exposed and condemned the world of the evil one and has permanently and finally in Himself defeated the prince of this world. And that evil one will not cease to be the enemy of God and the hunter of the souls of humans. But his day is coming and so is the day of all those who make themselves his glad servants and are the hounds with which Satan hunts the souls of their fellow-humans.
He who knows what He knows knows why He has not already brought to a halt things as they are but according to His loving wisdom He went to the cross and from there proclaimed to the tormented world. “I am with you, I am your champion and representative. I am against all that is against you and what you now see as I hang here I mean to be the proof of that. But what is happening here is more than my suffering, it is your suffering too and it is my way to glory and that glory will be yours too.”
The crucifixion of Christ is the crucifixion of humanity! For He came as humanity’s champion and Savior and in His triumph He triumphs for the world against a “world” of evil and against all who choose to be the willing and rejoicing servants of that evil world.
The crucifixion of humanity is the crucifixion of Christ.
(O Holy and Almighty God won’t you help us to see that your loving suffering and glorious resurrection in and as the Lord Jesus Christ is not only for the Church. And won’t you open the eyes of the Church that has been by faith been baptized into the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus that it might proclaim that good news to the crucified of the world. This prayer of gladness and sadness is in the name of the living and glorified Lord Jesus.)
