God loves beautiful things, and we can learn to appreciate them, too. What a pity to be blind and deaf to the glory of God's creation!
We can know some of the thrill of appreciating beauty; but can we feel the greater thrill of appreciating the glory of His message of salvation? Is the gospel a system of abstract theology as impersonal as the science of mathematics or chemistry? If so, we do have to force ourselves to feed on it, for no heart-hunger could then be possible! Is making sure of salvation a cold business-like process of commitment like taking out an insurance policy?
The true gospel is fantastically beautiful, a message that grips the human heart more deeply and more lastingly than any human love could do. Straight-forward New Testament truth seems fresh and different to many who hear it. It seems shocking to them to realize that Jesus said there is only one prerequisite to salvation: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16.) According to this, our part is to believe. (The Greek word for believe and to have faith is the same). Thus Jesus taught clearly that salvation is by faith, and since He added nothing else, He obviously meant that salvation is by faith alone.
That makes us draw a deep breath. Isn't it necessary to keep the commandments, to pay tithe, give offerings, keep the Lord's day, and do good works, ad infinitum? Yes, but we have no right to add to John 3:16 words that He did not utter.
Then did Jesus teach the "only believe!" heresy that lulls so many people into a do-nothing-and-love-the-world deception? No; He taught the kind of "faith which works," and which itself produces obedience to all the commandments of God. Such faith makes the believer "zealous of good works" so numerous that they cannot be measured (Galatians 5:6; Titus 2:14). God has already done the loving, and the giving. Our believing comes by responding to that Good News with the kind of appreciation that is appropriate—the yielding of ourselves and all we have to Him. The ad infinitum works follow such genuine faith as surely as fruit follows seed-planting.
It is a tragic mistake to assume that the true gospel message is soft on works. Pure righteousness by faith is the only message that can produce anything other than "dead works."
The Dimensions of the Love Poured Out at the Cross
What was the measure of the Father's love? Note carefully that verb in John 3:16: "God so loved ...that He gave His only begotten Son." He did not merely lend Him. He gave Him.
In our human judgment it is easy to assume that Jesus was lent to us as a missionary or foreign diplomat who spent 33 years in lonely exile on this planet and then returned to the luxury and security of His heavenly home-base. The agony of the cross lasted only a few hours, and the entire episode of His life on earth seems like a comparatively brief term of service, like a diplomat temporarily serving in a foreign post. But this idea is not true.
The reality of that sacrifice means infinitely more than most Christians imagine. The refreshing, wider view gives a glimpse of truth that melts the hard heart of anyone who will look and appreciate it.
When Jesus came to this earth as our Saviour, He came from heaven where His "goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting" (Micah 5:2). He was always the divine Son of God, so that it was already a great sacrifice for Him to leave heaven and come to this dark world to suffer and die for us. But He gave even more. Paul speaks of seven steps of condescension that He took:
Christ Jesus,... being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2:5-8).
Nothing in Scripture suggests that this was a loan for only thirty-three years. It was an eternal sacrifice. For all eternity He gave Himself to us. He bears our nature forever-more. He stepped down lower than the angels. He is forever our Brother. That truth begins to reveal the dimensions of the love that led Him to die for us.
Whether one believes it or not, there is a subduing power in it, and the heart must stand in silence in the presence of that awe-inspiring fact. Whenever that blessed truth comes to us that the sacrifice of the Son of God is an eternal sacrifice, and all for me, our heart-response must be like that of the ancient king of Israel who "went softly" before the Lord after his heart became repentant. (Ahab, 1 Bangs 21:27).
To believe therefore means to appreciate that immeasurable love, to stand in awe of it, to let your human heart be moved by it to the place where you forget yourself and your petty human desires and ambitions, and you let that love motivate you to a devotion you never dreamed was possible for you to feel. Righteousness is not by faith and works; it is by a "faith which works." (Galatians 5:6).
But we have a problem. How can we learn to appreciate that love, so that this powerful faith can begin to work in us? Is there more to that love than we have yet seen?
Why the Message of the Cross Is Powerful
The answer to our question lies in comprehending the kind of sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross. Paul finds his greatest delight in it because its reality solves a problem that all the psychiatrists and counselors in the world are powerless to solve: the problem of deep self-centeredness. "I have been crucified with Christ," he says (Galatians 2:20). The Greek word is ego. Here the gospel penetrates to the most fundamental element of humanity's universal psychosis.
Paul is not talking about a severe kind of self-hate. He saw a dynamic power in the cross that most of us have never seen. And because we haven't seen it, we can't help but remain self-centered and complacent in our supposed devotion to the Son of God who gave Himself for us. The very life we now enjoy was bought by His sacrifice, whether or not we believe and appreciate it. For those who do appreciate it and thus "believe," deliverance from the tyranny of self takes place, and for them He has also purchased eternal life. (2 Timothy 1:10)
What is so special about Jesus dying for us? Billions of people have died, and many have suffered physical agony for longer periods of time than He did. Is the difference only in the personhood of the Victim—He was divine (whereas we who die are human), so that His death has sufficient value to satisfy the legal demands of the law?
However true this forensic concept may be, it does not do justice to the cross of Christ.
When He humbled Himself "even to the death of the cross," He suffered what Paul calls "the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree')." The apostle is quoting the great Moses, who ruled that any criminal sentenced to die on a tree is automatically "accursed of God." That is, God has slammed the door of heaven against him and refused to hear his prayers for forgiveness (Read Philippians 2:5-8; Galatians 3:13; Deuteronomy 21:22,23). The criminal must suffer the utmost pain of emotional distress caused by complete despair. Don't get hung up on whether or not this was fair. Moses said it, and everybody believed it. That "curse" did not apply to other means of execution such as beheading or stoning.
This is why a crucifixion was a gala event to watch, like a circus. The victim was God's write-off to be tormented as everyone's sadistic urges might dictate. If you as the spectator are "godly," this means you must show that you agree with God's judgment against him and curse him too, and do all you can to add to his torment. If you don't hate and revile the poor wretch on the cross, according to Moses you show that you are at odds with God.
As Christ hung on His cross, that's how the people viewed Him. They thought it was their duty to revile Him. Don't say that He was too smart and well-informed to let that "curse" bother Him. Paul adds that God "made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us" (2 Corinthians 5:21). He felt that curse which was ours by right, and it killed Him.
The Bible speaks of two different kinds of death, and we must not misunderstand the kind that Christ died. What we call death the Bible calls "sleep," but the real thing is called "the second death" (1 Thessalonians 4:13-15; Revelation 2:11; 20:14). It is the death in which the sufferer sees not a ray of hope because he feels utterly forsaken by God, the horror-filled sense of utter darkness, the unspeakable pain of divine condemnation beyond which the sufferer can expect no vindication, no resurrection, no hope.
More than this, it is the death wherein one feels the full weight of sin's guilt, the fire of self-condemnation and total self-abhorrence burning in every cell of one's being. Such a person can have no feelings of innocence. Such a death is the curse that Moses mentioned. Since the world began, not one human soul has as yet died that "second death" or suffered the full consciousness of that complete God-forsakenness—with the exception of Jesus. This is why He was "made a curse for us." (Galatians 3:13, KJV). Even the thousands of crucified victims in Roman times were spared that full consciousness of darkness that Jesus felt, for He has always been "the true Light which gives light to every man who comes into the world" (John 1:9).
No one else has ever been physically or spiritually capable of feeling the full weight of that guilt of sin or sensing the full realization of the glory of a forfeited heaven. Not even our celebrated serial-murderers who occasionally go to the electric chair have as yet died "the second death." No lost human being can feel this full load so long as the heavenly High Priest continues to serve as mankind's Substitute, for He is still "the propitiation . . . for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2:2)
The Bible gives us a unique insight into the nature of Christ's death. In recently re-reading three major works by capable scholars on the nature of agape I was impressed that not one of them sees the deeper insight that the Apostle Paul saw in the cross. According to his insight, our Saviour could not see through the tomb. When He cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" He meant it. This was no actor's script to be recited on cue. Hope did not present to Him His coming forth from the grave a conqueror, or tell Him of the Father's acceptance of His great sacrifice. Isaiah says that "He poured out His soul unto death" (Isaiah 52:12). Christ felt to the full the anguish which a sinner would feel if mercy should no longer plead for the guilty race.
A Love That Surpasses Knowledge
In Ephesians 3:14-19 we can try to measure some of the dimensions of the love revealed at the cross as Paul saw them:
I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ... that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
(a) Paul is not concerned about our doing this or that, but he prays that we might comprehend something. He knows that if we grasp what the cross means, a new motivation will possess our hearts, and all the right-doing will then surely take place, even the good things that we have always felt we could not do. Bible study and prayer become a pleasure. Even sacrifice will become a delight.
(b) For Christ to dwell in our hearts by faith requires that we be "rooted and grounded in love [agape]." This is another way of defining faith as a heart-appreciation of that love.
(c) The dimensions of this love are as high as heaven, as deep as hell, as broad as the human race, as far away as your heart need or anybody else's.
(d) It is possible for us now to know "by faith" what "passes knowledge." Don't wait until eternity to begin to appreciate it! Without already stretching your mind and heart to "comprehend" it, you may not even begin to enter in to eternal life. Eternal life is not a materialistic, sensual orgy such as many Muslims imagine heaven to be; it begins now with a new spiritual awareness.
Our human hearts are so little and so shrunken up with love of self and love of the world that the simple story of the cross almost sweeps over our heads. Our tiny hearts need to be enlarged, as David prays, "I will run in the way of Your commandments, for You shall enlarge my heart." (Psalm 119:32)
(e) Someone very important, even the apostle Paul, prayed for you and me that we might join "all the saints" in comprehending this precious reality. The answer to Paul's prayer is the penetration of the gospel message to our awareness. It solves the problem of our universal love-affair with our ego.
Why Has This Truth Not Been Understood as It Deserves?
Satan knows that if human beings can appreciate the dimensions of that love revealed at the cross, they will "be filled with all the fulness of God," as Paul prays (Ephesians 3:19). Hence the enemy wants to eclipse or to becloud it.
This has been the principal work of the "little horn" of Daniel 7 and 8 and the "beast" and "Babylon" of Revelation (Daniel 8:9-13; 7:25; Revelation 13:1-8; 14:8; 17). Long ago in the first centuries, this apostate power sought to corrupt this true idea that is essential to righteousness by faith.
Perhaps his most successful method has been to invent the doctrine of the natural immortality of the human soul, because he has nearly the whole world believing it. The idea came from paganism and was adopted by Christians of those early centuries who drifted away from New Testament teaching.
This falsehood has had a devastating effect on righteousness by faith, for it neutralizes it. The modern complacency that pervades the world church comes from popular false concepts of the gospel that are related to this pagan idea. (Immortality is in Christ alone, bestowed at the resurrection. It is not innate, apart from Christ. The lost will never have it.)
We can easily see how this idea works to combat true faith. If the soul is naturally immortal, Christ could not have died for us! In fact, if the soul is naturally immortal, there can be no such thing as death, and Paul was wrong to say that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3). Christ's glorious sacrifice is automatically reduced to a few hours of physical and mental suffering while He was sustained by hope. Thus the pagan-papal doctrine dwarfs "the width and length and depth and height" of Christ's love. It reduces His agape to the dimensions of a human love which is motivated by self-concern and hope of reward.
False Ideas Produce a Weak Experience
The result is a diluting of the idea of faith to an egocentric search for security—a search for reward in heaven. The highest motivation possible remains likewise ego-centered. All pagan religions are self-centered in their appeal. And very few Christian churches can overcome this pagan-papal doctrine of natural immortality.
Despite their great sincerity, so long as human minds are blinded thus they cannot appreciate the dimensions of the love revealed at the cross, and in consequence cannot fully appreciate true New Testament righteousness by faith. The result has to be a widespread lukewarmness, a spiritual pride, self-satisfaction, and subservience to ego-centered-ness. Fear always lurks beneath its surface as a motivation. The obverse side of the coin, hope of reward, is equally a motivation of self. When we distort faith itself to become egocentric, the gospel is paralyzed.
As best he could in his day, Luther understood this dynamic of faith as a heart-appreciation of agape, yet he fell short of a fully adequate grasp of its full dimensions. And after his death his followers soon reverted to the pagan-papal concept of natural immortality. Most popular ideas of justification by faith are conditioned by this concept. This is not to deny that some individuals manifest a sincere devotion to Christ while they assume the false teaching of natural immortality, but some exceptions only prove the rule. Whenever any pagan idea infiltrates the church in general, a general loss of zeal for Christ is the sure result.
The New Testament gospel begins to cut the ties that have bound us to these bankrupt views, to rediscover what Paul and the apostles saw. The three angels' messages of Revelation 14 foretell this recovery of truth.
Let us penetrate deeper into the New Testament idea of Good News.