We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

cross fireworks

The Revelation of God in the Cross

The cross cannot be understood apart from the resurrection, just as the resurrection can never be understood apart from the cross. They are two sides of the same coin.

If you consider the cross apart from the resurrection, then the crucified Christ becomes nothing more than one of the many thousands of people who were tortured and executed by the Romans.

If we do not keep the resurrection closely connected to the cross, it can easily become a triumphant explosion of supernatural power that not only lacks the enemy-loving, self-sacrificial character of the cross; it actually subverts it!

There is a strand in theology that implies that God merely used the humble, self-sacrificial approach reflected through Jesus’s life leading up to the cross because it was necessary to get Jesus crucified to atone for human sin. Once this was accomplished, this misguided line of thinking goes, God could return to using his superior brute force to get his will accomplished on earth and to defeat evil, which in this view, is what the resurrection signifies.

This line of thinking allowed theologians to assure Christian rulers, soldiers, and others that God didn’t intend all Christians to follow the enemy-loving, nonviolent example and teachings of Jesus. It was a line of thinking that was unfortunately very convenient whenever Christians felt the need to set Jesus’s teaching and example aside to torture heretics, massacre enemies, or take over countries.

Though it was never openly acknowledged, this perspective implies that Jesus’s humble, servant lifestyle, his instructions to love and bless enemies, and especially his self-sacrificial death conceal rather than reveal God’s true character! If we’re totally honest about it, it implies that God was only pretending when he assumed a humble posture in Christ. His true character is displayed when he acts more like a cosmic Caesar than the crucified Christ, accomplishing his plans and achieving his purposes by flexing his omnipotent muscle rather than by picking up the cross.

If we accept this line of thinking, it has the effect of making Jesus into a liar when he said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9).

Against this view, I contend that the cross and resurrection must be considered as two sides of one event. The resurrection confirms not only that the Son of God was victorious over sin, death, and the powers of hell, it also confirms that the way the Son defeated evil is God’s way of defeating evil.

It confirms that Jesus’s humble, servant lifestyle, his instructions to love and bless enemies, and especially his self-sacrificial death reveal rather than conceal God’s true, eternal character. The humble character of Christ wasn’t something God adopted for utilitarian purposes, as though it were foreign to him. Christ rather displayed this character because this is “the exact representation of [God’s] being (Heb 1:3).

The power that raised Jesus from the dead and that is at work in all who have been raised with him (Eph 1:17-23) isn’t a power that contrasts with the cross; it’s the power that leads to the cross and that confirms the cross as God’s way of responding to evil, even as it confirms that the cross reflects the kind of God that the true God is.

—adapted from Benefit of the Doubt, pages 242-244

Photo Credit: Marcia Erickson

Related Reading

How God Changes the World

God’s hopes for us began before the creation of the world. And what God intended from the beginning gives us insight into how God works to bring about what he intends. In the first chapter of Ephesians, Paul teaches that God “chose us in [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and…

Did Yahweh Crush His Son?

Though Isaiah was probably referring to the nation of Israel as Yahweh’s “suffering servant” when these words were penned, the NT authors as well as other early church fathers interpreted this servant to be a prophetic reference to Christ. Speaking proleptically, Isaiah declares that this suffering servant was “punished” and “stricken by God” (Isa 53:4,…

The Starting Point for “Knowing God”

While it makes sense that Hellenistic philosophers embraced knowledge of God as the simple, necessary and immutable One in an attempt to explain the ever-changing, composite, contingent world (see post here for what this means), it is misguided for Christian theology to do so. By defining knowledge of God’s essence over-and-against creation, we are defining God’s essence…

Lies, Truth, and the Holy Spirit

The root of the flesh is a lie about who God is and who we are. Satan brings us into bondage of the flesh by convincing us that God is not the loving God he says that he is. In doing this, Satan convinces us that we cannot find fullness of life by being wholly…

Love and Violence

What does it mean to confess that “God is love” and that we are called to “live in love” (Eph. 5:2)? One of the more common ways of understanding God’s love has its roots in the teachings of Augustine. He adamantly affirmed that the revelation that “God is love” lies at heart of the Gospel…

Prayer and Co-Reigning with God

God’s primary objective is a world in which free agents love God and one another. For this to be possible, people need a stable environment and freely chosen, irrevocable, morally responsible say-so. Prayer is simply the spiritual side of our morally responsible say-so. We influence things by what we do through our bodies and in…