The cross is kind of a broad subject in that it isn’t relegated to just a holiday. It’s 24/7, 365 days a year. So is the resurrection, for that matter, in fact, even more so. As Paul said, if Christ did not raise from the dead, then our whole faith is worthless.
He says something similar about the cross, and we’re going to look at that today. Again, we have two scriptures. The first is from Paul’s letter to the Galatians. We’ll look at Galatians 2:15-21; then we’ll look at what Peter had to say––ironically, also to the Galatians as well as other churches spread throughout the middle east and Asia, in 1 Peter 2:21-25.
So Galatians 2, then 1 Peter 2.
As you’re turning there, let me read to you something about the donkey that carried Jesus.
The donkey awakened, his mind still savoring the afterglow of the most exciting day of his life. Never before had he felt such a rush of pleasure and pride.
He walked into town and found a group of people by the well. “I’ll show myself to them,” he thought.
But they didn’t notice him. They went on drawing their water and paid him no mind.
“Throw your garments down,” he said crossly. “Don’t you know who I am?”
They just looked at him in amazement. Someone slapped him across the tail and ordered him to move.
“Miserable heathens!” he muttered to himself. “I’ll just go to the market where the good people are. They will remember me.”
But the same thing happened. No one paid any attention to the donkey as he strutted down the main street in front of the marketplace.
“The palm branches! Where are the palm branches!” he shouted. “Yesterday, you threw palm branches!”
Hurt and confused, the donkey returned home to his mother.
“Foolish child,” she said gently. “Don’t you realize that without Him, you are just an ordinary donkey?”
Just like the donkey who carried Jesus in Jerusalem, we are most fulfilled when we are in the service of Jesus Christ. Now, believe it or not, this kind of goes along with our sermon today. What does that have to do with the cross? Without Christ within us, all our best efforts are like “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6) and amount to nothing, and I am going to use that same phrase, “filthy rags,” later on today and how that applies to our salvation.
But like the donkey, when we lift up Christ, we are no longer ordinary people but key players in God’s plan to redeem the word.
Scripture: Okay, let’s go to our scripture verses this morning. The first is out of Galatians 2, verses 15-21:
15 “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles 16 know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. 17 “But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! 18 If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.
19 “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
I’ll get back to that in a few minutes, but let’s get straight to our second set of scriptures from 1 Peter 2, verses 21-25:
21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
22 “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 24 “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” 25 For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
So, you might be able to see already where we’re going with this. The cross is not just the way in which Jesus died. It’s not just the unfair treatment of God’s only son. It’s not just a tragic irony or some historical story in the Bible that we remember with crucifixes and holidays. There’s a greater purpose to the cross.
As Paul told the Corinthians, “we preach Christ crucified.” That’s the wisdom and sign that the Jews and Gentiles were looking for, but to them, it was considered foolishness.
Through the cross, we are free to live as God intended––not absolutely perfectly, but the cross is the means to what sets us free and forgiven and have a right standing with God. It allows us to start a new spiritual life, and step by step, we can be the type of Christian that can live through Christ, for Christ, and not try to fight so hard to live strictly by ‘the law’ or God’s laws, but through a new spirit of righteousness.
We pick up in Galatians at a point where Paul is telling them about a confrontation he had with Peter. If you read a few verses above, Paul uses the name Cephas, which is the Aramaic name for Peter.
So, Peter went to Paul’s church in Antioch and feared certain Jewish elite Christians and what they thought about these Gentile Christians. So out of fear, Peter separated himself from the Gentiles and sat with only the Jewish Christians because the Jewish elite Christians believed they were truly saved because they not only believed in Christ but also followed the Jewish law of Moses to add to their salvation. And so others there were following Peter’s lead, including Barnabas, Paul’s closest friend. As you can imagine, Paul wasn’t too happy about this because not only was it sinful, but it happened in Paul’s home church, and so it shamed Paul.
And we pick up in the middle of Paul’s story that he was giving to the Galatians about this confrontation he had with Peter. The point isn’t the confrontation but what he said to Peter. And he wanted to get that same point across to the Galatians. And the point is, no matter how much you adhere to the laws of God, you are still not considered righteous. It’s the cross of Christ that makes us righteous.
Paul said, “We…know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.
How many people, even today, believe that they are justified through being good? I remember several years ago, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that he earned his way to Heaven. This is how The Washington Post wrote it. It said:
Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, said it’s his work for more gun control — along with his anti-smoking and healthy eating campaigns — that have won him God’s favor and a sure spot behind the Pearly Gates.
His exact words, made in context of discussing his smoking cessation and anti-obesity pushes, as well as his concerted crackdowns on private gun ownership, to the New York Times were: “I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”
Unfortunately, Mayor Bloomberg is going to be in for quite a surprise because we are not justified through our deeds or accomplishments––if you even believe that those things he did were good deeds or accomplishments, to begin with. That’s a whole matter of human opinion. And regardless of what God’s opinion is on it, it doesn’t matter. We are justified through the cross of Christ.
Now, the last name, Bloomberg, is Jewish, so if he was raised Jewish, he may not have any idea about the cross of Christ. In either case, what he considers good deeds are of his own opinion, and it seems rather lofty to say that such things were good enough to earn him a place in Heaven.
So Paul, knowing what some Jewish Christians might say in opposition to his statement regarding the cross as the only means of salvation, makes a rhetorical question here. If we are saved by Christ alone, then does that mean that Christ condones sin?
Enduring Word Commentary puts it this way: As the men from Jerusalem saw it, the idea that we are made right before God by faith in Jesus alone wasn’t enough. After all, Christians still struggled with sin. How could they have the “accepted by God” issue settled if they still battled sin? In their thinking, this made Christ… “a minister of sin” because Jesus’ work of making them right with God apparently didn’t make them right enough. In other words, “If God justifies bad people, what is the point of being good? Can’t we do as we like and live as we please?”
Gotquestions.org said: Our salvation is not the result of any of our efforts, abilities, intelligent choices, personal characteristics, or acts of service we may perform. However, as believers, we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works”—to help and serve others. While there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation, God’s intention is that our salvation will result in acts of service. We are saved not merely for our own benefit but to serve Christ and build up the church (Ephesians 4:12). This reconciles the seeming conflict between faith and works. Our righteous acts do not produce salvation but are, in fact, evidence of our salvation (James 1:22; 2:14–26).
In the end, we must recognize that even our righteous acts come as a result of God within us, not of ourselves. On our own, our “righteousness” is simply self-righteousness, and vain, hypocritical religion produces nothing more than “filthy rags.”
And so Paul then famously says the following: 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
In other words, when Christ died on that cross, he took all of our punishment for us. When we accept Christ’s sacrifice, we have, in essence, died on that cross too. God himself exchanged our penalty for sin. That whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
Going back to gotquestions.org again, it said, Jesus Christ died in our place when He was crucified on the cross. We deserved to be the ones placed on that cross to die because we are the ones who live sinful lives. But Christ took the punishment on Himself in our place—He substituted Himself for us and took what we rightly deserved. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
If we go to our second set of verses out of 1 Peter, we read in verse 24, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” Here again we see that Christ took the sins we committed onto Himself to pay the price for us.
Isn’t it interesting? You can see here how Paul’s reprimand hit Peter (as it should). Peter wrote this about 15 years after Paul’s letter to the Galatians, so Peter certainly had time to correct himself and repent of his thinking and actions. The truth of Christ not only corrects your understanding, it makes you bold, too. Peter didn’t fear what others thought by this point.
If we flip to the next chapter, in 1 Peter 3:18, we read, “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18). Not only do these verses teach us about the substitute that Christ was for us, but they also teach that He was the atonement, meaning He satisfied the payment due for the sinfulness of man.
In other words, the cross completed it all. Peter used the phrase “once for all” sacrifice. No more sacrifices at the temple, and no more being made righteous by the strict adherence to the laws of Moses. The cross satisfied God’s wrath. And through the cross, we have right standing with God. Our righteousness comes through the cross and the grace of God.
We read this from the Prophet Isaiah: All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5–6)
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. (Isaiah 53:10–11)
1 John 4:9-10 says, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation (or appeasement) for our sins.”
Enduring Word once again says that “Peter reminds us that when Jesus died on the cross, we also died to sins. Our life is permanently changed by our identification with Jesus on the cross, even as the Apostle Paul described in Romans 6.”
And what does Romans 6 say? It’s a very similar statement that Paul made to the Galatians. He said, beginning with verse 1:
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
And if you want to read more on that, Paul talks about this subject throughout the entire chapter of Romans 6.
But Peter, here, talks similarly as Paul did about dying to ourselves or dying with Christ on that cross. We have died to sins in the sense that our debt of sin and guilt was paid by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. When we died to sin with Jesus on the cross, it means that He paid our debts.
Have you ever paid off a debt and then worried about it? I haven’t. I worry when the debt isn’t paid off. I have to pay it on time or else…you know, I have to make sure I get it in, wondering, “gee, how much left do I owe?” I was asking Diana just the other day how much left we owe on the truck. But we don’t trouble ourselves over debts that are paid. We rejoice when debts are paid.
I remember to this day when my mom wrote the last check for their house payment. I think we went out to dinner or something to kind of a fancy place. I don’t know, maybe she just talked about it. But it took them 25 years to pay off that debt. And she seemed so relieved.
That’s how we are with the cross of Christ. Our debts have been paid in full. We should rejoice. We should be relieved.
Charles Spurgeon said, “He who bore my sins in his own body on the tree, took all my debts and paid them for me, and now I am dead to those debts; they have no power over me. I am dead to my sins; Christ suffered instead of me. I have nothing to do with them. They are gone as much as if they had never been committed.”
We have died to sins in the sense that now a greater passion fills our life – a passion for the Lord Jesus Christ that is greater than our previous passion for sin.
Like Paul pointed out, we are not completely devoid of sin, but a greater passion for righteousness fills our life rather than a passion for sin. And through the Holy Spirit, we have the ability to conquer the sinful desires that we still battle with. It’s not through works. It’s through The Holy Spirit working within us that we can be more than conquerors.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
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