The Accounting of the Cross

Have you ever wondered why there is such detail in the account God gave of the arrest, trial, sufferings and death of His Son? He did not simply tell us that men crucified Christ, and that His death made atonement for the sins of His people. He has given great detail, specific details, while leaving out other details. Why? As I read and re-read the four Gospel accounts, I see that God has prominently set before us several things:

1. It was God’s predeterminate, eternal will. Jesus prayed, “Not my will, but Thine be done” (Luke 22:42). The answer to the question, “Why did Jesus have to die?”, is first answered by this: because it was the will of God (Heb. 10:7; Acts 2:23). To do the will of God was Christ’s great desire. It was His food and drink! And it is our greatest blessing and honor to do the will of God. Believing Christ is doing God’s will (John 6:29, 39; 20:31; Rom. 1:5; 16:26; 10:16-17; 6:14, 17; 1 John 3:23). Believing Christ crucified is the gift of God. It is the mark of the new birth and the fruit of the Spirit of God dwelling in us (1 Pet. 1:21-23; John 1:12-13; 3:14-15). Believing Christ honors God because faith agrees with God that Christ alone could and did fulfill God’s eternal will (Matt. 5:17, 20; Rev. 5:1-13; Isa. 42:4). Christ’s death fulfilled the everlasting covenant, that everlasting will God made with Christ our covenant Head (Matt. 26:28; Heb. 10:14-18; 13:20; Heb. 9:15-17).
2. Scripture cannot be broken. God the Word has spoken (John 1:1-3). It must therefore be done (Ps. 33:11). He has also brought it to pass (Isa. 46:10-11; Ps. 33:9; John 19:30). Every Gospel writer repeatedly prefaces or follows-up what Jesus did by these words “That the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled” (Matt. 26:56). “As it is written” (Matt. 26:24); “For it is written…” (Matt. 26:31). I think we will all be overjoyed to find that all God recorded in scripture and which we have believed has all been perfectly accomplished, precisely according to what was written before (Isa. 45:21).
3. God required atonement. The crucifixion of Christ teaches us that He in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily as the Son of God and Son of Man, did Himself make atonement to God for the sins of His people (Heb. 5:1; 9:24-28; 10:10-14). God Himself made the atonement. He made it in the death of His Son (Gen. 3:21; 22:8; Rom. 5:10). The wisdom and truth and justice and righteousness and mercy and grace and faithfulness and condescending humility and patience of God (and more) is seen in this: He who was offended by our sin made up for that offence in the death of His Son (Rom. 5:10; Heb. 2:17-18). The Law-Creditor and Judge paid the crime-debt that rebels owed Him out of His own purse in the person of His Son. And having paid it, He forgave those lawfully imprisoned debtors (Gal. 3:13; Eph. 1:7; Heb. 9:12, 15). The offended God laid the sins of His offending enemies on His beloved Son, who was without offence, to remove the offence that those enemies’ sins were to Him (Rom. 5:6-11; Col. 1:20-22). The Just One died for the unjust ones to bring us to God (1 Pet. 3:18). The Holy One of God took upon Himself the form of a servant, was made in the likeness of men, and was made sin in that nature, that He might honor God’s law, so that we who were without righteousness might be made the righteousness of God in Him. God’s eternal will required Christ to make atonement for the sins of His elect people, and by that atonement, to bring them to God, sanctify them, justify them, perfect them forever in His one offering!
4. The sinfulness of man. Wicked men took our Savior. They tried Him at man’s patently unjust bar. They mocked Him who alone is worthy of all honor. They hurled their worst insults and inflicted their greatest pains on Him who held their life and ways in His hand (Dan. 5:23). And they did all they could to humiliate Him whose glory is higher than the heavens! They used lies to put out the light of Him whose truth is brighter than the sun. Christ was crucified by wicked hands that fulfilled the will of wicked hearts (Acts 2:23). Oh, the exceeding sinfulness of man, that man would thus treat his Creator, the only One good! We feel justified if we impatiently lash out because we think we have been treated unjustly. But it was not a righteous motive that crucified Christ. It was a sinful motive that sprang from sinful hearts. Provoked only by His pure goodness, men committed the most heinous of crimes: they murdered the Just One (Acts 7:52), killed the Prince of Life (Acts 3:14-15), crucified the Lord of Glory (1 Cor. 2:8)!
5. The exceeding sinfulness of sin. It was not only evil men that crucified Christ, but it was for the sins of God’s elect, those sins God made His, that God required His Son to die on that cursed tree (Gal. 3:13; Rom. 6:23; Ezek. 18:4). Sinners required the Lord to die, when in envious hatred they cried, “Crucify, crucify Him” (Luke 23:21)! Yet because our sins were made His before the foundation of the world, God predetermined from eternity that our Substitute must die in the way that He did (Acts 2:23; 1 Pet. 1:20; Rev. 13:8). Men unjustly required it. But God righteously and graciously required it. Therefore, sin must be exceeding sinful, that God would require His Son to die to make atonement for it! How bad is sin? “It is Christ that died” (Rom. 8:34)!
6. To show, by fulfillment of scripture, who Jesus of Nazareth truly is. He is the Son of God (Ps. 2), the Son of Man (Dan. 7:14; Matt. 20:28; Mark 14:61-62), the Lord’s Christ (John 20:31), the King of Righteousness (Jer. 23:5-6; Heb. 7:2), the King of Peace (Isa. 9:6), the King of Glory (Isa. 6:5; Ps. 24), the Lord of all (Rom. 14:9; Acts 10:36). Because He did the will of God and triumphed gloriously over God’s enemies, God highly exalted Him! He came to bear witness to the truth (John 18:37). By His death, He both upheld the truth and bore witness to it (1 Pet. 2:18-25). He reconciled and magnified God’s righteousness and peace, His mercy and truth (Ps. 85:10; Isa. 42:21; Ps. 119:142). Jesus of Nazareth was not an earthly king or an earthly captain, as apostate Israel so notoriously taught and stubbornly held to, to their own damnation. He is Immanuel (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23), the Lamb of God (John 1:29), the one Mediator between God and men (Acts 4:12; 1 Tim. 2:5), God manifest in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16)!
7. Christ is the beginning, the end, the subject and fulfillment of scripture (Ps. 138:2; John 5:39; Heb. 10:7; Luke 24:25-27; 44-47; Rev. 1:1, 8, 11, 17-18). I love those words spoken prophetically in Psalm 40:7 by our Lord Jesus Christ, “In the volume of the book it is written of me” (Ps. 40:7). Jesus Christ fulfilled the law and the prophets and the Psalms by His death on the cross (Luke 24:44-47; John 19:30; Matt. 5:17). This is explicitly and repeatedly brought out throughout every Gospel account of Christ’s crucifixion.
8. To show us our great need. Will we presume to contribute to your salvation?! May it never be! Judas betrayed Christ. Peter denied Him. All of the disciples forsook Him. The best of men failed. The pillars of the church could not watch one hour with Him. They all left Him alone. All failed, without exception, who had been with Him over three years and earnestly resolved not to fail! None failed to fail but Christ! Why? Because we have a great need and must know our need of our great Savior!! We are utterly unable to do one thing to save ourselves (Ps. 49:8). We must be saved by grace alone, not of works, lest any man should boast (Rom. 11:6; Eph. 2:8-9). Christ must have all the glory (1 Cor. 1:30-31; Isa. 2:11)! God foretold it (Ps. 55:12-13; Zech. 13:7). Oh, how we resist the truth about ourselves taught in scripture (Rom. 3:10-12)! Oh, how we must be taught and retaught the sad truth from God’s word and through the hard knocks of trouble! Yet the lesson, that Christ is all, is worth the pain! Why do men not call upon Christ? Why don’t we seek Him? Why do we cling to our own works and worth? It is because we don’t see our great need as sinners and don’t see Christ as God’s eternally appointed and anointed Savior?!
9. Christ prevailed alone, by Himself. The great theme that rings from the Gospel accounts is that Christ, by Himself, for God’s elect, by His death, made atonement for their sins, purged their sins, obtained their eternal redemption, made full and eternal remission of their sins, sanctified and perfected them forever, made reconciliation for their iniquity and established their everlasting righteousness (Heb. 1:3; 1 Pet. 2:24; Heb. 9:12; 10:10, 14-18; 13:12, 20; 1 Cor. 1:30; Rom. 10:4). No man was with Him when He began to make atonement until He came out and had made atonement (Lev. 16:17). “I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me” (Isa. 65:3). He is the last Adam, the everlasting Father, who stood as our covenant Head. There is only one Head, only One Surety, only one Mediator who stands between God and man, who did all for God that He required for His glory, and all for His elect people that God required to bring them to Himself, in love, to make them holy and blameless (Eph. 1:4).
10. From first to last, God is sovereign and salvation is of God, in Christ, by His grace alone. The cross cries out, “Grace, grace, grace” (Zech. 4:7)! God, before the world began, loved His elect people. He hated those He did not choose. Why? For one reason: “that the purpose of God according to election might stand,” that salvation would be “not of works, but of Him that calleth” (Rom. 9:11). He eternally set His love on those He chose in Christ (Jer. 31:3; John 13:1; Eph. 1:4; 2 Thess. 2:13). He determined to leave the rest to receive the just reward of their works. God is just in both. By definition, God is just to those who receive only what they deserve. But God is also just to those for whom Christ stood and answered all to the glory of God’s holy, just and good law (Isa. 42:21). God is also merciful. Never is God’s sovereign mercy more brightly seen than when it shines on those who are the foulest among men (1 Tim. 1:15)! Thus, election is all of grace (Rom. 9:11). And redemption is all of grace. “Being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). If redemption were not of grace, then the debtor in crime to God the Judge must pay some or all of his debt to God’s justice. But if that were true, Christ died needlessly (Gal. 2:21)! Redemption must be of grace not only because Christ did it alone, but because it was obtained before the redeemed were ever born. For those born before the cross, it was obtained in God’s eternal decree (1 Pet. 1:20; Rom. 3:25; Rev. 13:8). For those born after the cross, it was obtained in God’s eternal decree and at the cross (Heb. 9:12-15). Not only election and redemption, but life from the dead is all of grace. “But God, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Him, by grace ye are saved” (Eph. 2:4). “Of His own will begat He us by the word of truth” (James 1:18). “As many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). God’s grace chose Christ to be the covenant Head of His elect people. This is what Eph. 1:4 means when it says, “He [God the Father] hath chosen us in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). God’s grace appointed and anointed and gave Christ to be Redeemer (Heb. 2:14-17). And God required the full ransom price from Christ for our redemption (Matt. 20:28; John 10:15-18; Acts 20:28; Eph. 5:25). All that God did in election and redemption is entirely outside of our personal experience. But regeneration is also entirely of grace, though it is part of our experience (Eph. 2:1-10; Titus 3:3-7). Therefore, in the Gospels, this is greatly emphasized by the sin of man and the obedience of Christ. The Gospel accounts of Christ’s death show a completed redemption. Not Judas nor the soldiers nor the high priests nor the chief priests nor the elders nor the scribes nor the Pharisees nor the Gentile governors nor the senseless crowd, but Christ was the Victor! They who imagined themselves captors were captives to do the will of our great God and Savior (John 18:4-8).
11. To show the death of death in the death of Christ, to parade the defeated and bound devil, the victory over the world, satisfaction to God’s justice and honor to God’s law (Col. 2:14-15; Rev. 12:9-10; John 12:31; Rev. 20:1-3).

In summary, the Gospel accounts of the death of Christ loudly declare these themes:

1. God’s eternal will is fulfilled (Ps. 40:6-8; Heb. 10:5-18).
2. Man’s sinful will is exercised to the fullest extent (Luke 23:25).
3. The salvation of great sinners is finished, according to God’s great grace in Christ (John 17:1-4; 19:30).
4. Christ is set forth to believing sinners as altogether lovely, because He is the LORD who has become our salvation (Isa. 12:1-3; Ps. 27:1; Luke 2:30; Acts 4:12; Matt. 1:21; Rom. 11:16-27). Christ is glorified in His grace! And what a glory it is for sinners to behold! May God give us faith to see Him!

Rick Warta