Introduction
The title of this final teaching “The Future of the Cross”, is a rather unusual expression. When I first came up with it I wasn’t sure why? The conclusion I have come to is that the future of the cross is the blessing of the Father.
Part of the reason for speaking of the future of the cross is the habit of most Bible- believing Christians to relegate the cross to the past, as if it deals only with past sins. The cross is recognized as foundational, but somehow not a living reality in the present. This is an even greater danger in the consumer culture of today. There is a tremendous temptation to move, as a book title puts it, “beyond the cross”.
In getting a sense of the dimensions of the cross various teachers have spoken of an “eternal cross in the heart of God”. The death of God’s Son has always been a focus in his mind. In a day when the highest profile Christian leaders are preoccupied by church growth, wealth creation, social policy and political influence we need to enter into the truth put so well by Charles Spurgeon, “Do you know …what God’s estimate of the gospel is? Do you not know that it has been the chief subject of his thoughts and acts from all eternity? He looks on it as the grandest of all his works.”
The Cross Contains God’s First and Last Thought
As people who have entered deeply into the relationship between the Father and the Son (Rom 11:34; 1 Cor 2:16), the framework presented by the N.T. apostles is all – encompassing. Paul speaks of “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things” (Eph 3:9), Peter says, “you were ransomed …with the precious blood of Christ, … foreknown/chosen before the foundation of the world …manifest in the last times for your sake,” (1 Pet 1:18 – 20). For John, Jesus is “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.” (Rev 13:8)
Since the plan of God is eternal (cf. Rom 16:25 -26), what is accomplished by the death of Christ must not be thought of as an emergency strategy to deal with sin. This would be to subordinate the power of the divine blessing to the force of evil. It cannot be that God’s original word to humanity will fail, it is only a matter of how it will be realised.
Adam’s Incompletion
The creation of humanity is enveloped in a blessing to go forth, multiply and fill the earth (Gen 1:28). Until this happened, until Adam and Eve moved beyond the boundaries of the little Garden of Eden (Gen 2:8) to stamp the authority and dominion of God on all things (cf. Eph 1:10), they were not “perfect” either spiritually or vocationally. Before they could enter their destiny, they needed to break through the barriers that seemed to separate them from complete God- likeness, the barriers of death and the evil behind it (Gen 2:17).
If our first parents had pioneered and perfected faith in Eden (cf. Heb 12:2) their humanity would have been immortalised in the Garden [(“ It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.” (1 Cor 15:44))] and all their descendants would have swarmed across the earth filling it forever with the glory of God (cf. Hab 2:14).
Temptation was an opportunity for the perfection of faith (cf. Rom 1:5; 16:26) through conquering the presence of evil. When Satan says, ““You will not surely die….you will be like God’” (Gen 3:4), he launches the human potential movement – “You can be anything you like, like God, there are no boundaries.” God – lessness, he says, is the way to god – likeness, in the sense of deathlessness. The decision to have the knowledge of good and evil for oneself is a faith decision in oneself as the centre and circumference of reality, and it involves a decision to push God outside the margins of intimacy, to expel him from our innermost being. It is a willful decision to split your soul off from God. Covenantal partnership with God is terminated, the marriage is over, and we have decided to go it alone. (This is what people mean when they say that the human spirit died through sin.)
The results of this cleavage with the divine life are catastrophic. The whole experienced world is fractured – husband and wife are in conflict ““The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree” (Gen 3:12), man is set against beast, “I will put enmity between you (the serpent) and the woman,” (Gen 3:15), the earth is spoiled, “cursed is the ground because of you” (Gen 3:17 cf. Rom 8:20). Instead of multiplying oneness in the image of the trinity each generation multiplies division. Human society, the family, the nation, and so often even the people of God [(cf. Deut 12:8; Judges 21:25; “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.” Prov 21:2)] has become a conglomerate held together by self interest, founded upon fear and ruled by control.
God is now in opposition to our image e.g. “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?” (Num 23:19; 1 Sam 15:29). The final cleavage, concentrating all that is separated, is the ultimate indignity of death, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”” (Gen 3:19). This is the undoing of the work of God’s hands and the breath of his nostrils (Gen 2:7; Job 27:3) – it is all over for the godless (Eph 2:12).
A world full of inequalities, a world you cannot control (but you must try), a world of dominance over you [(the opposite of Gen 1:27)] is full of the message of impending death : rich vs. poor, men vs. women, young against old, top and bottom, weak and strong, First World vs. other World, educated vs. uneducated, preacher vs. preached to. There seems to be no truly shared space of understanding love (cf. Col 3:14).
This world breaks God’s heart, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” (Gen 6:5- 6). God cannot understand what he has done to deserve this forsakenness, he cannot understand the wicked heart of man (Jer 17:9).Even of the covenant people he cries, ““O my people, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me!” (Mic 6:3 cf. Jer 2:5).
What can he do about this, how will he put a new spirit in us and change our heart of stone into a heart of flesh (Ezek 36:26)? There is no answer to the “how” until the coming of Jesus.
The Man Christ Jesus
Jesus is a “real man” (but not in the macho sense), he knows the struggles of our flesh and blood. He is “bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh” because the Word became our flesh as it has been weakened and ravaged by the Fall (John 1:14)? He really experienced what it is to be physically less powerful, intellectually less able, personally less liked and materially less advantaged. He was the object of ethnic and family prejudice, ““Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”” (John 1:46). “Is not this the carpenter’s son? [Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers (and) his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” 57] And they took offense at him.” (Matt 13:55 – 57). [“And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”” (Mark 3:21)]
Jesus’ “agony … (in Gethsemane) , his sweat …like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luke 22:44) is a real struggle in “a man of sorrows …acquainted with grief” (Isa 53:3; Mark 14:34) wrestling with an anguish that he feels can destroy his soul (Matt 10:28), “my soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto death” (Matt 26:37). This is the beginning of his final immersion (Luke 12:50) into the fracture of the human rebellion against God where the centre does not hold together and all falls apart. [It is a sensitivity to the “groanings” of the distressed Holy Spirit “too deep for words” (Rom 8:26) to which the rest of us are hardened.] We are witnessing Jesus on the threshold of the tremendous cost of renovating the hardness that our humanity placed at the heart of the created order.
The Accomplishment of the Cross
“And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34)
The intense “loud voice”, reveals deep emotion; Jesus triple use of the personal i.e. “my”, “my”, “me”, makes it most personal, thirdly, he speaks in his heart language, Aramaic, and not the Hebrew of scripture. Finally, this is the only place [where Jesus quotes scripture without introducing it as a citation, such as “the scripture says”] where he prays in words other than his own. All this reveals unbearable stress and incomprehension.
In bearing our sin and curse (2 Cor 5:21; Gal 3:13) Jesus has entered into the incomprehensibility to God of why he is forsaken by man, and in so doing, as the faithful image of God, he becomes totally uncomprehending as to why he feels forsaken by his Father. In Jesus, the human heart/spirit is the broken over the broken heart of God. He enters into a place where he can find nothing about God that is loveable – but he keeps loving him. This means that in this one place, one time, one person, a human being loves as God loves, totally unconditionally.
Luther grasps this, Christ took all our sins upon Himself….became the greatest thief, murderer, adulterer, robber, desecrator, blasphemer, etc., there has ever been anywhere in the world. ….He … has and bears the sin of Paul, the… blasphemer, persecutor, and assaulter; of Peter, who denied Christ; of David, who was an adulterer and a murderer….He has and bears all the sins of all men…in order to make satisfaction for them with His own blood.” Luther’s Works V.26 P.276-277
In following his Father all his life Jesus has finally reached the extreme edge of exclusion from intimacy to which God is pushed by humanity – which is the death of Fatherhood for God and hell for us. But in being pushed to the margins Jesus never lets go.
This is why the cry of desolation is not the final or future word from the cross but only its foundation.
“After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” 29 A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”” (John 19:28 -31).
The English translation, “it is finished” make it seem like Jesus is resigning himself to the end of his life. But in his great prayer of John 17 he uses the same vocabulary.
“he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” (John 17:1- 5)
In his death Jesus has “brought to completeness” God’s eternal plan of uniting himself with humanity forever. In him the human spirit has been taken into the glory that the Son had with his Father in eternity, the glory of God and the glory of the man Christ Jesus (Rom 5:15, 17; 1 Tim 2:5) cannot be divided. This is the final revelation that God has never willed to live apart from man, and that, experientially, he has loved us more than he loves himself. The Father’s great gift to humanity is not “the world or life or death or the present or the future” (1 Cor 3:21 -22) but Christ himself (1 Cor 3:23; John 4:10; 2 Cor 9:15).
“he (Jesus) bowed his head and gave up his spirit ….. But when they came and ..saw that he was already dead…one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.” (John 19:30- 34)
The words “and gave up his spirit” are literally, “gave up the S/spirit”. It means Jesus’ human spirit in union with God’s Spirit returns to the Father in perfected triumph, and that our spirits have returned to God with him.
[As Eve was taken out of the side of Adam and their partnership became our ruin (Greek L.X.X Gen 2:21 = John 19:34 for “side”), so Jesus side stands for his closeness to the Father’s heart (John 1:18) and their partnership has become our salvation.]
[Out of his side comes blood and water. [(the blood always stands for forgiveness (John 1:29; Eph 1:7).] The combination “blood and water” always signifies cleansing in scripture (Lev 14:6, 51, 52; Heb 9:19). But when water and Spirit appear together, as in Jesus’ famous words to Nicodemus, “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5), it speaks of the beginning of a new order.]
[(This has many rich Old Testament associations, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you,” (Ezek 36:25 -27); ““On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.” (Zech 13:1))] [(And finally in Revelation, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city” (Rev 22:1- 2. Compare Gen 2:10; Ezek 47:1- 9; Zech 14:8)]
In scripture, water is often symbolic of the Holy Spirit (John 7:37- 39). The water that flows from the cross signifies that through the fracturing of Jesus’ humanity the Holy Spirit has broken through (cf. Perez Ruah) as the one who manifests the Father’s compassion. There are two ways in which the heart of a Father can be broken, by grief at loss and by joy at restoration (Luke 15:20 >24). In this case, at the cross, we prophetically see the Spirit pouring out of the innermost being of the Father as he overflows with joy at the final earthly victory of the Son(“it is finished”). He has mourned, he is now comforted (cf. Matt 5:4).
In the new order in the Son made perfect through his suffering (Heb 2:9; 5:10), there is no male vs. female, no curse, no death, no margins, no edges, no outcastes, no separation, no weak vs. strong, Jew vs. Greek, slave vs. free, young vs. old, hub vs. spokes, white vs. black, top vs. bottom. Jesus himself is centre and circumference, the whole fullness of the Godhead for humanity (Col 2:9 -10), “Christ is all, and in all” (Col 3:11).
Jesus’ breakdown on the cross has led to a breakthrough into a new creation (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15), he has been to the edge and returned to the centre, in him there are no divisions. This is “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, 10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (Eph 3:9- 10). Inside the church there are no boundaries. In the kingdom of God the inside is bigger than the outside. You are now situated in the healed heart of the Father (John 1:18; Col 3:3 cf. 2 Chron 7:16).
In 1995 I went to Argentina to see the revival there, and was touched in many ways. As I was about to go into the boarding lounge in the airport in Buenos Aires I wandered into a small catholic chapel. There I picked up a small pamphlet with the Spanish heading, “Fifteen minutes in the Company of Jesus”, inside the pamphlet was a very unusual map of the world. Transposed across it were the airport runways, at the centre of these was the heart of Jesus from which were lines radiating through each continent, the one place in Australia where the 2 met was over Perth. The Father was saying that as I had so clearly seen his heart in revival in South America I would see it in this city – I still believe this and I believe I will see it soon.
The Impartation of Sonship
The good news is that the marginalisation of humanity is over, Fallen history has ended, in Christ, humanity is taken into God, man and God are no longer essentially divided. When Jesus returned to the glory he had with the Father from before the foundation of the world he took our renewed nature with him. Jesus has fully “joyed the Father” (Heb 12:2), he has entered into the fullness of the satisfaction of God; his humanity is forever inside the heavenly love.
The reward for a man in the heavenly sphere (1 Cor 15:47) is different from the earthly plane of existence. It is not riches and honour and long life that he distributes to his people (cf. 2 Chron 1:12; Ps 61:19.), it is not like the human potential movement that promises an exceptional quality of life filled with happiness, creativity, and fulfillment, it is something far more profound.
Jesus’ prayers in John 17, were our key to understanding the “accomplishment” of John 19:30. They also unveil his reward from the Father. “…glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:1- 3). The Son’s reward is the authority to give eternal life, it is the power to impart sonship.
Hebrews says, “10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.” (Heb 2:9 -12)
John says, “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the authority to become children of God, [13 who 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).
Luke teaches that the Father gives the exalted Christ the Spirit so that he can turn us into God’s children, “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he (Jesus) has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.” (Acts 2:33
Typically, Paul draws it all together, “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (Gal 4:6- 7). The perfected Son imparts sonship; that he can do this to us through the ministry of gospel is the revelation that God is his Father.
There are no classes of sonship, “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. [28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:26- 28).] As such, there can be no essential divisions within the body of Christ.
A New Authority from Heaven
There are only two fundamental authorities in the world, the authority of Jesus and the authority of the beast. The latter is “given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. 8All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.” (Rev 13:7 – 8)
When “tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word” those who profess Christ but do not know the eternity of the cross have no confidence in its future and necessarily fall away (Mark 4:17).
On the other hand, the one who has “been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.” (1John 5:18). In the overcoming power of the cross these ones persevere in faithfulness to God, through all the fractured suffering of this world they grow more and more in the authority of Christ.
You can only impart to others a sense of the sonship of Jesus through immersion in the work of the cross (1 Cor 4:15). Gifting from God and authority with men do not equate to this sort of authority with God. How many “big name” believers have to fall before we understand this? What must happen for us to realise that true spiritual fatherhood is not connected to numbers or profile but the ability to impart an ineradicable sense of sonship.
Authority with God means something like this; when Joshua prayed for the sun and moon to stand still so that he might pursue the holy war, “the Lord obeyed the voice of a man”, (Joshua 10:12 -14). “Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” [7 And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.]” (Acts 3:6 -7). I remember Yonggi Cho speaking of a time when they brought a woman in on a stretcher and he was so filled with faith that the Lord was going to heal her that he simply said, “Get Up!” and she did!
This is the work of Jesus “the pioneer of life” (Acts 3:15) who gives us a share in his power and glory (Cf. Acts 5:31), by pioneering and perfecting our faith in him (Heb 12:2).
There comes a season when the fruit of the cross matures, when suffering imparts an authority with God to command the Father’s blessing, which is to share in his plan from the beginning. This time is coming soon.
What is Wrong?
There is a spiritual famine in this city and it is revealing itself in a particular way. It is visible in pastors pathetically preaching for the tithe to come into the “local storehouse” and in a host of Christian ministries “begging” for funds or for workers. The church is full of begging, striving and burn out, as though we are “workers for a Master” rather than sons of the Father (Luke 15:25- 30).
This reveals a crisis over Fatherhood, the psalmist says “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread.” (Ps 37:25). Jesus said, “which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”” (Matt 7:9 -11).
Most Christians I know are living as if they were outcastes,(like the Gentile woman who) “begged him (Jesus) to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” 28 But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29 And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” (Mark 7:26 – 29)
Which is nearer to normality, the way we experience things or this testimony from the recent Reinhard Bonnke crusade in Nigeria?
Last night’s meeting was simply glorious! Souls were saved in huge numbers, as the fire of the Holy Spirit fell in a mighty way. We also witnessed outstanding miracle-healings. Among them was a 32 year old man in a wheelchair. “I’ve been in it all my life”, he said, as he walked across the stage and showed us a picture with his school-class. It showed him in the very same wheelchair. There were so many other miracles that happened. Jesus gave healing to the people like a father would give bread to his children. That is our God and what a mighty God we serve! (Reinhard Bonnke Lagos November 2006)
This is very personal to me, I know what it is like not to be fed as a child, to be under a table in fear of punishment because a father would not intervene. I have experienced fracture after fracture in relationships and split after split so that there is a war between two parts of me. One part that hears God clearly (I think) and speaks boldly (or tries to) and another part that is used to feelings of abandonment and struggles to come back again and again from the repeated experiences of being maginalised as a human being and especially as one who has sought to speak the Word of God. There is a part of me – whatever my theology and very real experience of God tells me, that is full of self- doubt about what it really means to have God as Father.
It will not stay like this. There is a righteous Father in heaven and an advocate with him , “Jesus Christ the righteous. Who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1 -2).
What he is About to Do?
Jesus is speaking to us about the revelation of the Father (Rev 1:1) for each of his churches. He is coming soon, (not in the final but in a local spiritual visitation) as in the book of Revelation he promised he would come to visit the churches in Ephesus, Pergamum and Sardis (2:5, 16; 3:3). He is coming to break down everything that is not centred on him (Heb 12:25 -29) and to establish himself as the sole centre of his people. He is coming to breakthrough with the Spirit – power of the cross, to break us down so that he might build us up. He is coming to turn the church inside out and to reveal that “what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” (Luke 16:15). He is coming [– in his mini parousia –] to so fill your lives with his own that you will passionately want the Father to have more like yourself, more sons and daughters like you (cf. 1 Cor 11:1). The time is coming when you will be ready to go to the ends of the earth to fulfill this the Father’s blessing, just as he promised in the beginning (cf. Eph 1:22 – 23; 4:10).
This is the future of the wisdom and the power and the glory of the cross. Amen.