C Is For Cross - God Centered Alphabet

Hello and welcome back to God -Centered Theology. This is Andy Cain, and this is another edition of the

God -Centered Alphabet. That's right, all 26 letters, and I will admit to you, some of them may be harder than others to find something to cover, but I commit we will do this.

Today we're on letter C, and yes, you guessed it. If I gave you probably two guesses, you'd probably get on the first.

C is for the cross. That's right, the cross, the cross of Calvary, the one we just we celebrate, well, year -round we should, but in and around Easter, we talk about the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus.

But to talk about the cross today, I want to talk about what two things we want to look at.

There's a lot of things we could cover about the cross, but I want to sort of take it a different direction here.

I want to look at what Jesus specifically says about what the cross is representative of, and what it's accomplishing, and what

He says about His atonement, and then I want to look at what other scripture is saying is accomplished in that atonement.

So let's get right into it. In Luke chapter 22, verse 14, is when you get the

Lord's Supper. Now this isn't, you know, instructional like it is in 1 Corinthians and Paul.

This is when it was being recorded, it actually happened. So when the hour had come, He reclined at the table and the apostles with Him, and He said to them,

I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say to you,

I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And when

He had taken a cup and given thanks, He said, take this and share it among yourselves. For I say to you,

I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes. So some eschatological stuff going on in there.

Story for another day, but something to think about. And when He had taken some bread and given thanks,

He broke it and gave it to them, saying, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And in the same way,

He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, this cup, which is poured out for you. Hmm.

He doesn't say do this in remembrance of me. He says something different here.

He says this cup, which is poured out for you. So He takes it, pours the wine into their cup.

He says, as I'm pouring this in here, it's a symbol, this cup, which is poured out for you.

And think about when somebody pours a certain amount into your cup, they're putting the amount they desire for you to have.

Now, typically at a restaurant, you know, they're going to fill it up or whatever. But in, you know, the person doing the pouring has control over how much is poured in.

So you think about it, we all have our own allotted cup of sins that need to be repented for and need to be atoned for.

I can't atone for someone else's sins and they can't atone for mine. We need them atoned for. And He says, this cup, which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

Whole lot going on here. First of all, we think about Jeremiah. He talks about the new covenant that would come here.

Now it is. Think about the new covenant in my blood. Well, the old covenant required and relied on the sacrifice and the shedding of blood of animals.

And we know that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. But then you remember, we look at Hebrews and Hebrews 10, it talks about the blood, the blood of bulls and goats cannot pay for sins.

So animal sacrifices, the shedding of blood from anything else other than God Himself was never meant to, nor could it ever actually pay for sins.

It was simply a foreshadowing, covering temporarily. And so now we see very

God Himself encased in human flesh and the person of Jesus Christ saying, this cup that's being poured out is a symbol of the blood

I'm going to shed because He says the new covenant in my blood, He's told him,

I'm going to go to the cross. Cause you remember, God said in alphabet, sin is for cross, right?

I'm going to go to the cross. I'm going to die for you. I'm going to shed my blood. And what bulls and goats could not do, what animals could not do, what sacrifices could not do, what all the old covenant system could not do.

We're going to have a new covenant system that is going to do it, that is going to fulfill it, that is going to pay for your sins.

Wash you white as snow, make you perfectly righteous. There's not going to be some new perfect animal.

It's not going to be some fancy system that a lot of man -made religion has.

God says, I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to shed my own blood. I'm going to do it for you.

And it's going to be this new covenant in my blood. So now we want to go over to the epistle of Colossians that Paul wrote and look at what he says the cross accomplishes.

Okay? C is for cross. He says there in verse 13, who? Well, we don't have time to do a deep dive exegesis into this, but we need to identify who this who is.

Well, in verse 11, being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might for the attaining of steadfastness, of all steadfastness and patience, joyously giving thanks to the father who has qualified us to share the inheritance of the saints and light.

Now it's interesting here because a lot of the Unitarians and Trinity deniers, we'll talk about, you know, modalism or, or something that's not

Trinitarian and they miss so much of the Trinitarian language found in the text. Here we have the father who is being, who we're giving thanks to the father who is

God. And he's qualified us to share in the inheritance of saints and light who the father rescued us from the authority of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the son of his love.

Now, if God is one, which we are monotheistic religion, we do believe in one eternal

God, but we believe, and I cover this on a God -centered recommendation, then the forgotten Trinity, we believe in Trinity.

And so we believe in three persons, father, son, and spirit. Well, if all those three persons are the same

God and are just different modes or representations of God or not distinct persons, why does

Paul use language like this here? Because notice here, and in the spirit it's mentioned back up in verse eight.

So you've got the spirit present here too, but right here in these verses where we're talking about the cross and what happened, we've got the father and son in view here.

It's giving thanks to the father. The father qualifies us to be, to share in the inheritance of the saints and light.

He rescues us from the authority of darkness, transfers us to the kingdom of the son of his love.

So you see here, he's transferring us into the kingdom of the son, and it's referencing this son as being the son by which the father has set his love on the son.

So there's that separation there. These two people aren't the same person.

They're the same being. They're both Yahweh, but they're not the same person. The father is transferring his saints, his saved ones, into the kingdom of the son, and this son upon which there's the ruler of this kingdom that we're being transferred into is the son that he has set his love upon.

And so very interesting Trinitarian language here. And it says, in whom, and this in whom here is the son of his love, in whom, the son, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

And it goes on to talk about how this who, now we've switched. So the who in verse 13 was a reference to the person of the father.

Now we've switched to where in whom in verse 14 is the son, and also everything that follows here starting in verse 15.

Who, Jesus Christ, is the image of the invisible God. He, God is spirit.

No man has seen God at any time. Nobody's seen the father, but the son is the representation of God in human flesh.

The first born of all creation. In him all things are created. He's before all things. All things hold together through him.

So we see in the cross, we move down here to verse 20. It says, through him, through Jesus Christ, to reconcile all things to himself.

So the father is reconciling all things to himself through the son. He makes peace through the blood, having made peace through the blood of his cross, through him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.

So we've got here, remember Jesus said, this is a new covenant in my blood. Well, now here we have the fullness of God is pleased to dwell through him, reconciling all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.

So Jesus Christ reconciling things to himself, making peace, thinking about Micah chapter five is this one is our peace.

You think about Isaiah nine, this kingdom of peace, he's peace, he's all these things. Jesus Christ is our peace.

But notice this peace that we have with him comes through the blood of his cross.

Jesus said the new covenant in my blood, without shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins.

It's through the shedding of the blood of God himself that our sins are atoned for.

And so you see here a very beautiful picture of why the cross is so central.

It's the central event in redemptive history. It's the central event because it is the very event where God himself shed his blood, died for us to pay the price for our sins so that we can have our sins atoned for.

Well, our sins are atoned for on the cross. He actually pays for our sins so that we can be righteous and we can be justified.

We can be like the believing Abraham through faith, the instrument of our faith.

And so there's so much majesty, so many different places we could go with this. But seeing what

Jesus says about it, the cross is not just an event, it's the shedding of his blood in his new covenant.

It's his covenant because he institutes it through his blood. And we see here in Colossians that it rescues us from the authority of darkness, transfers us into the kingdom of his son.

We have redemption through the cross. We have forgiveness through the cross. We have peace through the cross.

We're formerly alienated, but now friends with God through the cross.

There's so many aspects of who we are in Christ that is summed up in his work on the cross.

Amen? Well, I think we've made it very clear here that C is for cross in the