The beauty and majesty of the cross and what Jesus Christ did for all of humanity is an amazingly beautiful picture and you’ll often times hear many Preachers and Pastors talk about it, especially around Easter time, and it’s wonderful, but here’s what is so often missed…
They have bad theology.
First, if Jesus didn’t die on the cross for our sins, He would have done it another way.
Secondly, nothing can stop God’s plan (Job 42:2).
Now that you know the answers 😉 let’s unpack these a little more!
God Didn’t Need the Cross
I’ve heard it said by Pastors, “What IF Jesus didn’t die on the cross for us? What IF He never did this for us? Without that one act that He did for all of humanity, we wouldn’t have what we have. We wouldn’t be saved. We wouldn’t be Christian.”
We wouldn’t be saved???? Really???
We can understand that after Adam and Eve sinned, all of humanity from then on was born into sin.
But to say that we wouldn’t have what we have if He didn’t die on the cross is NOT true.
Listen, if Jesus Christ never died on the cross, He would have done it another way!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don’t you see how the message they are saying, while innocent on their lips and with no ill-intention on their part, can be degrading to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?!
God didn’t NEED the cross. He didn’t need some tree.
He had a system. The people brought their sacrifices and offered them to Him. He gave them the Ark of the Covenant. Through the generations, they had systems in place.
If Jesus never died on the cross, we’d still be able to stand before God today, but we’d be sacrificing animals (Hebrews 7:27).
If Jesus never died on the cross, He would have done it another way. God is not bound by our human terms or to be put in some box. He didn’t have to die on the cross, He could have paid our debt in any way HE wanted to; after all, He IS GOD!
It’s not the cross that makes the story, it’s God.
And you can’t refute that. If you try, I’d simply ask you a question…
If the cross saves us, then what happened to all the genuine believers BEFORE Jesus died? Did they all go to Hell? 👈
What Jesus did on the cross is amazing and fantastic, but it’s NOT what saves us. GOD is who saves us.
As humans, we are constantly trying to deglorify God. We make idols, we worship a bunch of worldly things and say they are our gods. There is only ONE God.
We have to stop thinking about things in humanistic terms.
“I’m so glad for what Jesus did for me on the cross,” someone says.
That’s great! Absolutely!!! But we forget that He sacrifices in the same way for us every single day of our lives!
In that way, we steal His glory and we don’t even realize it.
The Bible says…
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8
The Bible, God’s Word, says He doesn’t change. If He died on the cross for us 2,000-ish years ago, if He sacrificed for us back then, you better BELIEVE He’s sacrificing for you today. And yesterday. And tomorrow!
Every DAY He’s sacrificing for us. 😮💣💯
EVERY…DAY!
He didn’t stop loving us or go to Heaven and cease to stop being HIMSELF!
No, He sacrifices for us every day. And He deserves honor and praise for that EVERY SINGLE DAY! Not JUST on Easter.
Yes, if Jesus didn’t die on the cross, He would have done it another way.
We can’t say, “If Jesus never died on the cross for us…” Because it puts the glory on the cross. It puts the glory and majesty of what He DID DO for us on a piece of wood. On a one-time action in history.
If He didn’t do it that way, He would have done it another way. Why? Because God is sovereign.
HE, and He alone, decided He wanted it to be as a way to die on the cross.
He picked how.
He picked where.
He picked when.
No one else chose. And no one else MADE Him do it.
We could still be sacrificing animals. Sacrificial systems were set up and in place. He CHOSE to die on the cross for us. He chose that.
No one told Him to do it (Isaiah 43:10 says there is no other god before Him, nor will there ever be after after). No one made Him do it. He wanted to, because of His great love for us!
No one can stop His will.
If God wants something to happen, you cannot stop it.
- Kings cannot stop it.
- Stars and the moon cannot stop it.
- Time cannot stop it.
- Satan cannot stop it.
Job 42:2 says “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
There is nothing greater than God and nothing that can stop Him.
Aren’t WE lucky that God is good?! That He’s not a tyrant, power-hungry god.
Aren’t WE lucky that He’s generous and good and fair…and LOVING?!
Because we CAN’T stop Him. Instead of being a slave to an unfair, unjust god, we have a holy God we can go to any time we want. He’s there, He’s close to us, He listens.
But nothing can stop His will. So not only do you have a God who CHOSE for Jesus to die in the exact way, in the exact time that He did, and not only do you have a God (Jesus) who WILLINGLY went to the cross and submitted to God the Father, you also have a God that held it all together to cause all the events to line up perfectly to create that.
You have Herod trying to kill Him as an infant He had to get through. Luke 13:31
You have Him walking invisibly through the crowds when they tried to attack Jesus, the Bible stating because “it wasn’t His time”. Luke 4:30
You have Him telling Judas to do what he would do (His giving PERMISSION to Satan to do it; Satan has no authority over God. God LET it happen). John 13:27
You have Satan playing into God’s hands by being the vehicle in which Jesus WAS crucified and “caught”. John 13:27
You have Jesus, the man, not fighting His temptation to NOT die when He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane; willingly submitting to the Father’s will. Matthew 26:39
All throughout the entire story of Jesus dying on the cross, you see a perfect picture of God and His sovereign will, which I think that so many people miss.
Yes, we should all praise what He did for us, He died on the cross for us and it’s amazing and great. I’m so utterly thankful I don’t have to go and sacrifice an animal to cover my sins!
But there’s so much MORE to the story that you’re missing!
His sovereignty.
Nothing stopped it from happening. He planned it from before the beginning of the world, He caused it all to happen in exactly the way and time He wanted it to happen. Nothing stopped it, nothing slowed it down, nothing prevented it.
THAT’S the power of the Living God.
👉 You do not serve a tiny God who lives up in space somewhere who doesn’t care about you.
He’s here with you. He chose what you would do in your life from eternity past (Ephesians 2:10). His will for your life was set in stone far before “stone” was even a word! 😮
Do you understand how BIG He is? 🙏
Do you understand how much POWER He has? 🤯
Do you understand how much He LOVES you? 🎁
He chose what you will do. He chose you to be born (Psalm 139:13). He chose your life. Nothing can stop what He wants to happen, but He does allow us CHOICES. Human will.
Jesus had a choice.
Jesus could have said no. He is God, after all.
When Jesus was sweating LIKE drops of blood He could have said no. He could have said no in Heaven before He was born as a human. All along God, the Father’s plan, Jesus could have said no to it, but He didn’t. He chose to do the Father’s will.
We have that same choice every day as well.
- Will we do the Father’s will?
- Will we do what He wants us to do?
- Live our lives for Him?
- Take the Bible seriously?
- Pray our guts out every second of every day?
- Will we learn more about Him so that we can honor Him and show Him praise?
- Will we be a good steward of all the things He gives us here on Earth in order to please Him with the resources He gives to us?
- Will we try to sin less?
God has a plan for us all so intense and so beautiful that you would not believe Him if He told you. 💯
Sarah laughed when God said she’d have a baby (Genesis 18:12). I laughed at Him when He said I would be like Moses and lead a lot of people 10 years ago. We tend to not take Him seriously. We tend to not believe those outrageous things. But in fact, they are true!
God has such an incredible plan for your life (Jeremiah 29:11). He chose it before the earth began and there’s nothing that could stop it but He allows us to choose.
He did not create an army of robots, He created humans. He gives us that free will, decisions, and choices. He WANTS us to CHOOSE Him.
He gives us opportunities to choose His will and Him every day.
If there is an idol in your life, something you’re picking over God, and you’re not repentant, eventually He WILL take it away. God is a jealous God (Nahum 1:2, Exodus 20:3).
Listen…God is sovereign. God chose for us what He wills for our lives from eternity past. God creates it all to happen. He orchestrates the entire thing. Yet…YET, He wants us to want His will. And when we don’t, when we sin, when we follow our OWN devices, sometimes He lets us go down those paths to teach us a lesson. To teach us that He is always right! He lets us fail sometimes and that’s OUR fault, not His.
We lose a lot of time that we could be useful to Him in service, we torture ourselves because we go down the wrong road, all because we are not willing, as a people, to keep our eyes focused and fixed on Him (Matthew 23:37).
Jesus fixed His eyes on God. Who’s attention was His on as He died? He was talking to God, not to humans (Matthew 27:46). His focus was on God throughout His entire life and ministry.
When we take our eyes off God, bad things happen. We lose everything!!!
Most of the time, we don’t even know it. 😮
👉 How many things, how many blessings in your life have you lost because you went down the wrong road willingly? Because you lost your focus on God and when He tried to convict you to tell you about it, you ran away, rebelled, denied His good pleasure?
When we keep our focus on Him and Him alone, when we walk in the Spirit and do not let the temptations of the world pull us under, God has amazingly BIG things stored up for us to have.
Maybe it’s a ministry, maybe it’s being used by Him, maybe it’s showing the world He exists through you, but whatever it is for you specifically, it’s BIG.
Why?
Because we serve a BIG God. 💣
