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At the Cross
We often hear how our faith differs from others. But we must not forget that we hold in common with others also the truth of the Christian story.
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone SDA Church, CA, USA
Delivery: 2008-10-18 20:15Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2008-10-18 20:15Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kirl-atthecross.php
In this sanctuary we have often from the pulpit heard how as Seventh-day Adventists, our understanding of God is unique. And more such we will hear. But today, a different tack. Today, a popular Christian hymn offers a brief outline. For, while our understanding is distinctive and we must never loose sight of that, it is also true that as Seventh-day Adventists, our belief in God is in many ways quite similar to the understanding of others.
Let us consider, then, some of the basic elements of Christianity. Yes, our God is big and His gospel can never be described in full in any one hymn or any single sermon. But still we offer up our worship in single hymns and single sermons, one at a time. The infinite God knows, understands, and helps us. Our finitude is no sin. But He is in heaven, we on earth, and our words must, in humility, be few. Then we offer those few words, that each may hear, and add his praise of our Lord.
“Alas, and did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die”
The hymn begins, appropriately, with “alas.” How we should regret the suffering and death of Jesus! Sin was unnecessary; Lucifer’s rebellion need never have been; Adam’s transgression need never have come to pass. When it did, it triggered demonstration of the beauty of God’s character. Like any father or mother, He saw His children endangered. He had given free choice and now, before His creatures had learned well to use it, they had entered into rebellion. Rather than leave them in the hopeless abyss, immediately He embarks on a costly project to save them. We should not take lightly the problem of sin and of salvation. Rather, we should with Isaac Watts exclaim, “Alas!”
Did your Savior bleed? The blood is not just about a legal transaction; blood represents the life. When someone loses enough blood, he dies. One’s blood can be taken from him or given by him. Produced in our bones, the blood carries oxygen, hormones, white blood cells. Its circulation regulates body temperature. Blood is necessary for life.
Blood is first mentioned in Scripture when Cain has murdered Abel. God tells him, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10 ESV). Although Abel is deceased, God still hears him. All that Abel was—his love for animals, his obedience, the unique, special things about his personality, his character—all that Cain was is encompassed symbolically in his blood.
Abel was killed; another human ended his life. When God speaks with Cain, the deed has been done; it is past, completed action. Cain ended his brother’s life and walked away. To God, Abel’s life is ended, and yet, his blood, his whole earthly existence, is presently crying to Him from the ground. With Cain’s murderous act comes a curse. The result of this crime was not that the ground was cursed (that had happened in Genesis 3:17). Now Cain was alienated from the ground (4:11). Cain had done murder, but in doing that he had defiled the land. He was at odds with the creation. Earth was created as a place to live not to die. Death is unnatural.
The next reference to blood comes five chapters later. God tells Noah that humans will now be permitted to eat animals. Again, as in Genesis two, there is a single prohibition: no blood. You have life, you have blood, and God will evaluate that life. You will be held accountable for the way you use that life. In 9:6 murder is at the forefront again: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” Because man is made in God’s image, able to think and do and make moral choices, he is a morally responsible being. His moral aspect is central to him.
When men try to live lives having no reference to the moral aspect, they deny what they are. Humans are designed for moral living. Abel’s life was a moral life. It reflected God’s own glory; it honored the beauty of the selfless divine character. Imitation normally says that the one imitated is valued.
Jesus shed His blood, gave His life, for our salvation. The cross was no mere transaction. Jesus had lived and modeled purity for 33 years. His life was without sin. It cost Him years and years of self-denial.
God hates sin, and the first thing to say about God is not how powerful He is, but how He limits Himself. He has practiced self-denial from the first moment when Lucifer intentionally and with intelligence (premeditation) chose to pursue rebellion. God has intervened in His universe to prevent all the consequences of sin from being activated as they otherwise would have. God has kept rebels alive from the first. He has withheld His wrath against sin, permitting only a fraction of its consequences to be manifest. When Jesus took human flesh and became as human as we are, He was soon seen to be practicing self-limitation. He could choose to follow the inclinations of His degenerated humanity, or deny those inclinations. He chose to deny. It was an illustration of the divine character.
Did your Savior bleed? Yes, He went to the cross for you. He was willing to offer life to everyone who would be willing to receive it. The symbolism of blood is seen again in Leviticus 17:11: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.”
It is the blood that makes atonement. The atonement is made by the life. The blood is the vehicle, the life is the atoning agent. Jesus’ death is actually all about His life. His death reconciles, His life saves (Romans 5:10). Jesus, not us or our lives, makes atonement.
What we would prefer is a bloodless salvation. That is, none of Jesus’ blood shed, and none of ours shed. We don’t like to feel indebted. The Christian is someone who, at least in part, has come to grips with the feeling of indebtedness. When you know that but for Jesus you are lost, you know something of indebtedness.
And it is just as well. Your life has nothing in it, no righteousness, no merit, no virtue in it, with any saving power. As Ellen White said,
The gulf that was made by sin has been spanned by the cross of Calvary. A full, complete ransom has been paid by Jesus, by virtue of which the sinner is pardoned and the justice of the law is maintained.... The best efforts that man in his own strength can make are valueless to meet the holy and just law that he has transgressed; but through faith in Christ he may claim the righteousness of the Son of God as all-sufficient. Christ satisfied the demands of the law in His human nature.... Genuine faith appropriates the righteousness of Christ, and the sinner is made an overcomer with Christ; for he is made a partaker of the divine nature, and thus divinity and humanity are combined (Faith and Works, p. 93).
Yes, your Savior bled. He suffered on the tree. The suffering was real.
Did your sovereign die? We are accustomed to thinking of presidents and prime ministers, not kings. Most of the kings left today are figureheads. But at the time Isaac Watts wrote “At the Cross,” practically every nation was ruled by a king.
God does not run a democracy or a republic. The image chosen by heaven to portray God’s government is that of monarchy. Time was when the king was seen as protector of his subjects, and as owner of all the kingdom. As such, he had a strong stake in managing his kingdom well. His was not a four or possibly eight year run, with a you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours sense towards all the financial contributors who made his campaign for president possible. God does not have to lay-waste to his kingdom by inflating dollars or stripping citizens of their property and redistributing it on often dubious schemes.
In contrast, God works with those things that He considers valuable. What He considers most valuable is you. He gave His most precious gift for you. Jesus died, paid your penalty, suffered in your place, took your stripes. All to heal you. He put at risk all of His kingdom for you. There are occasions in Scripture where a king offers to give as much as half of His kingdom for something. But our Father risked all of His kingdom for you. Jesus is your sovereign Lord. He died for you.
“Would He devote that sacred head for someone such as I?”
To devote is to consecrate, vow, or give. Would Jesus give His life for someone such as I? Again, it is the image of God that is found in man—that is what attracts God’s interest. He wanted to make holy people. He wanted to populate His universe with other persons who would be like-minded beings and free.
Would Jesus be willing to die for you? Just one of you? The answer is found in His one person interview with the woman at the well; in His midnight, one-person audience with Nicodemus, in His answer to the one thief on the cross beside Him who simply asked to be remembered; in Jesus’ healing of the one man laying by the pool of Bethesda; in the call of Jesus through the Holy Spirit for Philip to go and engage in discussion with the one Ethiopian treasurer; and so on. Yes, Jesus would die for just one soul. John 3:16 proves it. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” “Whosoever” means whoever is willing to believe. And whoever is willing to believe means even one who is willing.
Romans 5:6-8 reminds us of what ones “such as I” are: “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
When? “While we were still sinners.” That is, while we were rebels, before we had responded to, or even seen God’s grace, before we had tasted and seen that the Lord is good, before we made any move toward Him, He made a move toward us. Jesus died to make salvation possible for a crew of rebels.
“At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light.”
The chorus points to the cross, for it is at the cross that the hymn writer first sees the light. The cross is the place where life and death meet. The first sacrifice was Jesus, the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). The first symbolic offering must have happened at Genesis 3:21. God provided skins to the two naked sinners, and these skins presumably came from two animals in the garden of Eden. Death had silenced the joy of the garden.
In Genesis the burnt offering marked reconciliation, in the Hebrews wilderness journey out of Egypt, the daily sanctuary service was marked by an array of offerings pointing forward to Christ. Twelve-hundred years later, Jesus Himself saw the light in the sacrifice of the Lamb at passover. Here is the description of what passed in His mind as He beheld:
He saw the white-robed priests performing their solemn ministry. He beheld the bleeding victim upon the altar of sacrifice. With the worshipers He bowed in prayer, while the cloud of incense ascended before God. He witnessed the impressive rites of the paschal service. Day by day He saw their meaning more clearly. Every act seemed to be bound up with His own life. New impulses were awakening within Him. Silent and absorbed, He seemed to be studying out a great problem. The mystery of His mission was opening to the Saviour (The Desire of Ages, p. 78).
Jesus had watched intently, and His future opened to Him. He saw more deeply. In this sense, the 12 year old Jesus Himself “saw the light” at the cross. Listen:
As His mission had opened to Jesus in the temple, He shrank from contact with the multitude. He wished to return from Jerusalem in quietness, with those who knew the secret of His life. By the paschal service, God was seeking to call His people away from their worldly cares, and to remind them of His wonderful work in their deliverance from Egypt. In this work He desired them to see a promise of deliverance from sin. As the blood of the slain lamb sheltered the homes of Israel, so the blood of Christ was to save their souls; but they could be saved through Christ only as by faith they should make His life their own. There was virtue in the symbolic service only as it directed the worshipers to Christ as their personal Saviour. God desired that they should be led to prayerful study and meditation in regard to Christ's mission (The Desire of Ages, p. 82).
The gospel of Mark tells how when Jesus died on the cross, the rough Roman soldier was persuaded of His identity.
And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God (Mark 15:37-39).
Such had Jesus Himself predicted before:
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up (John 3:14).
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me (John 12:32).
Truly then, it is at the cross where we see the light.
“And the burden of my heart rolled away”
What is the burden of our hearts? It is the emptiness that is there in consequence of our sin. It is our sense of condemnation from the evil that we have done, the certainty of sure gloom that hangs over us, for one way or another deep down inside we know that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). We have not only come short of God’s glory, but more, we have identified with the great rebel. We have followed Satan in his rebellion, and made decisions for self. Our conscience condemns us, and thank God for our conscience. We have broken God’s law, but what that really is, is that in so doing, we have disagreed with selflessness and agreed with selfishness. We have disagreed with God’s character and concurred with Satan’s. And we know that it is wrong.
Our hearts are dangerous. Self-perception is ever skewed. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Or hear the English Standard Version: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Even if we cannot trust our self-perception, we still feel the sense of mental confusion, of wrongness, or sickness. It is peace with God that we must have, and some have come to the place where they truly desire it. Others aren’t clear yet. They have not come to themselves (Luke 15:17). We are burdened. Jesus understood.
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28).
Whether they know it or not, all are weary and heavy-laden. All are weighed down with burdens that only Christ can remove. The heaviest burden that we bear is the burden of sin” (The Desire of Ages, p. 328).
Sin is our burden; and with sin we feel guilt. This burden Jesus came to remove. Notice that Jesus did not come to relieve us of responsibility, or to strip from us that which we refuse to surrender. He came to give deliverance to the captives that are willing to be delivered. All may return to God but not all are willing to return. All may have the burden removed, but not all will have it so.
“It was there by faith I received my sight”
God has given us the faculty of faith. Even small faith is power. In his hymn, Watts puts the singer in the role of a blind man who receives his sight. Until we see Christ, we are all blind men walking. We move along rapidly in the darkness, spiraling toward we know not what. It is at the cross that sight comes, or again, it is at the cross where we at last see something of God’s character. Why would a pure being, the very source of love authentic, die for me? It makes every person who sees it halt. You have to think about the question. You look. And if you can loosen your hands from sin, you live. if you can see even a small ray of light at the cross, God will give more.
But at the cross you also must exercise faith. As we said, we do not like to be indebted to anyone. We do not prefer to admit that we need anyone or anything. We would rather build a mighty cathedral or do some mighty work, or, proclaim by voice or pen some mighty, mighty message—we would rather do any or all of those things, before we would be willing to surrender.
Without personal surrender none of that will matter. And when we have surrendered, none of that will save us. Jesus must be our personal Savior. He dies for my sins. He offers His righteousness for my evil. I recognize my weakness; He gives me His strength. He takes the stripes meant for me. And in becoming my Savior He dies. I am healed.
It is not beyond our capacity to understand intellectually, but without the grace of God, without His energizing our trembling, tiny faith, our stubbornness will rise up and blockade the heart so that Jesus may not enter. If self is all alive then the will will interpose. Beware: self would prefer to do spiritual suicide before it would back down. Your heart needs a supernatural touch. God will touch, do not doubt that. But when He does, will you resist, or lay hold? He pleads in Isaiah:
Let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; and he shall make peace with me (Isaiah 27:5).
There by faith we receive our sight; we become sighted. The Great Controversy vista opens up. The light that illumines it all is shining bright from calvary.
“And now I am happy all the day”
This closing line sounds trite. After receiving Jesus, now we are happy all day long. Does this send the right signal? Is the Christian happy all the day? Are you happy all the day?
Watts was a staunch believer in election; he was both, a dissenter and a deeply-died Calvinist. This means that, in his view, the elect were predestined by God to be the elect and that they could not be lost. To see meant to see that you were predestined to be saved, to see that you were one of the elect. You could not be lost. You would be in the kingdom and there was no disputing it. It is in this light that we read Watts’ line, “And now I am happy all the day.”
Our reading of the Scriptures is not the same. God wants all to be saved but He will not force one to be saved. We are happy that God is able to finish the work that He has begun in us (Philippians 1:6), and that salvation is possible for us. We are happy that our God respects the free will He has given. We know that God is not waiting for opportunity to destroy but rather that He says, “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).
Christians have brain chemistry as every other human does. We are not always “happy” in the emotional sense. I do not think that Watts intended us to understand his meaning as only emotional. He intended “happy” in the sense that he knew beyond doubt always that he was among the elect and his eternal home was assured. However, the flip side of this view of election is to feel oneself doomed, lost, every day, to believe that while God has predetermined some to eternal life, that He has also predetermined some to damnation—and to understand that you must be one of these unfortunate ones. Yes, there is a downside to Watts’ view of election. Not everyone will feel certain of their election. Some will see the evil in themselves and become certain that they are elected to damnation.
Someone will say then that the Adventist cannot “be happy all the day” like Isaac Watts because he cannot be assured of salvation like Watts. Some see this as a defect or a fault in our theology. Actually, we can have a present assurance of salvation, we can know that, right now, we are right with God. But even that is not held forth as the chief motivation for the Christian. Remember, our view is different from Watts. So we have this “now I am happy all the day” line. What shall we make of it?
Let us ask a question. Which is more satisfying: (1) I will be “saved” whether I want to be or not, whether I have wicked thoughts or spiritual, whether my life testifies for God or for Satan. Or, (2) God who saves me is God who heals me. While I will not be in the kingdom because of any righteous works that have appeared in my life, my character will testify to what God is like before a world, even a universe, wanting to know whether God can be just and also justify—make righteous—fallen humans (Romans 3:26).
In other words, we can take the scripted view—I am in the kingdom and I may as well go along for the ride, or, I am a free agent and God is granting me opportunity to be part of the solution to the sin problem. I can take no comfort in the first idea because it has nothing for me but one more crowded seat on the bus to heaven. If I am to be in the kingdom without any choice on my part, then so will other wicked people be in this new world without any choice on their part. God will have to remove our free will, take away that crucial aspect of image of God in us, dehumanize us, so that we can live together robotically in His robot world. That is not a thought that would lead me or anyone I know to be “happy all the day.”
In contrast, if at the cross I see the light that Jesus died to save me by regenerating me, by sending His Holy Spirit to me, that His suffering for me makes it possible for Him to heal me, that He calls me to be released from captivity, to choose righteousness, and to consent with Him to the eradication of sin from His universe, that puts me in a very different place vastly more satisfying than the bus-ride view. That view is that God would labor with me to help me return to true humanity—that view will lead me to be impressed by His grace all the day, or in Watts’ language, to be “happy all the day.” Indeed, as much more satisfying as is our view, as much happier all the day we will be!
Conclusion
For 300 years Isaac Watts’ classic hymn “At the cross” has been a comfort and a help to believers in Christ. Because of distinctive places in history and in the development of Christian thought, the various Christian groups offer distinct emphases. Our views are not in all respects mutually compatible. But that does not mean that we do not share much of the Christian story in common with each other. We do. We can rejoice with others and with them affirm that it is “at the cross” where we too see the light. Seventh-day Adventists look to the cross, and would not have it any other way.
Alas, our Savior bled, our Sovereign died, He devoted His sacred head for such as us. At His cross we see His light. Jesus takes away our burden of sin. He brings to life our faculty of faith, He gives us sight, and He offers a satisfying resolution to the sin problem that respects the humanity He has given us. He is our King. Hallelujah! GCO
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