The story is told of love illustrated on a plaque in a children's home in Michigan, for there on the chapel wall of what is called Eagle Village, a treatment center for boys located near Hershey, Michigan, there hang the portraits of two 12-year-old boys. One of them is blonde-haired, Rick, and the other is a youngster, a black youngster, whose name was Rosie. The pictures hanging on the wall recall an incident of several years ago now.
Some of the boys from Eagle Village were on a canoe expedition on Lake Superior. They were pulled ashore to make camp for the night, but Rosie spotted something floating there still in the water and pushed off in a canoe to go get it. The wind was blowing strongly, and it did not take long for the winds to blow him away from the shore altogether. The staff that was sponsoring the trip quickly realized the peril that Rosie was in and started off in two canoes to go out and rescue him.
Rick, who happened to be Rosie's best friend, also saw what was taking place and jumped in one of the canoes to try to help his friend who was in danger. So there were three canoes out on Lake Superior as evening was coming and the wind was blowing. In fact, the wind picked up, and it was not long before all three of the canoes being helplessly tossed about were capsized.
Miraculously, despite the frigid waters, the staff members all made it back to shore, but Rick and Rosie were both lost to the depths of Lake Superior. In their memory, there hangs a plaque between their pictures, and on the plaque it says this, To Rick, who loved enough to give his life for another. To Rosie, who was loved enough to have another pay that price. It seems to me that that illustration and the words on the plaque help us to grasp the symbolism of the cross.
For the cross stands for one who loved enough to give his life for others, and it stands as a testimony that there were those who were loved enough to have another pay that price. So powerful is the message and the symbolism of the cross that it has been transformed from a grotesque reminder of execution in the ancient world to a wondrous sign of deepest love and self-sacrifice. For it was on that old rugged cross that the Son of God hung and died.
Thousands of times people died on crosses in the ancient world, but it was that one person who died who caused the cross to be transformed in its symbolism. The significance of the cross of Jesus Christ might be summarized in three legal concepts that the Bible wraps up in the work of the cross. The first place the cross signifies a transaction that is accomplished. A transaction that is accomplished.
Jesus Himself said, the Son of Man has come to give His life a ransom, a ransom on the behalf of many. Matthew 20, 28. The Bible tells us that humanity is in slavery to sin. We like to think of ourselves as being free, but in fact we are enslaved to our own sinful lusts. We are not free. We are in bondage. Liberation from slavery demands a price, a purchase price. Things must be bought in order to be freed. That is exactly why Jesus died. That is the meaning of the cross.
For on the cross He paid a redemption price for us. The price of our redemption was His death, and by His death the shedding of His blood. That is why the cry from the cross, it is finished, is so very special to us. Those three words come out of one word in the language of the New Testament, tetelestai. And what it means, it is finished, what it means is the price has been paid. The purchase price for our freedom was laid down by the Son of God.
Not only was the price laid down, but our freedom was given to us. We have now been released from the consequences of our slavery to sin. The New Testament further puts it this way in Titus 2, 14. He gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from every lawless deed. Or as Paul writes to the Ephesians in Ephesians 1, 7, in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace.
Go rich in grace was the Son of God that He came into the world and on the cross paid out of His riches the price for our forgiveness and our redemption from sin. Slavery is such a foreign concept to us in the 1990s that we have a hard time understanding and grasping in our emotions what it means to be freed. But if any of you saw the Civil War series on PBS in recent weeks, perhaps you were able to be reminded of the meaning of liberation, of emancipation, being set free from lifetime bondage.
That is what Jesus Christ accomplished for us at the cross. When we think of the significance of the cross of Jesus Christ, we must remember that it signifies a transaction that is accomplished. A price has been put down for slaves. Those slaves have been purchased from their original owner and now set free. But the cross also signifies justice that is satisfied, justice that is satisfied. For you see, human sin is not merely something that is not very nice, that is troublesome.
Human sin is an offense against a holy God. While our sin has consequences for ourselves and our relationships to other people, the primary direction of sin is upward. It is an offense against a holy and righteous Creator. And because He is holy and righteous, He must respond to sin with justice, and He did. And the penalty of sin is death. The soul that sins, it shall die, God said. The wages of sin is death. Death is the just penalty for human sin. God declared it so as the righteous judge.
But the wonderful thing is that God who laid down the penalty for sin and who proclaimed this as justice is the same God who came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ to pay for us that very penalty that He established. What a wondrous thing is this work of the cross. For now the very God who exacted the penalty of death in His holiness and justice is the God who came in grace and in mercy and in love that He might satisfy His own justice by the death of His Son.
That is why the death of Christ is called in Bible terminology propitiation, a big word that simply means God is satisfied. His justice has been satisfied. What it means is that people do not have to die and go to hell to pay for their own sin. They may and they will if they insist. But God has paid the penalty for us and has satisfied His own justice. This last week I visited in a prison in Rochester.
If you've ever been in a prison you know the feeling when those doors slam shut behind you and suddenly you're locked in from the rest of the world. As I saw some of those who are residents there at that prison, they look just like me and you. They look like our next door neighbor. The only problem is they're criminals. They have committed some crime for which they have been found guilty and they are incarcerated in that place by the federal government until justice has been satisfied.
The fact is that in this world we are all the criminals. We have offended the law of God and God who is just and who is holy declares punishment upon sinners, the punishment of death, not merely physical death but eternal and spiritual death as well in hell. How wonderful is our God that seeing us whom He loves in such peril under His justice, He came into the world and satisfied His own justice on our behalf through the death of His Son. He Himself says the Apostle John.
Christ Himself is the propitiation, the satisfaction for our sins. Paul says regarding Christ, whom God set forth publicly as a propitiation. The writer of Hebrews says it this way, Christ had to be made like His brethren in all things, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
So the cross of Jesus Christ signifies not only a transaction that's accomplished, the price has been paid, but justice that's been satisfied. And finally, the cross of Jesus Christ signifies a separation that has been bridged. Sin is a great separator. It alienates us from God. It alienates us from one another. It alienates us from the creation of God around us. Sin is a great separator. Through the death of His Son, God has provided that that separation could be bridged.
He has made it possible for us to be saved by the death of His Son. What Jesus did on the cross provides the answer and the only answer to the alienation that exists between God, our Creator, and we as creation fallen in sin. Paul says it this way in 2 Corinthians 5 19, Christ, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. And in Colossians he says, it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Christ and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself.
Having made peace through the blood of His cross. So when you and I think of the cross, we see the legal work of the cross. The legal work of the cross, it is a business transaction where the price is paid for a slave that he might be purchased and set free. It is a legal judicial transaction where the price of justice has been satisfied so that the law breaker, the criminal, can be set free from his penalty. It is a personal transaction.
For by the death of Jesus Christ, the relationship between the sinner and God is regulated and there is the possibility of peace. If we observe this Good Friday merely for its facts, its history, and we miss the personal meaning of it, then we have lost the heart of what it is all about. The meaning of Good Friday is that Jesus died for us. Rembrandt apparently understood this truth. One of his great paintings is that of the crucifixion.
As you look at the painting, first your attention is drawn to the dying Savior in the middle of the picture. And then you see the crowd around Him there at the cross with various attitudes and actions as they were putting Him to death. But finally your eyes stray to the side of this painting and there in the shadow you see a painting of Rembrandt himself. He put himself in the painting as he recognized that his sins had helped to nail Jesus to the cross.
Friend the cross stands for one who loved enough to give his life for others. And it stands as a testimony that there are those who have been loved enough to have another pay that price for them. How do we respond to that love? Faith, love, devotion is the only proper response. Giving our hearts to Jesus Christ, repenting of our sin, and trusting Him alone as our Savior.
But as we recall His death today, as we remember the cross, let us remember that when He died and gave up His Spirit, it was not resignation, it was not defeat, but it was victory. A victory that He proved three days later. He said the Son of Man must suffer, must be put to death, and must rise again on the third day.