The Meaning

What is meant by the Cross of Christ? There are several phrases which mean about the same thing. “The death of Christ,” “the blood of Christ,” “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,” “Christ and Him crucified “... each has in the heart of it a definition of what the Cross of Christ means.

 

Then, if you will put together some of the great words which occur in the writings of the Apostle Paul, you find an unfolding of this heart meaning. The word “propitiation,” which suggests the justice and holiness of God; His love making propitiation to His justice: not His demanding of another that propitiation shall be made to Him, but love furnishing what justice and holiness demand.

 

“Reconciliation,” which is the manward side of it.  Be ye reconciled to God comes through the Cross of Christ. “Redemption,” Redeemed not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. “Justification,” which has in it the accounting of a man as innocent.  He began before the Fall in a state of innocence, and justification is away beyond anything that a human court of justice ever realizes. It is putting the sinner in the condition before God as if he had never sinned at all. It is giving him a standing in the merit of Jesus Christ of absolute innocence before God.

It is all summed up in the word used over eighty times in the Old Testament, and just once in the English version of the New, “ATONEMENT.” At-one-ment really defines the fruitage of it. It brings us into harmony with God, makes us one with Him.

[A. C. Dixon]

 

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Philippians 2:5-8 ... Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:  Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:  And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

 

 

 

Hebrews 13:12-13 ... Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.

 

 

Romans 5:11 ... And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.❤