Sunday 10 March 2013

The Cross of Christ



Colossians 2:11-15   
 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self-ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ. Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins. Having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Because of the work of the cross our legal standing before God is complete at the moment we are born again.It can have nothing added to it, no matter how obedient or committed to Jesus we become after we are converted. This is because it is given to us purely on the basis of God’s undeserved grace and mercy. It is not something we can earn or deserve. It is received by faith. It involves the total cancellation of our previous legal standing of guilt and condemnation before God the Supreme Ruler and Judge John Stott wrote  'The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it.'