Jesus and The Cross. Why?

In human relationships, forgiveness always is connected to equality. When I forgive someone, I choose to be equal with them. This is because I have decided that I will treat them as a fellow human being, who like me, is both truly sinful and truly valuable. They become my equal. When I forgive them, I have allowed them to have truly harm me - thus I take on their sin - revealing what remains - their value. It neither negates the sin, nor downplays the value of the offender. It minimizes nothing and it elevates everything. It elevates sin. It also elevates the courage, compassion, and pain of the one who forgives and it elevates the tremendous value of the one who has been forgiven.

This is the same with the cross. God never self-protects. He lets us wound Him. He takes on our sin and He sobs and carries deep pain. Do you really believe that when you harm someone in word or deed that it is really just him or her whom you harm? To harm a child is to harm their father or mother. To harm a human being is to harm the One who gave them life.

At the cross, God meets us as an equal. He has become every human being we have ever harmed in word or deed, because truly our harm went straight through them and directly to Him at the cross. God somehow entails every aspect of being human while retaining every aspect of being God. His perfect love brings Him to the point that He is unable to protect Himself from harm, and this is why at the cross He is completely and utterly wounded by us.

In this moment - he meets us as an equal - because although He is more than capable of protecting Himself from us, He allows Himself to be fully harmed by us. Yet, He declares our tremendous value to Him by saying, “I will not hold this against you, but you must realize it costs me everything. You have utterly harmed me. But, you must also understand, I truly I love you and I will never hold it against you.”

To the non-Christian, the cross might seem a little weird or metaphorical, but I don’t believe it can be anything but a “historically-true myth” as J.R.R. Tolkien once explained to his friend C.S. Lewis. I don’t believe it can be anything but true because in His humanity at the cross, God says, “I am your equal. I refuse to self-protect. I will let you wound me and suffer all the consequences of your sin to the fullest extent and it will be utterly painful, but in the end, after all the wounding and pain, I will look up at you and say ‘It is finished’. All the pain will die away and I will feel complete peace and know nothing but your value.”

There are more aspects to the cross, but this is one of them.