The Tapestry Of The Cross

It’s common for people to focus on Jesus standing in place of our punishment. The Bible talks about the substitution, but there are others. Jesus created a tapestry on the cross that we often miss, because we focus on one part of the cross and Jesus.

These are all mentioned in the Bible. They are facets of the atonement and they all fit together.

1. Substitution

Jesus stands in our place, so that as Martin Luther King put it the “Great Exchange,” we gain His righteousness while He takes our sin. This is our cross to bear, our rightful death, and He takes it instead of us.

Jesus died so we don’t have to, even though our sin causes death. This is found in Isaiah 53:6, 1 Peter 2:24, and 2 Corinthians 5:21

2. Propitiation

This is often lumped together with substitution but it’s a distinctly different thing. It means the turning aside of wrath. Jesus’s death turns aside the wrath of God so that His anger is not poured out at those who trust in Jesus’s death.

Therefore, God’s wrath is not poured out against any of us who believe even though He is just and we deserve it. This is found in Romans 3:35, 1 John 4:10.

3. Expiation

Jesus cleanses our filth so that our sin is taken far away from us. If we think of the second goat (the scapegoat) on the “Day of Atonement” or Yom Kippur who is sent out into the wilderness to be eaten by goat demons. He is identified with the people’s sin and cast out of the camp with their uncleanliness on him. Jesus cleanses us not just from the penalty of sin but from its pollution, sending it far away.

Even though of sins make us filthy, Jesus cleanses us. This is found in 1 John 1:7, Leviticus 16.

4. Ransom

Jesus paid the price for our sin. He paid the price to the Father.

We are free from the price of our sin. This is found in Matthew 20:28, Colossians 2:14.

5. Redemption

Some church teachers or preachers use the example of redemption using slave markets and say that being redeemed is like being bought from slavery. I think this is half right, but the referent can be wrong. If we look at Exodus. God didn’t buy Pharaoh off, He crushed Him under the weight of the Red Sea. Jesus forcibly brings us from the oppression of this world’s snake-king into a promised land.

We are set free from our bondage to sin. This is the narrative of the whole Bible. Read Galatians 3:13, and Exodus 6:6.

6. Reconciliation

This is the classic “bridge to life” analogy. If we follow Jesus, we are no longer enemies of God but we are at peace. Our warfare with heaven has ended. And more than that we are given the greatest love, the love of the age to come. Jesus declares us as friends.

We can have a relationship with God despite our sin. This is found in 2 Corinthians 5:18, John 15.

7. Sacrifice

The Cross acts like the Levitical sacrifice of Purification, Ascension, and the Peace Offering. We are made Holy, our sin is covered, and we are lifted to the heavens, and a table is laid in the Lord’s Supper with the meat of the sacrifice.

Jesus takes us to the Father and feeds us a meal. This is found in Hebrews 9:13-14, and Leviticus.

8. Recapitulation

This is the climax of the Cross. The Resurrection, Ascension and the Gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus consciously re-done Adam’s failure at the tree in the Garden, and being spiritually killed on wisdoms tree so that we will have access to the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

9. Demonstration

Jesus’s death is a demonstration of God’s justice. This is found in Romans 3:24-25, Romans 5:8, 1 Corinthians 1:22-25, and 1 Timothy 1:15-16. It is in the death of Jesus, that we discover who God is.

10. Example

Jesus’s death is an example of how we are supposed to live, self-forgetfully and self-sacrificially. Because some people have taught that Jesus’s death was only an example, others scoff at it. But, it’s a Biblical idea, ad we look at God dying for us, we can learn who God is and who we can turn to.

We are called to live like Jesus. 1 John 3:16, 1 Peter 2:21.

11. Victory

Jesus conquered death. Death is dead in the death of the living. He has wrestled the keys of hell from the enemy’s cold hands and now rules over death. Satan, sin, and death died on the Cross and Jesus won.

Satan was defeated in the way Zechariah 3:1-4 described it. The true accusations of the accuser are made to be false because Jesus stood in our place on the Cross. Found in Colossians 2:15, Genesis 3:15.

12. The Gift

The Cross was not required by the laws of God had set to govern the universe. No one forced Him to do it. Jesus chose to freely offer Himself in our place. He hung in the air, arms wide outstretched to embrace the world. Found in Isaiah 53:10, Galatians 2:20

God loves us. And that’s good news.

“My life is but a weaving Between God and me. I cannot choose the colors He weaves steadily. Oftentimes times He weaves sorrow. And in my foolish pride forget He sees the upper and I the underside. Not until the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly will God unroll the canvas and reveal the reason why” -Life is but a weaving by Corrie Ten Boom.

Where we only see the messy underside God sees the beautiful finished pattern on the top.