Focusing on the Cross of Christ

“We could not rejoice that there is a God, were there not a Mediator also; one who stands between God and men, to reconcile man to God, and to transact the whole affair of our salvation.” -John Wesley

These words come from John Wesley’s comment on 1 Timothy 2:5 in his Notes Upon the New Testament. The verse reads: “For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

As we’ve now entered Lent, this isn’t a bad place to start. Lent culminates in Easter, but its focus is the way of the cross. We are called at this time to a period of introspection, penance, and honesty.

It was Christ’s work on the cross that ultimately put on full display his role as mediator. As fully human, Christ represents us, all that we bring. As fully God, he is able to accomplish what none of us ever could. We might spend the rest of our lives mining the depth of meaning attached to the cross, for it is on the cross that humanity’s sin, its brokenness, and its depravity met the self-offering love of God himself.

It is also on the cross, that we can see just how corrupt humanity has become and yet at the same time just how far divine intervention is willing to go to save us. The seriousness of sin and the unlimited love of God met there.

In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (the same one that the Wesley brothers knew and used) we see the cross described very clearly. It is on the cross that the Father of his “tender mercy” gave his “only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption.” And what Christ did in that self-offering was to provide “(by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.”

This wasn’t simply our inability to accept the message of Jesus, or a repercussion of political discord. Such an approach is to limit the cross to a certain time and place. In reality, the cross changed everything for all times and in all places. Both justice and mercy collide there. As does the reality of sin and the even greater reality of holy love. The just penalty for our sins is laid on him, who as the sinless, spotless lamb, provides the only means to counter the forces of rebellion, evil, and death.

So as we journey through this season, let us focus on the cross. Easter will come. But the cross must come first. For it is there that we see the depths of sin and the victory of love, once offered for all. The sacrifice was made, the only one that could change the course of history itself. Its power is still available to each and every one of us.

Ryan N. Danker is director of the John Wesley Institute, Washington, DC. This is reposted from a weekly JWI newsletter that can be subscribed tohere.

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