Churches each and every Lord’s Day have the great and heavy task of preaching and teaching God’s Word to His sheep with the sole purpose of ensuring that the sheep hear the voice of their shepherd, Jesus Christ, as He tells us plainly in John 10. However, most churches fail at this as they are mostly preoccupied with preaching self-seeking and aggrandizing things such as health, wealth, and prosperity or how if you are of a certain race or class, everyone else has wronged you, etc.
However, even on the off chance they teach on the cross and how through His death we died to sin and how through His resurrection we are brought to life in Him (Romans 6) the teaching will somehow end in some weird form of self-aggrandizement. This by no small means misses the point entirely.
Missing the Point
Jesus tells us in Matthew 20:28 (repeated in Mark 10:45) that “just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” We see that Jesus came to the world for the purpose of being our ransom. The question obviously becomes to whom and for what does He pay this ransom. First, for what does He pay this ransom and the answer to that as outlined in many Bible verses (1 Peter 2:24; 3:18, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Colossians 2:14) is for sin. Secondly, to whom did He pay this ransom? The devil perhaps, may it never be as the answer is actually to God the Father is this ransom paid:
Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
Romans 5:9-10
and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.
1 Thessalonians 1:10
We see that the Son of Man was the ransom for the wrath of God against us and this raises a new question which is why was He? This is where most preachers/teachers put a full stop thus missing the point entirely and thus most so-called Christians and even true Christians themselves have a very basic understanding of Christ’s work on the Cross and that is He died for our sins. I am even pretty sure that some of you didn’t know till you read this article that He died to satisfy God’s wrath stored for us (Deuteronomy 28:15-68, Isaiah 34 for a better understanding of His Wrath).
However, even when we reach there ‘the why’ question doesn’t go away it still lingers because the question asked by ‘why’ is by what basis/standard is God angry at sinners? To make sense of Christ’s Work on the cross we have to answer this question because without an answer the Cross is a weird oddity in human history but with an answer, it is the greatest gift to mankind because even as 1 Corinthians 1:18 says;
For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God
God, By What Standard?
As Romans 3:23 says, we have all fallen short of the glory of God. Just a few verses earlier in the same chapter that is verses 10-18 we are told the following:
as it is written,
“THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;
THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS,
THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD;
ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS;
THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD,
THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”
“THEIR THROAT IS AN OPEN GRAVE,
WITH THEIR TONGUES THEY KEEP DECEIVING,”
“THE POISON OF ASPS IS UNDER THEIR LIPS”;
“WHOSE MOUTH IS FULL OF CURSING AND BITTERNESS”;
“THEIR FEET ARE SWIFT TO SHED BLOOD,
DESTRUCTION AND MISERY ARE IN THEIR PATHS,
AND THE PATH OF PEACE THEY HAVE NOT KNOWN.”
“THERE IS NO FEAR OF GOD BEFORE THEIR EYES.”
So essentially what we see from these 9 verses is how nothing about us meets the standard that God has set for us and thus as a result we fall short of His glory. The standard of God that makes us fall short is His holiness. The reason God can claim that there is none righteous is that we haven’t followed His command as stipulated in Leviticus 19:2 and reiterated by Peter in 1 Peter 1:15-16 and that is to be holy as He is holy.
Holiness, the Discarded Doctrine.
Many will be quick to say that no we actually know that, it is not as if you are telling us something new so I can’t understand why you would say that it is a discarded doctrine. To that I say that you are actually right, I am not telling you something new however the version of God’s Holiness that most people are presented with is so minute that it wouldn’t be shocking if most people render it insignificant. The reason I know this is because of not only my reflections but also a conversation I once had in which I said that the main reason for the deterioration of the church is the lack of immediacy and urgency when it comes to preaching the holiness of God. After this conversation, the people I was conversing with told me that they had never heard the holiness of God emphasized in the way I did to them and all I did was mainly recite verses to them with some commentary on top.
So, when you hear that it becomes a glaring gap as it is completely antithetical to the way the Bible treats the holiness of God. This is a word that appears more than 600 times in the Good Book. It is the only attribute of God that is given emphasis to the 3rd degree as the Jews used to back in the day in the same way we say great, greater, greatest (Isaiah 6:3, Revelation 4:8). It was God’s holiness that made Moses cower in fear at the sight of the burning bush (Exodus 3:3-6). It is of the same holiness that God said to Moses that he couldn’t see His face and live, but could only see His back and he still had to be veiled (Exodus 33:20-23) and even veiled His face shone so brightly that the Israelites were afraid of him (Exodus 34:30)
The same holiness made Isaiah curse himself when he only saw but a glimpse of it in Isaiah 6:1-5. Consider this for a second Isaiah was a Prophet of the Lord and one of the most if not the most righteous man of his day and yet when he saw and felt the glory of God which is the image of His holiness, he couldn’t help but curse himself for as he himself says in verse 5 he was a man of unclean lips. The same was true of Moses during his call in Exodus 3 and the same was true of Habakkuk in Habakkuk 3:16, as throughout the chapter before then Habakkuk was asking questions about His wrath, anger, and justice and thus when God revealed Himself to him it was enough to make his inward parts churn and tremble and essentially for decay to enter his bones.
The question now becomes have you been taught of his holiness like this, do you now see how high of a command to be holy just as He is, becomes? If men like Moses, Isaiah, and Habakkuk all trembled at the glimpse of His holiness who are you to think you can simply discard it when everything that we do in our lives is meant to lead to it?
It makes the Cross even More Beautiful
To finish off, I haven’t even touched the New Testament in regards to men like Peter, Paul & John just to name a few as this is God willing but an introduction to the journey, I want us to take together this year and that is one to understand the holiness of God and why understanding it isn’t optional if you want to have a fruitful life in God through Christ.
However, I hope that even this slight introduction has made you by God’s grace appreciate the work of His Son on the cross even more and made it even more beautiful showing you that God in the person of His Son chose to fulfill the command you couldn’t fulfill to be holy as He is by not only dying on the cross but also living the life that by no means could we live and thus as we are considered holy because He is and thus unlike Moses, Isaiah, and Habakkuk and many more we can approach thy throne of grace with confidence as it isn’t our confidence but His (Hebrews 4:15-16). May that fill you with absolute joy as we endeavor on this journey together. Be blessed and Shalom.
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