Easter is coming again.
I have been thinking about writing this message of Jesus’ cross for a while.
Jesus, more correctly our Heavenly Father, chose to sacrifice himself for his children’s sins which are humanly impossible to clean. He loves his children so much He cleansed our sin with His own blood. The sermons of Easter have been all about His love, His sacrifice and His resurrection.
Two years ago, in the spring of 2021, I was driving on the bypass near Costco early in the morning. (Ever since it was built, it has made it easy for me to go to my church. I have to go to church to ask for help from my Heavenly Father whenever problems come into my life. So that bypass has been a big blessing for me.) My church had decided to have early morning services every day during the Passion week before Easter. It was the busiest week of my life because I didn’t have enough workers for my shop due to the coronavirus pandemic. So I had to work day and night to make up for the lack of workers. But when my church announced about the early morning service for Easter week during the pandemic somehow I made a commitment to attend that prayer meeting. For three mornings I was the only member to attend the prayer meeting. From Thursday more members showed up and more on Saturday.
I have been thinking about the meaning of the cross and the meaning of the Easter service for a couple of years. I have been questioning the way we celebrate Easter. I felt that something was not right. On the way to my church, it came to me that the most important principle has been missing. What was missing or pushed to a corner was “God’s righteousness and the truth.” A cross is made of two pieces of wood, a vertical one and a horizontal one. Eventually this thought came to me. Those two pieces of wood that make the cross are the horizontal wood of “His love” and the vertical wood of “His righteousness and truth.” The horizontal wood can’t be there without the vertical wood. But how many preachers and churches have been giving the message of His righteousness and the truth on Easter service? Very few. We all talk about love and forgiveness and joy and happiness of his resurrection.
If forgiveness is the reasons for the cross, Jesus didn’t need to go through that agony, If it was because of love and forgiveness, then he could have forgiven everybody at one instant. He is the Almighty One isn’t He? The reason for the cross was God’s righteousness and the holiness of heaven. He loves his children so much and He wants to bring them to His place, but His place is absolutely holy. But none of his children can come to His place because of their sins. Children’s sins can be cleansed only by His own blood. So He chose to sacrifice himself to preserve His absolute righteousness and holiness of Heaven and to bring His beloved children to His house.
Paul wrote in I Corinthians 13:13” And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Because of this, Christians can’t fight with the secular world if they bring out “love” to insist on their ideas and their values. Christians have not been able to recognize the difference between the love in Christ and any love which the world has been talking about. The love on the cross is the love in His righteousness. It is love in truth. We Christians have to stand strong about this, but at the same time we should be patient and loving for the repentance of lost people, the way Jesus has been for us. I wonder if Paul had forgotten to write “in Christ “or “in his righteousness” after the word “love” when he wrote to the Corinthians. Or maybe in that time the Holy Spirit was so strong it did not need to be mentioned.
I am sure that Satan’s most powerful and effective tool to fool Christians is “love.” Love without God’s righteousness and truth leads us to a more sinful world. Satan has been doing a very good job and we are seeing the result of his work today.
Let’s not forget that Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross of the vertical wood of “His righteousness and truth” as well as the horizontal wood of “His abundant love.”
K.S. Lee, Ridgeland, Mississippi
