Good Friday – the day Christians focus on Jesus’s death on the cross. It is right for us to remember and reflect on Jesus’s death on the cross. There is great value in doing so. It seems to me, however, that in our thinking about the cross, we get it wrong. Think with me.
Our default, unconscious way of thinking is oriented around merit – what I call merit-based thinking. It is the way the world (society, culture, family) trained us to think. It is the way the world functions. Merit-based thinking is oriented around earning and deserving. What we receive is determined by what we have done, i.e., what we deserve. Merit-based thinking is deserving-oriented thinking.
Because merit-based thinking is our default way of thinking, it shapes the way we think about Jesus’s death on the cross. We unconsciously view his death through the lens of merit.
This way of thinking understands Jesus’s death in terms of punishment. The wrong that was done, i.e., sin, had to be punished. It also understands Jesus’s death as a substitute for us. He received the punishment we deserved. It was our sin that was being punished. He took our place, dying the death we deserved. This way of understanding the cross views God as an angry God. Our sin wronged God, stirring his anger. The wrong had to be made right. Jesus’s death was the means by which God’s anger (some speak of God’s wrath or God’s righteousness) was appeased. His death was the atonement paid for our sins. In other words, Jesus had to die so God would forgive us. This popular understanding of the cross, shaped by merit-based thinking, is known as substitutionary atonement theory.
This way of understanding the cross makes Jesus’s death about us. His death is the means by which we can be forgiven for our sins. His death opens the door for us to eternal life. Because of his death, we get to go to heaven when we die.
This understanding of the cross, based on merit-based thinking, creates what my major professor called man-centered Christianity. It is all about us. It is an ego-centric form of Christianity – what’s in it for me.
It seems to me this merit-based understanding of the cross misses (or ignores) what Jesus taught about God. It ignores the character of God as well as how God relates to us.
The witness of scripture is that God is merciful and gracious (Exodus 34:6-7; Psalm 103:8; Jonah 4:1-2). Rather than responding to sin with anger and judgment, God is slow to anger. God “does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities,” Psalm 103:10. Rather, God forgives sin – freely, unconditionally, lavishly. The core of God’s character is steadfast, faithful love – love that does not waiver, that does not give up on or abandon us. The writer of 1 John captured this reality when he wrote “God is love,” 1 John 4:8.
Jesus knew God to be merciful and gracious. Thus, he responded with compassion to people who were hurting. Jesus knew God was more willing to forgive than we are to receive forgiveness. Thus, Jesus proclaimed the forgiveness of God to be a gift given freely to any and all. Jesus knew God to be a God of steadfast, faithful love. Thus, he refused to give up on or abandon any.
How might we understand the cross differently if we viewed it through the lens of God’s character rather than through the lens of our ego-centric self-interest with its merit-based thinking?
Viewed through the lens of God’s character, the cross is about God, not us. It is about the steadfast, faithful love of God that never gives up on or abandons us in spite of our sin. The cross portrays how far God’s love will go without abandoning us. The cross proclaims the grace of God that joyfully and freely forgives our sin.
This way of viewing the cross leads to a God-centered Christianity – a Christianity that nurtures a love for God that runs deeper than the love of our own ego-centric selves. Such a love for God leads us to joyfully abandon ourselves to who God is (hallowed be thy name), to eagerly embrace God’s ways (thy will be done), and to wholeheartedly participate in what God is doing in the world (thy kingdom come). This kind of love is what Jesus identified as the greatest commandment. “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’” Matthew 22:37-39. We love God by loving others, particularly the most powerless and vulnerable.
When we love God, we become like God. As we become like God, we love as God loves. We love those whom God loves.
How we view the cross is important. When we make it about us, our what’s-in-it-for-me nature remains essentially unchanged. Our Christianity is about believing the right things so we can go to heaven when we die. When we make it about God, we run the risk of being transformed at the core of our being. We just might fall in love with God – with who God is, with God’s ways, with what God is doing in the world. Our Christianity would then be about loving God by loving others, here, now, on earth as it is in heaven.
How we view the cross is
important.
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