**“The Wondrous Cross of Christ”** **By Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones** **“How…

**“The Wondrous Cross of Christ”**

**By Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones**

**“How does this cross save us? That is what you want to know, is it not? Any person who is saved, is saved by the cross of Christ, and to be saved means that your sins are forgiven, that you are reconciled to God. You become a child of God, and you begin to receive His blessing. You have no fear of death or the grave or the judgment. You know you are going to inherit glory. How then does the cross save us? Here is the question of questions. Let the Apostle answer it in his own words here: “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Galatians 6:14).**

**Look at the cross, my friend. Have you ever surveyed this wondrous cross? Look at those three crosses on that little hill called Calvary, outside the city of Jerusalem. Look at the middle cross and at the person who is dying there. Who is he? And the answer is that He is the Lord, which means that he is the Son of God. You remember what He said to Peter at Caesarea Philippi Peter said, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ You are right, Jesus said, ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood has not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven’. I am the Christ of God, Jesus said. It is My Father who has revealed it; this is the truth. Jesus is the Lord of Glory. He is the eternal Son of God. He is the second person in the blessed Holy Trinity. He is God the Son.**

**Why has He died? What is He doing there on the cross? He said, ‘The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many’ (Matthew 20:28). He taught that He had come in order to die. ‘We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels’ – what for? – ‘for the suffering of death . . .’ We see Him now, ‘. . . crowned with glory and honor; that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man’ (Heb. 2:9). My friends, the Son of God is there dying on that cross because He came from heaven unto this world in order to die. That is why He came. He took on human nature in order that He might die. It is not an accident. It is essential.**

**He came because you and I and all mankind are guilty and under the condemnation of a Holy God. ‘For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23). All this nonsense about the good men and the bad men, moral and immoral men. It means nothing in the sight of God. In the sight of God the most respectable non-Christian is as damned and as hopeless as the vilest reprobate and sinner. There is no difference. Respectability does not count with God. It is filthy rags, it is nothing. ‘All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God’. That is one reason why He came.**

**Yes, but then you say, Why can God not forgive this, why does the love of God not forgive a man who says he is sorry and who repents. That question is answered in the Bible. God is holy, God is righteous. He must punish sin. His own holy nature insists upon it and He has told us abundantly that He is going to do so. So here is the problem. Man is a guilty sinner, God is a holy God. How can the two be brought together? The answer is the Cross of Christ.**

**How is it the answer? Let me tell you. I am putting this as plainly and as briefly as I can. The answer is like this. The wages of sin is death. That is God’s own pronouncement. Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. If you go back to the Old Testament, what do you find there? Well, you find a great deal about sacrifices for sin. The people take a bull to the High Priest and he puts his hands upon its head. They then kill the bull, takes its blood and present it before God in the holy place. What are they doing? Well it is God who has told them to do it. But why did He tell them to do it? The answer is that the wages of sin is death and that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.**

**What they were doing, in a picture, was this. By putting their hands on the head of the bull they were, as it were, transferring their sins to the bull. The sins were on the bull. They then killed the bull and presented his blood as an offering. God taught them to do that. They transferred their guilt to the animal and then the animal was killed and his blood was offered. They did that every day in the Temple. They took a lamb, a pure unblemished lamb, they killed it and took the blood. You remember what happened when the children of Israel were taken out of Egypt – the tremendous night when death came and killed all the first born of the Egyptians, but not the first born of the Israelites. Why? Because they had painted the posts and lintels of their doors with blood. They had taken a lamb and they had slain it and then painted the door posts and the lintels with the blood of the lamb. And they were passed by, their sins were not punished and their lives were saved.**

**Jesus Christ, the Son of God, comes. Why has He come? John the Baptist gave the answer when looking at Jesus: ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’. The Lamb of God has come. God has provided His own sacrifice. It is His own Son. The Lamb of God. That is what happened on the Cross at Calvary. God took your sins and mine and He put them on the head of His own Son, and then He smote Him, He punished Him, He killed Him. The wages of sin is death.**

**So what was happening on the cross was that God Himself was laying your sins and mine upon His own dearly beloved Son, and He paid the penalty of our guilt and our transgressions. ‘For He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him’ (2 Cor. 5:21). ‘The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all’ (Isaiah 53:6). That is what the Father did. What did the Son do? He was passive as a lamb, He did not grumble, He did not complain. He took it all upon Him. He surrendered Himself deliberately and freely.**

**That is the gospel. ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave – to that death – His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life’ (John 3:16). ‘Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes you were healed’ (1 Peter 2:24). That is why it happened, that is the meaning. It is the cross of Christ that saves us by bearing our punishments and by taking our guilt upon Him. God smites Him, and the law of God is satisfied. I am dead to the law through the law. The law has been carried out. Carried out upon Him, so I am free. ‘There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 8:1).**

**‘For God so loved the world, that He gave . . .’; ‘the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.’ This is the preaching of the cross. It is the cross that saves me. What am I to do? I have nothing to do but to believe this message. Nothing else. Do not tell me you are going to live a better life. You have not seen the truth if you say that. ‘Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this Man (Jesus Christ) is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by Him all that believe are justified by the law of Moses’ (Acts 13:38-39).**

**I do not care who you are, because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. I do not care what particular form your sin takes. They can be very respectable or they can be heinous, vile, foul, filthy. It does not matter, thank God. But what I have authority to tell you is this. Though you may be the vilest man or woman ever known, and though you may until this moment have lived your life in the gutters and the brothels of sin in every shape and form, I say this to you: be it known unto you that through this Man, this Lord Jesus Christ, is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin. And by Him all who believe, you included, are at this moment justified entirely and completely from everything you have ever done – if you believe that this is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and that He died there on the cross, for your sins and to bear your punishment. If you believe that, and thank Him for it, and rely utterly only upon Him and what He has done, I tell you, in the name of God, all your sins are blotted out completely, as if you never sinned in your life, and His righteousness is put on you and God sees you perfect in His Son.**

**That is the message of the cross, that is Christian preaching, that it is our Lord who saves us, by dying on the cross, and that nothing else can save us, but that can save whosoever believes in Him. My friends, that is why the Apostle glories in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. He had a message that he could take throughout the world, to the blackest and the vilest and the most hopeless of men and, equally to the respectable and all the good and the nice and the kind. He could take it to all people. And he had the same message for them all, that they were all lost and dead, but that whosoever believed in this message was immediately justified.**

**Do you want to hear more about the cross of Christ? I am going on with this great theme, and I am going to test you. If you have even a glimpse into this truth you will want to hear more about it. But if you do not want to hear more about it, let me warn you in the words of the Apostle. ‘Beware, therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets, behold, you despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which in you shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you’ (Acts 13:41). Tell me, do you glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ? Would you willingly and gladly spend all your days in singing the praise of this Son of God who loved you and gave Himself for you? Let us examine ourselves. Let every man and woman answer for himself and for herself.**

**Let us, then, finish with the answer which Charles Wesley gave 200 years ago:**

**And can it be that I should gain**

**An interest in the Savior’s blood!**

**Died He for me who caused His pain?**

**For me, who Him to death pursued?**

**Amazing love! How can it be**

**That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me!”**