The
Way of the Cross
"What
Jesus did on the cross is not, therefore, simply an example, of some
general truth either about how people should behave or about what God
is like. The cross only becomes an example, as and when it does,
because it is first an achievement, an accomplishment....
You
see, the achievement of the cross is presented throughout the New
Testament as the pinnacle of the plan whereby the creator God, the God
of Israel, had purposed to save his world. This implies, of
course, that the world is not simply perplexed, needing good advice;
nor simply misguided, needing good leadership; nor simply muddled,
needing good examples. The world, in the early Christian (and
Jewish) analysis, is sick and needs to be healed; it is sinful and
needs to be forgiven; it is under alien lordship, and yearns for the
kingdom of God. Jesus walks the way of the cross as the healer
of the world's ills, the lamb whose death brings forgiveness, the king
coming in his strange kingdom....
When
Jesus walked the way of the cross, he was going to do what no-one else
could do, or would ever need to do again. He was going to do
battle with the forces of evil, and emerge victorious. He was
going to bear our pains and carry our sorrows; to be wounded for our
transgressions and bruised for our iniquities; to defeat death itself
by his death."
N.
T. Wright, The Way of the Lord, pages 96,97.
