This message is about the power of the cross to save sinners
“It doesn’t matter what you put your faith in as long as you’ve got faith.” Let me say that again; “it doesn’t matter what you put your faith in as long as you’ve got faith.” Forty-two percent of people like us would agree with that statement according to Barna research.
That “us” isn’t merely Americans. It’s not merely American Christians. Forty-two percent of American, Bible-believing, saved by grace through faith alone, Christians trained in an apparently biblical worldview believe that it doesn’t matter what you put your faith in as long as you’ve got faith. So, forty-two percent of people just like us.
How does that happen? Well, if you think it’s faith that saves, it’s pretty easy to get there. After all, doesn’t it seem narrow for God to punish people who reach out in faith but in the wrong direction? Think of it this way: imagine a girl drowning in a pond. She’s got her goggles pulled into her eyes at an angle so she can’t see. She’s thrashing around calling for mommy. Her mother rushes into the water and holds out her hand. If her daughter happens to grab her hand, she’ll be saved. If not, well at least that mother made salvation available to the girl. Requiring people to put their faith in exact right place is like that. Once you think it’s faith that saves, it’s pretty easy to wind up there.
That is a compelling argument, but that’s not how it works at all. It’s not really faith that saves. It’s the cross. That’s the claim of this sermon: the cross saves.
We will study this in two points. First: the power of the cross. Second: nothing but the cross.
First: the power of the cross. This is our third week in the doctrines of grace. We’ve seen that by nature, we are hopelessly rebellious. We will not yield the throne of our lives to God, and we can’t because sin has taken that throne. That’s Romans 8:7-8, “The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.” Since no heart would come to Him, God softened some rather than leaving them in their hardness. Grace is His choice.
This morning we see how He made good on that choice. This morning we see how He softens hearts so they happily choose to come to Him. This morning we see where Christ pushes sin off the throne of the human heart and sits down. This morning we see the cross. You’ll see that the cross did and does much more than commonly thought.
The cross didn’t merely make salvation possible for humanity. That’s the common perception. No, the cross saved all who would ever be saved then and there. It actually brings them to God. “Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God,” as Peter put it.
Jesus knew exactly who he was dying for as he went to the cross. “I know my sheep…” Jesus said, “and I lay down my life for the sheep.” The cross sealed the deal for specific souls. As the song in Revelation goes, “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.” They already belonged to Jesus at the cross. Their being born again—my being born again—was in the bag.
Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that some people might come to God. No, he died to give unrighteous people righteous hearts so that they would come to God. ‘“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed,”’ as Peter put it. “God made [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” as Paul put it. The cross is the place of the great exchange—our sin for his righteousness. Our heart of stone out. Holy Spirit in. The cross makes that happen.
Jesus didn’t head to the cross hoping that some savvy souls might figure out what he was up to, come to believe that their sins could be forgiven by this sacrifice, and then spread that message. His death secured not just forgiveness but also faith. He may have meant more when he said, “it is finished,” than you thought.
Paul didn’t consider his coming to faith as the moment of his salvation. He thought it was the cross. “I have been crucified with Christ,” he said, “and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” That’s the power of the cross having its way with him—heart of stone out, Holy Spirit in, creating faith. “The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
That’s the work of the cross. As the hymn puts it, “lord, now indeed I find thy power and thine alone, can change the leper’s spots and melt the heart of stone. Jesus paid it all; all to him I owe; sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow.”
That’s worked out in time, but it’s all secured at the cross. The Father chose to soften certain hard hearts because otherwise no one would ever come to him. The Son laid down his lie to secure forgiveness and faith for his sheep. The Spirit applies this forgiveness and gives this faith through the new birth when He chooses as we’ll study next week. That’s how Peter described born again people. He called them, “those who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood.”
This is what is called definite atonement. Atonement is the process of bringing sinful people and a holy God back together—at one. At-one-ment—atonement. You see the word used in the sacrificial system of the Old Testament; “the priest will make atonement for the community, and they will be forgiven.” Those sacrifices pointed to the true sacrifice that made the reconciliation happen. The New Testament says that Jesus’ cross is the sacrifice that makes it happen. “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith.”
The cross is sufficient for every step necessary to pull a man completely out of sin. “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world,” as Paul put it. The cross is the moment of salvation history. “When I am lifted up, I will draw all to myself,” as Jesus said.
But not everyone comes, right? True, it’s those who are drawn who come. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them,” said Jesus, and “all those the Father gives me will come to me.” “When I am lifted up, I will draw all to myself.” This doctrine is also called “limited atonement” because God has chosen to reconcile every one of us irreconcilable sinners to Himself. He hasn’t chosen to soften every resistant heart. “It was God’s will that Christ through the blood of the cross should effectively redeem from every people, tribe, nation, and language all those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation and given to him by the Father; that Christ should grant them faith (which, like the Holy Spirit’s other saving gifts, he acquired for them by his death),” as Article 8 puts it.
The alternative is either universalism, which makes sin meaningless and is nowhere supported in Scripture, or God acting like that mother holding out her hand in hopes that, that child might reach out at the right place. No, if anyone is going to be saved, the Father is going to have to grab them even though they want nothing to do with Him. He will need to change their hearts to want to reach out to Him. They will then find that He’s been holding on to them the whole time. The cross is God grabbing us. The cross saves.
This is the message of salvation. Let’s think about how best to share it as a church. That’s our second point: nothing but the cross. We’ve got three principles for outreach from this doctrine—first, keep it about the cross. The cross saves so let’s keep salvation about the cross. When we make salvation about anything other than the cross, we pervert it. We slip into provincialism—as if salvation has to do with our way—the way we grew up with—and therefore being saved means becoming just like us. Why is that you think Christianity is the true religion rather than Islam or Hinduism? Is it because of the cross or is it because it’s yours?
When we make salvation about anything other than the cross, we slip into ritualism—as salvation is accomplished by being in a church building, or baptism, or profession of faith, or the mass, to use a different tradition.
When we make salvation about anything other than the cross, we slip into easy-believism—as if faith is accomplished by mere awareness of a few Biblical truths and wanting to be a good person rather than taking up the cross and following Jesus.
It’s about the cross. It’s about hopeless sinners receiving new hearts and hope through the death of the Son of God. That’s what Paul told the Corinthians, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” The cross saves and it is the message about that cross which God uses to give the new heart in real time. There’s a reason we have a cross behind the pulpit. Keep it about the cross. That’s our first principle.
Second principle—don’t empty the cross of its power. The cross is power. We mock that power when we try to help it along. Some people think that Christianity could be much more popular if we took the edge off God’s wrath. They think Christianity would be more attractive if we weren’t so focused on this problem of sin. They think the cross and the message of the cross by itself is fine, but it needs to be presented better. They believe we Christians have the best product of all—salvation—and it’s free. They reduce the gospel to a message that hearts that are still dead in sin can and will accept because it has nothing to do with needing a new heart. They make it all about you and they find people with charismatic personalities and great rhetorical skills to deliver this good news that God exists to help you fix your life the way you want with great emotion.
Ask yourself, though, what does any of that have to do with this power of the cross? It’s a totally different story of salvation that denies the cross at every turn. The cross is meaningless once you minimize wrath, sin, and the need for the new heart. The cross is only a message about me in so far as it’s my sin that made it necessary.
The power of the cross is something else altogether. The most emotional, charismatic presentation of it delivered with the greatest rhetorical skills will seem foolish to a man whose heart God isn’t softening. The most bungling presentation of it will apply salvation to a man of God is softening. “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God,” as Paul put it. That man knew outreach. He’s the model.
Do you think the cross saves, or do you think we need to help it along? Your answer to that question will dictate what you are looking for in a preacher, how you think we ought to do outreach, and your confidence or lack thereof in doing outreach. The idea of having a form of subscription that requires pastors to affirm today’s doctrine is aimed at putting the weight on the power of the cross not our skills in helping it along. It’s worth considering how you think all this works because that determines a great deal of what kind church this will be.
Our third and final principle is to lift high the cross to all. Jesus knows who he died for. We don’t. Our role is to be used by him in presenting the message of the cross. People will respond accordingly. It will smell like death to some people. It will smell like life to others; “to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life,” as Paul put it. That’s not success on one side and failure on the other. Both are the cross doing its work. Your work is to lift it high. That’s success. The cross knows how to attract when it wants to. “That old rugged cross, so despised by the world, has a wondrous attraction for me. For the dear Lamb of God left His glory above, to bear it to dark Calvary.”
Forty-two percent of people just like us would say that it doesn’t matter what you put your faith in as long as you have faith. The rest might say, “no, it’s putting your faith in the right place that saves.” But it has nothing to do that mother holding out her hand to that drowning, blinded girl hoping that she’ll grab her in the right place. God jumps in and grabs. He jumped in and grabbed using the cross. That’s what saves. Has it saved you? If so, you know it has the power to save others. Amen.