What Happened At The Cross

To value Christ’s crucifixion, we must understand we were all destined for a terrifying eternity in hell without it. How bad would this be? I want you to imagine being burned at the stake eternally, never being burned up, never losing consciousness, not being able to die, and the fire never being quenched. If you can imagine this – you might be able to understand what hell is like. With all the persecution that happened to Jesus, and Him being crucified on the cross instead of us, we now have a choice that we didn’t have before the Cross. Now we have a choice to have eternity in heaven with God or an eternity in hell with the devil and his demons.

God requires righteousness and full payment of sins to have eternal life with God. He requires us to be made holy as He is holy and righteous as He is righteous. This is not something we have the power to do; God must do this sanctifying work through His Holy Spirit. To make this happen, we must give up and let Jesus take our life. We have to die to ourselves. When we trust in Jesus and die to our selfish sinful nature and when we repent of our sins, He is just and will forgive us our sins.

What sins were paid for at the cross? When Christ was crucified, He paid for all of humanities sins, (past, present, and future), except one. Blaspheming the Holy Spirit was the one sin He would not pay for. I will cover this unforgivable sin topic in my next message. All sins can be broken down into three main groups, original sin, our personal past sins, and our personal present or active sins.

The fact that all sins are paid for does not mean that everybody’s sins have been forgiven. Forgiveness of our personal sins is conditional on our personal repentance. Payment and forgiveness for the original sin of Adam has been made complete through the cross. But we are all still responsible for our individual personal sins against God through our choice to repent and be obedient or not. Whenever God forgives us for any sin, the payment and judgment for that sin has already been made and paid for us through Jesus Christ at the cross. Rejoice that we don’t have to make payment for our sins. We couldn’t pay for our sins even if we wanted to – Christ had to do this for us.

Forgiveness comes through our willingness to be made righteous. Opposite to popular belief, we do not receive forgiveness just through the asking of forgiveness from God. We can ask God for forgiveness, but if the asking isn’t accompanied by repentance, the asking is not sincere. It is through our turning away from the ungodly to His godliness that we receive forgiveness from God. We must be willing to become righteous through the sanctifying work of His Spirit. We must be willing to become holy as God is holy. We must be willing to be sanctified to God. When we are sanctified, we are set apart for God. When we are set apart for God, we are set apart from the world and all its evil desires. Before the fall of man, Adam and Eve did not need to be sanctified, they were righteous already. They were right with God and needed no forgiveness. After the fall of man, humanity no longer had righteousness with God. If we are unwilling to let His Spirit totally transform our heart, soul, and mind, there will be no righteousness and there will be no place for us in heaven. Heaven (eternal life with God), is reserved only for the ones that have been made righteous.

The main reason Jesus went to the cross was to restore righteousness to whoever would be willing. Again the popular belief is that Jesus did everything necessary at the cross, so we don’t need to do anything. The truth is Jesus did everything we could not do for ourselves. The payment for our sins was an act that had to be done by God in order to restore the relationship to His creation. What was done on the cross by Jesus opened the door for the Holy Spirit to come. It is thru His Holy Spirit living in us that we are able to have this restored relationship to God. Enabling the Holy Spirit to come to us is the main reason Jesus went to the cross. God’s word says “He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. “ (Gal 3:14 NIV)

With God’s Holy Spirit, we now have an awesome power within us to become righteous. We are called and are able to conquer and put to death all of our sinful nature within our heart, soul, and mind. This is why God was willing to send His only begotten son as a sacrifice, so we could once again have the choice and ability to have that true loving relationship God desires with us. Once again I have to emphasize, love has to be a choice. Just like Adam and Eve had the choice to show their love through obedience, now through the cross, all people once again have the choice to love God thru their voluntary obedience. The good news is that the Spirit does all the work to change our hearts, so we want to be obedient children, if we are willing to change.

How is our relationship different from Adam and Eve’s relationship with God? We have to remember, before the original sin, man had not fallen from God’s righteousness, but now we are born into a fallen state of righteousness. I want to help you understand this fallen state of man with a word picture. I want you to picture, in the beginning, Adam and Eve on top of a glorious mountain, having a close communion with God. When they ate of the forbidden fruit, they fell in a freefall down this big mountain. When they got to the bottom, they had no way to get back up since the walls of the mountain were too steep for any human to climb. This is the current state of where all humanity is at without the power of the cross and the Holy Spirit. This is where the power of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit comes in. We still cannot climb up this mountain by ourselves to get to a right relationship with God. We have to let the Holy Spirit enable us to climb this mountain. This is where our faith comes into the picture. Through our faith in God, we have to believe in what we cannot see. We have to believe in a spiritual climbing ladder. We need a spiritual ladder because the mountain is a spiritual mountain. God’s Spirit from within us will prompt us to put our foot upon a ladder that we cannot see. If we have enough faith, we will put our foot out into space and believe we will not fall because we have faith that there will be a spiritual ladder rung there to support us. After each step we take in faith on this spiritual ladder, that previous step enables us to take the next step higher and closer to our living Father on top of this glorious spiritual mountain. Each climbing step taken in faith will allow you to be closer to God and see His true glory and as a result, your face and life will glow with His radiance through His love flowing through you. For some, if your faith is strong enough, you can take God’s spiritual elevator up this great mountain.

I want to encourage everyone, to grab hold of the faith that is available to each and every one of us through God’s Spirit and start climbing or to continue climbing the spiritual sanctification path God has for you. I know God’s path is not easy, but with God’s help through His Spirit, the burden of following His path becomes light and even joyous.

With God's love and Spirit, I bring you this message. May God bless you! - Michael W. Reid

Some scripture verses concerning this message: Mt 13:47-50, Mt 10:38, Mt 16:24-25, Lk 9:23, Mt 25:34-46, Mt 18:21-35, Gal 3:13-14, Rom 3:21-26, Eph 5:3-7, Heb 10:14, 1Jn 2:2, Mt 26:28, Mk 1:4, Acts 2:38, Heb 9:22, Mt 6:12&14-15, Mt 11:25, Lk 6:37, Lk 17:3, Lk 13:3-5, Acts 3:19, Acts 8:20-23, Acts 26:20, Rev 2:5, Rev 2:21-22, Rev 3:3, Rev 3:19-22, Mt 12:31-32, John 3:5-6, John 4:23-24, John 14:26, Rom 7:6, Rom 8:2-17, Rom 8:26-27, Rom 14:17, Rom 15:16, 1Cor 2:9-15, Gal 5:16-25, Gal 6:8, 1Tim 4:1, 1Pet 4:17-19