An Act Of Cruelty Or An Act Of Love?

God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.   Romans 5:8

The Bible tells us the Father laid the guilt and punishment for our sins on the Son. Think about it. If the Son were not God, the cross was an act of utter cruelty on the part of God. If the Son were not God, then God picked on some person in his creation and poured out on him what everyone else deserved. What kind of justice is that?

If the Son were not God, he was victimized by the Father—sentenced for crimes he did not commit. If the Son were not God, the cross was the greatest miscarriage of justice in history, not just by Pontius Pilate, but by God almighty. If the Son were not God, we would have to rewrite Romans 5:8 to read like this: “God showed his great injustice by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”

Before God created the world, he knew the choice Adam and Eve would make and the disaster that would follow. But God had planned to redeem men and women out of this fallen world so that they would share his eternal glory forever. That plan involved a great cost. It would mean God giving himself, and that self-giving would be the ultimate display of his own nature and his own glory.

God’s self-giving would involve all the persons of the Trinity. Before the world began, the Father said, “I will be the giver.” The Son said, “I will be the gift,” and the Spirit said, “I will bring the gift to all who will receive.” The Father would send the Son; the Son would lay down his life; the Spirit would deliver this priceless gift and make it yours.

As the Father gave the Son and the Son laid down his life, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ. The cross was not the act of a cruel and vindictive God. It was the outpouring of love by the God who chose to redeem his enemies at infinite personal cost, and the reason it is so is that the Son is God.

For further reading, see Romans 5