The Cross-centered, Grace-based Christian Life
By Jay Wegter
We need a new heart in order to love God. This ought to be preached when we proclaim the necessity of regeneration—the new birth is necessary in order to desire God with all of our faculties. Consider that the gospel’s call for the new birth proposes that a man cannot know God, and be saved unless there is a massive ‘invasion’ of the walled kingdom of self by the God of the universe. This ‘invasion’ grants a new nature, thus it is designated, ‘being born from above’ (Jn 3:7). But, the natural man opposes the new birth, he finds it offensive, even regarding it as a conflict of interest. The reason why is that he cherishes his imagined autonomy. But, when the work of the new birth passes upon the soul, the tyranny of self is deposed, the natural man’s ‘sovereignty’ is dethroned. The gracious result is that the government of God is installed in the soul—the new born man now cherishes Christ’s throne rights there.
Francis Shaffer gave a great summary of the 10 Commandments; it is to love God enough to always say thank you and to love neighbor enough not to covet. In a truly saved person, God’s cause, His glory, becomes his or her cause. In a genuine believer there is daily amazement that God accomplishes His glory and our good together in Christ. Jonathan Edwards argued that true salvation must have a foundation that goes deeper than self-interest. Genuine salvation is characterized by a Spirit-engendered sight and savor of God’s glory. Hypocrites and false religionists lack this mark of salvation. In his book, The Religious Affections, Edwards presses his case stating that the truly converted man has seen Christ spiritually whereas the world has not seen Christ in this way. Explaining further, he notes that the religious affections are the fruit of a new heart and that these affections are what moves the Christian life. Satan cannot counterfeit this sentiment—no natural man sees God’s glory and the creature’s happiness woven together in Christ. That controlling sentiment of God’s glory and our good joined in Christ is the sentiment of a gracious soul.
In this article we are going to be discussing grace-based living, but that does not mean that we will push to the side the consecration our Lord requires of believers. For our Lord has said, “You must hate your life in this world in order to keep it to life eternal” (Jn 12:25). The hating in this context means we are releasing our cherished way of doing things, our manipulations, defenses, and trusted areas of self-protection. Those attitudes and behaviors belong to the ‘old me’. But, now as a new creation, I am to daily consent to receive love from the Lord that I might love Him and the brethren in return. When Paul said, “Not I but Christ,” he was constantly looking to the Savior as His ‘Source Person’ (as the source of his spiritual life, vitality, righteousness, and favor with God) (Gal 2:20).
One of the common misconceptions about God’s grace, is that God has relaxed His strict justice in our case. This error leads us to think in categories that accompany a reductionistic gospel. By way of contrast, those who are truly recipients of grace, like the apostle Paul, want to study their Lord from the perspective of His cross—from the vantage point of propitiation. “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). “But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14). And, in John’s first epistle we are told that the propitiation is the height of God’s love to undeserving sinners. “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10).
In his book, Who will deliver us? author Paul Zahl indicates that we ought to follow the example of the Psalmist who was willing to pray the negatives in his life to God, rather than splitting off from them (as unacceptable feelings and circumstances). In fact, if we choose not to process certain kinds of pain and negativity, we lose some of our humanness in the process. By that I mean, that if we only deal with negativity by stoically shoving it back down inside, rather than giving it an interface with God, we are missing out on God ministering His faithfulness and lovingkindness to us. Joyful integration comes when, instead of splitting off from the negativity in our lives, we allow that negativity to come in contact with the cross. The cross was a spectacle to men and angels. It was unfathomable that Christ was abandoned on the cross by the Father. Our Savior’s cry of dereliction from the cross, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” touches the very apex of God’s dealing decisively with the human condition (Ps 22:1). For, in the Son’s experience of crushing wrath and dereliction, He was accomplishing a guilt-exchange for His people. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor 5:21).
This is baffling to our natural sense and reason that in order for Christ to become our Great Physician, He was making ‘a medicine’ out of His own dereliction and agony. Now, contrast this to the litany of false philosophies, false religions, and spiritual quackery of the world’s would-be healers. Paul did not preach a gospel of ‘common sense’. “. . .we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor 1:23-25). Nothing humbles like the cross. For, in its message we discover the truth that Christ was abandoned there because of, and for, our dereliction, defilement, uselessness and rebellion. When the Holy Spirit applies this truth to you, there is a grace awakening. In that burst of understanding, a realization washes over the soul that God’s grace in the cross is perfectly suited to my situation, for my ruin by reason of my sin. Saving faith and ongoing gospel faith involve a continual consent to God’s purpose in giving Christ as my only eligibility for endless installments of more grace (Eph 2:4-7). But, reckoning this truth is a kind of spiritual discipline—a faith choice to daily receive this grace. As Jerry Bridges says, it is the discipline of grace. It means consenting to have Christ be my merit and standing before God. It also means that since Christ carries my favor with God, I need to stop endless mental disputing about my qualification for God’s love and acceptance.
This spiritual discipline of preaching the gospel to ourselves touches upon the N.T. concept of abiding in Christ. For, when I am abiding in Christ, it means I am consenting to be held by Christ right down to the depth of my being (Jn 15:4-5). I am yielding to Him the areas that I used to manage on my own: my self-protection, eligibility, security, even my sense of blessedness. Without that daily decision of trust, I am not really abiding in Him. And I can’t enjoy God while haunted by guilt and fixated on endless disputing about my worth. Apart from abiding in Christ who is the True Vine, we are ‘pitiful plants’ (John Piper, Desiring God).
The gospel of grace is a mystery that requires the fiat work of the Spirit to comprehend. The gospel is so radically counter-intuitive, that sinners do not imagine for a moment that the chief way God is glorifying Himself is in His Son’s work as Savior of sinners. And, what is even more baffling is that this work of redemption is not a fiat action of God which occurs apart from human suffering and obedience. For, the manner in which God saves necessarily involves the humiliation and sacrifice of the Son of God as He radically identifies Himself with His people. He endures pain, sweat, blood, tears, shame, and rejection. And all of this is vicarious. He is standing in our room and place in all of His obedience. “But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed” (Is 53:5).
The Father places believing sinners in the Son so that they are united with Him. This union is so close that God contemplates the saints as in His Son. But, many Christians are not tasting the nectar in this flower of grace. The bitter things in their life are not sweetened by the abundant grace that Christ has purchased. These troubled saints have not dared to believe such glorious and majestic promises that the Father has communicated to His own in making them one with the Son. As a consequence, they are living off the dry crumbs of carnal reasoning. The primary symptom of this grace-less way of thinking is found in their tireless effort to manage their own dereliction, eligibility and defectiveness. By contrast, the grace-based believer doesn’t spend a lot of time mentally disputing his lovability. Instead, he consciously builds upon Christ as His qualification for divine favor. He obeys the injunction found in Hebrews 12:2, “Looking unto Jesus.” He has pledged to be constantly renewed in his mind on these grace truths purchased by the cross. As mentioned, this is a spiritual discipline: these truths require daily attention because the gospel is so counter-intuitive.
For, the cross of Christ possesses healing power for my sin-abused soul. Christ’s abandonment on Calvary’s cross is the divine answer to my ill-desert (the judgment I deserve as an habitual sinner). Christ’s dereliction is the cure for my dereliction. This is such a short, succinct clause, but it requires an explanation. Christ’s dereliction was His forsakenness while under the wrath of God. Dereliction means abandonment, being discarded as dysfunctional and useless. What a thought! The Son of God, the Creator endures our dereliction so that we might be forgiven and adopted as sons of God. These two immense ‘dots’—Christ’s bearing our dereliction by His dereliction are connected in the gospel, and are only perceived by the Spirit’s work. Let us explore further why the healing health of the gospel is centered in the cross—and why Christ’s dereliction is the cure for our dereliction.
1 Peter 3:18 states that ‘by His stripes we are healed’. By His bloody death, Christ bore the penalty for my sinful habits, my uselessness to God, my unfruitfulness—all the things about me which I’d like to hide from my conscious thought life. This is why the cross is so humbling; the glorious and majestic Creator of the cosmos hung on that cross for the worst and most vile things about me. That is radically humbling. But, first and foremost the cross is not intended to heal me as its priority; its first purpose is to give us the saving knowledge of God. For, the cross makes God known as Just and Justifier of the one who had faith in Jesus (Rom 3:26). Thus, we find that this theological mountain peak of propitiation (Christ’s atoning sacrifice) communicates to darkened sinners the saving knowledge of God. Thus, the cross effectively declares to us the ‘two major prongs’ of God’s character, His justice and mercy.
It is incredibly significant that God propitiates His own wrath on behalf of the elect. And, then as our Great High Priest, our suffering Substitute dispenses the benefits of His propitiation to the Bride chosen by His heavenly Father (Eph 5:25-27). Now, against this backdrop of gospel grace, we ought to be able to see the folly of seeking to earn favor with God. For, the infinite benefit of Christ’s propitiation is communicated and applied to us by the regenerating work of the Spirit. This means that every facet of the atonement translates into a benefit for us, and is ours by virtue of our union with Christ’s Person. It is His indestructible life as our Great High Priest which ensures He will save His own to the uttermost (Heb 7:23-28). We will never outgrow the fact that God wills to be known by the satisfaction of His unchanging standard of righteousness through the Substitute whom He has appointed. Our right-standing with God rests completely upon the sacrifice and merits of Christ who stood in our place and now represents us before the Father’s throne (Heb 6:19-20; 9:11-14; 10:19-22).
The cross humbles us as nothing else can do, for, the cross proclaims that we cannot fix our own dereliction. Yet, 100 years of psychology (which birthed the ‘human potential movement’) have told us that we can repair ourselves. But, it is God’s infallible perspective that is authoritative, and He has stated in Scripture that we are beyond self-help. Our restoration came by the cross which is a spectacle before men and angels. For, it is a scene of ignominy, shame, horror, agony, abandonment, victimization, and reproach. To the natural carnal mind, there is not a thing there that is attractive. In fact, the cross repels those addicted to self-help philosophies and self-improvement therapies. The cross strikes at not only our self-righteousness, but also our strategies of self-reformation and self-repair. The cross leaves us staggered as we attempt to contemplate what God was doing there, in His Son’s humiliation.
When the full force of the cross is realized, it strikes a death blow to all of our legal working. Yes, the cross humbles so deeply—making us ‘come clean’ in regards to our trusted places of refuge and performance. It humbles because it demonstrates how low the Son of God stooped in order to bend down, cleanse, and revive His people. The cross digs up and exposes to the light of day all of the faulty dialog we have habitually engaged in to quiet our troubled consciences. We are humbled by the cross because we cannot seem to connect, or comprehend the link between Christ’s infinite worthiness with our immeasurable unworthiness. What was actually being accomplished by the abandonment of the Son? The answer lies in His voluntary humiliation. So closely did our Lord identify with us, that He became (by imputation) the dereliction of the sinner. As it says in Galatians 3:13, the curse of God’s broken law rested upon Him, He became the curse, the anathema pronounced against transgressors of God’s law. The endless list of charges against us which justly called for our condemnation, was nailed to His cross by God Himself (Col 2:14).
In experiencing the wrath of God against His body and soul, the spiritual, psychical, physical, emotional, and relational consequences of sin crushed Him to the depth of His being. Our dereliction—which is our failure to live as the image of God, fell upon Him. He became, by imputation the derelict, useless (to God), guilty, defiled, condemned rebel, so that in our place, He was treated as the worst criminal who ever lived. Our dereliction (of duty), and alienation (dis-relatedness) was charged to His account as He perished under the curse of the law. But, how many Christians daily live upon these truths, feeding upon them as Christ urged in John chapter six? Why do we resist the healing power of the cross? And, instead choose a host of powerless placebos? The cross is just too humbling for us. We secretly despise being an object of divine pity, an object of compassion, a daily ‘charity case’.
I think of my experience in the prisons in which I ministered: often after preaching a sermon from the Word, inmates would come up to tell me that they planned to do better. They would promise, “This time I am truly repenting: no more substance abuse, no more spousal abuse and neglect, no more running with felons upon my release.” Most of those men did not change. It was the rare inmate who testified of what Christ has done for him. How humbling it is to receive into one’s whole person the truth that Christ was shamed, tortured, and abandoned for the likes of me—the Great Physician took on the penalty and eternal consequences of my ‘sin disease’ that I might be healed of it (Mk 2:17). We recoil from such radical love. We are reluctant to leverage all upon such a Person and His vicarious suffering. We are slow to release our cherished forms of self-protection—often preferring to be entangled in mental disputes about our defectiveness, rather than trusting that real, God-satisfying justice has been accomplished at the cross in the case of our personal sins.
The cross is not a spiritual pharmacy where we get a prescription filled for the improvement of spiritual health. The cross deals comprehensively with everything in us that alienates us from God—including our hiding from Him! In the realm of medicine, we know how anti-venom is made to treat snakebites. A mammal, such as a horse is given small doses of snake venom over a period of time until its resistance is strong enough to combat the venom. Then, serum is drawn from the animal in order to provide life-saving antivenom to humans bitten by poisonous snakes. In a related way, our Lord compares His own crucifixion to the brass serpent on the pole which Moses lifted up in the wilderness in order to bring recovery from the deadly bites of ‘fiery serpents’ (Jn 3:14-15). Gazing on the brass serpent which was lifted up on a pole brought physical healing to Israelites who were bitten (Num 21:9). But, looking in faith upon Christ who was lifted up in crucifixion brings spiritual healing so that believers will live spiritually and eternally (MacArthur Study Bible, p. 1581).
Our point is that Christ received the full sting of death into His own being that He might deliver believers from the sting of death (1 Cor 15:54-57). Christ’s Person and work is like no other love story. In eternity past, our Lord agreed to take upon Himself, the liabilities, curse, alienation, wrath, death, and damnation of His bride. He willingly took upon Himself the crushing suffering from which in divine justice, there was not escape. He drank the cup to its fullest, absorbing into His own Person the crushing suffering and ‘thesaurus’ of wrath (Grk.) His bride deserved (Rom 2:5-9). John Flavel, a Puritan theologian, imaginatively recreates the conversation between God the Father and God the Son in eternity past before time began: Father: My Son, here is a company of poor miserable souls that have utterly undone themselves and now lie open to my justice. Justice demands satisfaction for them, or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them. What shall be done for these souls? Son: O my Father, such is my love to and pity for them that rather than they shall perish eternally, I will be responsible for them as their Guarantee. Bring all your bills, that I may see what they owe you. Lord, bring them all in, that there may be no after-reckonings with them. At my hand you will require it. I would rather choose to suffer your wrath than they suffer it. Upon me, my Father, upon me be all their debt. Father: But my Son, if you undertake for them, you must pay the last penny. Expect no discounts. If I spare them, I will not spare you. Son: I am willing, Father. Let it be so. Charge it all to me. I am able to pay their debt. And though it will undo me, though it will impoverish all my riches and empty all my accounts, yet I am content to undertake it” (Quoted in The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ, by Ray Ortlund, p. 42).
God did not spare His own Son as Isaac was spared in the last moments (Rom 8:32). The ‘knife’ of God’s wrath was plunged into our Savior’s soul and body. The Father’s giving of Christ for guilty sinners is the heart of the gospel, and it is heaven’s logic which stands behind the promise of endless installments of grace for believing sinners (Eph 2:7). For, if God did not withhold the most precious gift, His only begotten Son, then all lesser gifts will follow.
But, how does the cross ‘heal us’ of our ‘terminal sin disease’? How does it change those who are the objects of its transforming power? In 1 Peter 3:18, it says that by His stripes we are healed. But, how did the open wounds and bleeding welts on Christ’s back heal us? The answer is that under God’s moral government the bondage of sin is not cancelled until the wages of sin are fully paid for. The cross joins pardon with payment. Christ’s sacrificial death ‘cuts the chains of sin’s bondage’ for all whom it is intended. To be healed by Christ’s agonies is the work of redemption. By the tearing of Christ’s flesh believing sinners are brought from a place of legal guilt and condemnation to a status before God of righteousness and favor.
We were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ (Rom 7:4-6). In Christ’s sacrifice God was reconciling the world to Himself by not counting their transgressions against them (2 Cor 5:19). He paid the ultimate price for this reconciling peace. And He did so while we were enemies of God (Rom 5:10), with hearts and minds brimming with hostility toward our Creator (Col 1:21). It is no exaggeration to say that the unbeliever wishes he could overthrow God’s moral government, the sinner imagines a heaven in which the Ten Commandments no longer apply. The sinner is offended by the rigor of God’s law. And, to show how deep his rebellion really goes, the unbeliever would rather shake his fist and demand that God stop being God than receive a blood-bought reconciliation to an infinitely holy God.
Consider that religious sinners steer wide of the cross, thinking that they may appease God with a carnal, relative righteousness (Rom 10:1-4). But, it is only the cross applied to the sinner by the Spirit that makes new creatures, the cross applied ‘buys’ transformed lives (Titus 2:14). The guilt-transfer at Calvary was also a transfer of righteousness so that believers are clothed with the righteousness of Another (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Pet 2:24). As new creatures that have received a ‘heart transplant’ (Ez 36:26)—God’s cause (the extending of His glory) is now their cause and their passion. This is all attributable to the finished work of Christ, for the cross makes God’s holiness beautiful to sinners, and the cross makes blood-washed sinners beautiful to God.
The true believer loves the way that God saves because the cross puts on display a host of God’s holy perfections (Rom 3:24-26). The true believer is ‘a friend of the cross’—he is a friend because he is enabled by the cross to cooperate with it purposes to make its recipients holy. Therefore every friend of the cross hates sin and zealously mortifies what remains of indwelling sin. (Note that those who are enemies of the cross permit their lusts and passions to set the standard for their behavior—Philippians 3:17-19). Therefore, a genuine believer is aligned with the purpose of the cross which is to conform us to the image of Christ (Rom 8:29-30). The Son of God is the Father’s unspeakable gift (2 Cor 9:15). Throughout eternity we will still be exploring what Christ has done for redeemed humanity. For, God has determined to commune with us after our form—by that is meant that Christ will dwell in our nature for all eternity (Isaac Ambrose, Looking unto Jesus).
Christ stooped to be born in our human nature that He might be glorified in our nature, raising it above that of angels (Heb 2:5). The beatific vision will be to see God in our nature glorified, with the marks of our atonement still on His body (‘beatific’ refers to a magnitude of bliss only possible in heaven when believers behold the glory of their Lord). There are no words to describe and capture this wealth of glory. The Son of God has assumed our nature to give us the greatest gift of all, God Himself (John Piper, God is the Gospel). God has ‘packaged’ His perfections in Christ, so that our Savior is “. . .the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power” (Heb 1:3). We see God’s glory ‘in the face of Christ’ in order that the glorified saints may experience for all eternity the unbroken communication of God’s glory to them in a perfectly perceptible way through the Son (2 Cor 4:6).
Christ the Lord is our Man in glory; He is a priest after the order of Melchizedek (Heb 6:17-20). Sin and Satan mercilessly beat us up each day. And as a result of the evil one’s insinuations, and our lack of gospel literacy, we find ourselves frequently marooned on a spiritual ‘desert island’—endlessly disputing our eligibility for God’s favor. We sit in this state of dereliction like a castaway scanning the horizon for possible rescue. We cannot see the forest for the trees, we are too timid to aggressively roll the entire welfare of our souls upon Christ again each day. But, the solution is very near. We must take heart from Hebrews 6, that our Great High Priest has entered within the veil for us with His own blood. Christ is our City of Refuge who protects us from the unbending justice of God’s avenging Law.
In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek (Heb 6:17-20).
There is much paradox here. For, Paul tells us in Romans 7 that the Law is good and spiritual and holy. But, the Law is also the uncompromising avenger of God’s trampled glory and honor. Our High Priest is our ‘City of Refuge’—with the Law pursuing, we have fled into Christ our City of Refuge from the condemnation of the Law. Christ, our High Priest intercedes for those for whom He has died so that no charge can be brought against His own (Rom 8:33-34). But, my friends there is courage needed to daily bank on this, and to hour by hour receive this exotic species of love (1 Jn 3:1).
Some trauma is involved in appropriating this love because it is apprehended by faith. By contrast, there is no faith required in order to be conversant with our unworthiness and failure. But, much faith is needed in order to be conversant with Christ’s worthiness and fitness as our Advocate. Guilt may rightly move us to repentance, but it cannot sanctify us. In fact, no sin can be crucified in heart or life until we know that it is forgiven. Apart from daily confidence in that blood-bought pardon, a believing person can be easily caught on a treadmill of penance and failure. Legal repentance cannot cleanse from guilt nor can it plant delight in the affections. The saint who experiences daily comfort from his Lord has learned the blessed habit of confessing and forsaking his sins, of permitting the Spirit to point him to the blood yet again, of matching his sinner-ship with Christ’s Saviorhood.