Does the cross buy grace?
In Ephesians size matters. Paul isn’t content with
talking about mercy or grace or love or power. He adds superlatives. He
talks about the exceeding greatness or riches of or the unimaginable
nature of God’s love or mercy or power or grace. The will of God, he
tells us, stretches from one eternity to another and the stage on which
we shows himself (limited though it is) is the entire universe. The God
we’re face to face with in Ephesians beggars description and his wisdom
is something the principalities and powers in the spiritual realm must
be instructed in and are privileged to catch a glimpse of (3:10).
And why would such a one bother with the likes of us? Yes, we’ve been
told why but while that means we’re not left utterly in the dark, how
much light does it really give us? He’s infinitely above and beyond us.
It isn’t just his power and wisdom—it’s his character, his love and
mercy and grace, they drive us to pile up words on words and phrases on
phrases in a vain attempt to grasp and express something of the meaning
of it all. It doesn’t surprise us to hear David ask in Psalm 8, "What
are humans that you bother with them?" But incredible as it seems and
however often we look around to see if anyone else can believe it or if
we’re the only ones who find it difficult to take in—incredible as it
seems, it’s true! He cares about us.
Well, all right then, so it’s true, but can we gain access to him or
must we always speak of him and deal with him at a great distance? If we
do gain access to his presence, what is it that gives us this
privilege? What hoops do we have to jump through? What great feats do we
have to accomplish? What Herculean tasks do we have to undertake to be
assured of entering into the company of the Great God? What assures us,
even now, of his favour and that in a coming day that communion we now
enjoy by faith will have an added dimension—his very presence? What gets us from the gutter, through the door and into the palace?
A wooden stake, a public gallows, on a little hill just outside ancient Jerusalem!
Why is that? Is there some magic in wood? Is there a mysterious power
in a hanging tree? Does the cruel and brutal death of some young man
make God cry and go all weak and tender? There have been millions of
deaths like that down the centuries! How does that one, that particular
one, enable us to enter God’s presence in peace (2:17-18)? What is it
about that death that opens the gates to breathless wonder?
It’s that one because in that one as in no other, in that death as in
no other event in all of creation’s history that God makes himself
known.
It isn’t God’s love of shed blood that opens his home to us! It’s God
himself—his nature and character. His shed blood didn’t make him a
loving or welcoming God—it proclaimed that he has eternally been like
that! The hanging tree didn’t turn God into a gracious God—it revealed
the truth that he already was this!
Nowhere else in time or limitless space can we find the proof that
God wants us to be home with him. Nowhere else, only at the hanging
tree! It’s only because of that that sinners like us dare to imagine we
are welcomed home.