Come with me to the Cross of Calvary where on that Cross, God in His infinite wondrous love and mercy provided His Son Jesus Christ as the one and only perfect sacrifice for sin died. He died that you and I can have eternal life by believing in Him. The Bible says, “Knowing that you were redeemed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:18-21).
Some seven hundred years before the first advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, the prophet Isaiah prophesied that Christ would bear our sins on the Cross. His death was substitutionary and atoning, “For our sake [God] made [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Dr. Charles Stanley wrote: “Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all of the prophecies about the Messiah, like the one that was written hundred of years before He was crucified. On the Cross He willingly became our substitute. Jesus, “who knew no sin . . . [became] sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He was pierced and crushed because of our sin, and by His sacrifice we are healed” (Life Principles Bible p. 855).
The following sets forth Isaiah’s account of the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross. “Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—everyone—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed; and He was afflicted, yet He opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, and there was no deceit in His mouth.
Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush Him; He has put Him to grief; when His soul makes an offering for guilt, He shall see His offspring; He shall prolong His days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. Out of the anguish of His soul He shall see and be satisfied; by His knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the many, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:1-12).
As we contemplate the Cross, let us consider our Lord Jesus who left the splendors of heaven, despising the “disgrace and shame” of that Roman Cross to become obedient to death, even the death of the cross so as to procure our great and wonderful salvation that we can rejoice about. Jesus chose us, loved us, bought us, washed us, glorified us, “and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (Revelation 1:6).
“On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame; And I love that old cross where the dearest and best For a world of lost sinners was slain. So I’ll cherish the old rugged Cross Till my trophies at last I lay down; I will cling to the old rugged cross, And exchange it some day for a crown” (George Bennard, 1873-1958).