Oh, the ludicrous cross

I am a follower of Jesus. That means I believe a lot of strange things. I believe God exists. I believe He created the world in its entirety. I believe in absolutes. I believe that a perfect and perfectly good God can allow evil and still be perfect, still be good. I believe the Bible is the way God has chosen to speak to us. I believe that the same God who created the Universe chose to bring salvation to the world by dying on cross at the hands of the very people He came to save.

What's with that last one? The rest of the beliefs I listed can be easily defended using scientific and logical arguments, with consent to a few presuppositions. But Jesus on a cross? Are you kidding me? An omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient God determined that the preeminent method to liberate people from their sin and the effects of their sin was to send His begotten son, the outgrowth of Himself, to bring people life through His own death.

See what I'm saying? It's counterintuitive. Couldn't a better way exist? Couldn’t God think of something else? He's God after all, right? Let me submit this: perhaps, keeping in mind that God knows all and has all power in His grasp, there is no other way.

As humans, we have been born with an intrinsic sense of what ethical behavior is. When we sin, we sense it. We feel guilty. Because of our inherent ethic, we become guilty. In becoming guilty we acquire the weight of that guilt, and guilt, though immaterial, does not just disappear. It has to go somewhere. Although sometimes it does not stay with us emotionally and our calloused hearts may no longer sense it, the guilt remains upon us.

Back to Christ, on the cross. The perfect human. The perfect sacrifice for our sins. It is there on the cross that our guilt went somewhere. All of the sin of the past, present, and future was transferred to Christ. When His blood was shed, our sin was shed. With his death was the death of our guilt, for it was all upon Him when He died. His expiation for our sins was the ablution of our souls, freeing us from all sin and opening the door to intimacy with the God of the Universe. Powerful? Heck yeah. Foolishness? Yeah, I suppose so. But sometimes, Love is foolish.