hose who live in the United States readily admit that the public commemorations for the Easter season in this country are never as extensive as we find for Christmas. Christmas has become the focal point of America's calendar year. The Easter season just doesn't call forth the same lavish attention. It is easier and much more pleasant to celebrate the birth of a tiny baby than a man dying on a cross.

However, it is significant to note that this modern priority is reversed in Scripture. In the New Testament, the birth of Christ is not the primary focus. In the four Gospel accounts of the Messiah's life, the events surrounding and including the Crucifixion carry the major emphasis. The staggering miracle of the birth of Jesus is mentioned only slightly by comparison.

After treasured recounting of the birth of Baby Jesus, both Luke and Matthew, and in fact all four Gospel writers, quickly shift emphasis. Rather than providing detailed, informative accounts of Christ's childhood and early adult life, the reader is almost immediately drawn into the events leading up to and including the Crucifixion. The pointed focus of all four Gospels is on just one week of Christ's life. From one third up to a half of each of the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is devoted to the week of Christ's death. All four Gospels rivet our attention on the cross. They force us to "behold the Lamb of God."

The astounding miracle of Christ's birth at Bethlehem, His 30 years in Nazareth, His profound adult teaching, His mighty miracles of compassion and power--these vital events are not the central focus of the New Testament record of Christ's life. What dominates the Gospels is not the living, but the giving of the Messiah's life. As remarkable as His birth and ministry were, the great mission of Christ's life was His death.

Consider one of Christ's explicit sayings about His death. In Mark 10:32-45, we find Jesus heading to Jerusalem with His astonished disciples and a fearful group of followers. As they walk, Jesus graphically describes what is about to happen to Him. When He finishes the painful description of His impending death, James and John approach Jesus with a request: they want to be given the positions of greatest authority at the Lord's side when He comes into His glory, which they assume will happen shortly. The others resent that James and John have beaten them to the draw in their brash request. A squabble breaks out among them, and Jesus is forced to intervene. He reminds them of the nature of true greatness in His kingdom: Greatness demands not the self-assertion and lordliness of the Gentile authorities, but sacrifice. Linger on His words: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served," He insists, "but to [slave] [what the Greek word really means], and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).1

Here is Christ's own summary of His mission. He declares that His work finds its crown not in His teaching or in performing miracles, or in high position, even though that is what His disciples still presumed. Rather, He has come ultimately to slave and to die, clearly echoing the portrayal of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53. Jesus comes to pour out His life as a substitute for those of us condemned to death because of sin. We are liberated from the terrible penalty and bondage of sin by Jesus' sacrificial death. And this type of sacrificial slaving and dying displays the real nature of His kingdom.

Even the sacrament of the Last Supper, instituted by Christ Himself and the only commemorative act He personally authorized, dramatizes neither His birth, nor His life, nor His words, nor His works, but only His death. Christ Himself wished above all else to be remembered by His death.

And the memorial that best represents the mission of Jesus is the one that God Himself erected--the cross. But there on Mount Calvary, on that "old rugged cross," hung a condemned criminal that most people were having a difficult time recognizing as God, for He was being summarily executed and dying. Jesus, who is God, was being crucified in a death designed to inflict maximum torture.

No, the cross was not a welcome sight then. And with our tidy, artistic representations of the cross on churches, on church bulletins, and in Christian materials, it is easy to forget how ugly and despised the cross really was in the time of Christ. It was the ultimate horror to face.

In light of the great war, the deadly battle with Satan that Jesus, our mighty warrior, fought and won on that cross, however, we would do well to deepen our own understanding of the Crucifixion. For to the biblical writers, the death of Christ is not some peripheral or optional theory, but the primary focus.

Many of our hymns rightly honor the love of Jesus for us, especially as seen in His sacrifice of Himself. Our children sing so happily, "Jesus Loves Me." The love of Christ is warmly affirmed by all Christians. But the love of the Father for us is something many stumble over. To counter any lingering misapprehensions that through His death on Calvary Jesus was trying to persuade an angry Father-God to forgive us, we are pointed to the biblical passages reminding us that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3:16). Jesus likewise told His disciples, "I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father Himself loves you" (John 16:26, 27).

The apostle Paul in Romans 8 also reminds us of the deep affection the Father has for us. According to Paul, nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:38, 39). We dare not overlook that tiny preposition that insists that nothing can separate us from the "love of God."

Scripture insists that the Father's love is the source, not the consequence of the atonement. God doesn't love us because Christ died for us: Christ died for us because God loved us. The horrible death of Christ was not made in order to entice the Father to love those He otherwise hated. It was not made to produce a love that was not in existence. It was a manifestation of the love that was already in God's heart.

Scripture also carefully instructs us that the forgiveness God offers through the cross is no mere winking away or overlooking of sinfulness as if it were some trivial problem, as an indulgent parent might do, saying, "Oh, I forgive you. It's OK." Nor is it a matter of God's feelings being hurt by our sinning. Scripture is clear enough that though God's love for His children is indestructible, He is in deadly earnest against sin. We cannot avoid the large number of biblical texts emphasizing God's intense wrath concerning sin. The Bible is clear: God never forgives sin. Never! He forgives only sinners. And the cross shows us how deadly sin is.

It is far too easy for us "modern" Christians to convince ourselves that despite all our "minor" mistakes--unforgiven bitterness, little white lies, impatience, intemperance--we aren't really so "bad." We imagine that God shares this same complacency about us. Perhaps, because sin doesn't make us angry, we find it difficult to believe that sin provokes the wrath of a holy God. Scripture, however, insists upon the seriousness of sin, and that sin separates us from God. None of the Bible writers ever suggest that a person might some day simply drift into the kingdom of God, naturally forgiven because God is love.

I find it important to review for myself these two basic foundational pillars of the biblical teaching of the atonement: God loves me, but He hates sin.

The sin problem is not just a trite matter of the God of heaven having His feelings hurt. Christ's atoning sacrifice was not an artistic crucifix between two candles on an altar. It was an awful torturing death that tore apart God from God. It was an execution. Christ bore God's holy wrath against sin to the utmost upon Himself because God loves us more than His own life.

But how could the Father love us that much? I have finally come to realize how much I need to learn about real loving and real forgiving. The Holy God against whom we have sinned Himself drank the dregs of the cup of punishment for sin that we deserve. The apostle Paul states it: "For [God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us" (2 Cor. 5:21).

What a better time than this world convocation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church to behold the Lamb of God, who takes away our sin. The cross was the ugliest, most horrible instrument of torture that had yet been devised. But this is not what killed Him. Our sins did that. Christ was willing to bear our punishment to win the great battle with Satan for me and for you. Because of that, the cross has been transformed into the glorious memorial of God's love. Now we glory in that "old rugged cross."

For Christ and His cross stand at the center of God's disclosure of His moral will and saving ways in Scripture. To stand beneath the cross is to stand at the one place where the character of God burns brightest and where His radical resolution of the sin problem is settled for all time.

It is hard to stand here, though. The cost of admission to this place is the humbling of our pride. It requires that we repent of our natural tendency to elevate our own ideas of what is right and wrong and instead accept the judgment of God on our sinfulness. The cost of admission includes being willing to be rid our self-righteousness and acknowledging instead how really corrupted we are inside. It demands that we displace ourselves from the center of the universe and elevate Christ to that place of honor. It insists that we accept God's sobering evaluation of us rather than the rosy assessment we are inclined to confer upon ourselves.

This is a hard place to stand, and few choose to stand here. That is why so many have dismissed the cross, refusing to pay the cost. It is why in our own time, much preaching on the cross is hesitant to announce the extreme price of admission to its benefits--the humbling of ourselves and our need of repentance.

The fact of our salvation is more amazing than life. God adopted us at the cost of His Son's life and at the cost of His own sorrow. This is more than any human being can comprehend. Ellen White reminds us that "in this life we can only begin to understand the wonderful theme of redemption. With our finite comprehension we may consider most earnestly the shame and the glory, the life and the death, the justice and the mercy, that meet in the cross; yet with the utmost stretch of our mental powers we fail to grasp its full significance. . . . The cross of Christ will be the science and the song of the redeemed through all eternity."2

"Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"
(John 1:29).

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1 Scripture references in this devotional are from the New King James Version.
2 Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 651.