The Mighty Cross
by Rev. Lawrence delos Trinos

I have a poster of a cross with these words: It was not the nails that held Christ to the cross but God's love for you and me. That quotation somehow points out the reason why the cross of Christ is mighty. It is the power of God's great love for us that makes the Cross mighty. But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us…(Romans 5:8 NLT)

It is important now and again to ask ourselves how deeply we know and experience the might of the cross. Am I growing in my understanding of God's great love through Christ's death on the cross?
The great demonstration of God's love is His complete forgiveness of our sin. But you know that God could not just forgive our sin because His Holiness demands that we must be punished for it. God who declared that the 'wages of sin is death' cannot simply dismiss our wickedness. So Christ came down to us, took all our sin and took all our punishment when he suffered and died on the cross. Through his death of immeasurable cost and suffering, Christ not only paid our sin to satisfy God's holiness. He also secured God's total forgiveness of our sin. Through Him, God demonstrated His great love. God's love is great because His gracious forgiveness restored us to a permanent and growing relationship with Him. The Bible also calls this our salvation. So we acquired this relationship with God not because we earned it or worked for it or even begged in mercy for it. We stress again that it was achieved for us by Christ on the cross and we could only accept it. After granting us forgiveness, God did not just leave us altogether alone to see if we could 'do well in our relationship with Him this time.' Rather, God promised that His spirit would live forever in us to enable us to become more and more like Him.

As we grow in Him, it is very important always to keep in mind the love of God. In the first place, the love of God tells us that we are saved to eternal life not just by 'our believing' in Christ but in realizing through faith that long ago, we had been granted salvation through Christ. But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so very much that even while we were dead because of our sin, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead (Eph 2:4-5 NLT). Likewise, it is never my obedience to God, my commitment to the church and my dedication to the ministry that would make me right with God. I have already been made right with Him forever when God in His love forgave me through the death of Christ alone. But the love of God tells and guides me how I should now live in Him and for Him. I cannot do anything anymore to make Him love me more. Through Christ's death on the cross, He has already shown me the full power and extent of His love. But I can and I must fruitfully and meaningfully grow in Him by living in the spirit of pure thankfulness and humility and the love He has given me. Only with such attitudes could I fully and truly enjoy the power of His love and His resurrection where my words and deeds would harmonize to glorify Him. Then I act as an instrument of the Gospel of Christ, constantly playing the music of His grace.

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