The Empty Cross
Sunday 20th April 2025
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
1 Peter 1:3 (NIV)
The Empty Cross
Michael Green once wrote a book with the title The Empty Cross of Jesus. It’s a great title because it implies that Jesus was once on the cross, but he’s there no longer – and both are necessary for our salvation and our hope.
We need Jesus to have been on the cross because that’s where and how he paid for our sins. And we need the cross – and also the tomb – to be empty now, to show that our sins have been fully paid for:
My sin oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
my sin, not in part, but the whole,
is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more;
praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
When Peter spoke on the day of Pentecost he quoted from Psalm 16 to explain what had happened in God raising Jesus from the dead: “you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, you will not let your holy one see decay” (Acts 2:27, NIV).
If God had left Jesus to decay – whether on the cross or in the tomb – it would mean that Jesus wasn’t the holy one after all and he couldn’t be our saviour. “The fact that he paid in full for our sins on the cross meant that he must be raised again; less than full payment would mean he would remain condemned” (Peter Jensen, The Life of Faith).
And so Paul can write that Jesus was “delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25, NIV). On the other hand, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17, NIV).
We live in a sin-and-death world, where people are born in sin and die in their sins – unless Jesus saves us. It’s the world we live in, and the world we’ll die in unless Jesus comes first. But Jesus, through his death and resurrection, has ushered in his new world of righteousness-and-life – and so everything is changed, and for ever:
“From the door of the empty tomb, all is changed. Death has been swallowed up in victory! The risen Lord reigns!” And so “the Christian world-and-life view is hopeful, focused on hope because of the redemption and resurrection of Jesus Christ” (quoted by Dick Keyes, Seeing Through Cynicism).
Prayer
I praise you, Father, for raising Jesus from the dead as my Lord and Saviour; and I praise you for the hope I have because my sin is paid for “not in part, but the whole.” Amen.
Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)