Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Mar/94

Contributor - A. Gardiner Skelly

Title - Wise or Otherwise

Topic - Crucifixion

Was the Cross of Christ a period or was it simply a comma? Was it the final curtain upon a completed drama or was it merely intermission time?

Certainly there were those who hoped that it was a final conclusion. That was the basic intention of His enemies who nailed Him there. They were threatened by His growing popularity It made them nervous. This sort of thing could easily get out of hand. He must be stopped. So the charges were concocted; the trial rigged; the cross was erected and the nails were driven into His anguished, torn flesh with terrible terminal intentions. This was to be the end is nonsense, once a I!!

Yes, as far as His enemies were concerned, the cross was certainly meant to be a conclusion. But as well, we can also see that, as far as His friends were concerned, the cross seemed to be frighteningly conclusive. That is precisely why they were so devastated by it. For three brief, but beautiful, years they had basked in the radiant sunshine of His friendship. Spellbound, they followed because He had filled their lives with love and their hearts with hope. And then, suddenly, it was all over. They were left with the legacy of a corpse and a cross. And that cross was, for them, devastatingly final.

Yes, His enemies meant it to be conclusive; His friends feared it to have been conclusive. And, in a strange but unmistakable way, Jesus Himself seems to suggest that it was conclusive. With His dying breath there escapes from His lips the cry, "It is finished". And even when we understand those words as a cry of achievement, and I am convinced that that is how we ought to understand them, they still convey a sense of some task neatly rounded out to its final conclusion. It is finished. Did He mean that the physical pain of crucifixion was all but finished through the release of His impending death? Did He mean that His mysterious incarnational sojourn in human history was finished? Did He mean that the cosmic struggle between good and evil, focused in His cross, had been victoriously concluded? We shall never know for certain the precise meaning of that cry, but these are certainly among the possible interpretations upon which the great theologians have pondered and puzzled. Certainly there is the strong suggestion here that in His cross something final and definitive has been accomplished, once for all, on our behalf; something to which we cannot and do not need to add; something which we can but accept in humble gratitude. That is a profound and wonderful aspect of the cross.

But there is another side to this coin. For He who said on Calvary, "It is finished", has also said, "Whosoever would be my disciple must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me". We cannot and do not have to add to our Lord's finished work on Calvary, yet in a profound sense, we are never really finished with this cross. It is both the badge and the price of our discipleship. We are to carry it daily, which means that we are to take those Calvary concepts, those precious principles of love and sacrifice and self-denial and disciplined devotional obedience into our lives and into our daily relationships, until, through the receding smog of our selfishness, others begin to see some dim glimmer of His likeness in us. It isn't easy; but always there is that inexhaustible grace available. And there is more than enough of it for all of us. Thanks be to God.

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