Through the death of Christ on the cross making atonement for sin, we get a perfect standing before God. That is justification, and it puts us, in God's sight, back in Eden before sin entered. God looks upon us and treats us as if we had never sinned.
What was once foolishness to us-a crucified God-must become our wisdom and our power and our only boast in this world.
O Priest! Take care lest what was said to Christ on the cross be said to you: He saved others, himself he cannot save!
The motive of grace is the infinite, compassionate love of a merciful God, but the work of grace was the death of Christ on the cross.
Man is in fact nailed down - like Christ on the Cross - to a grid of paradoxes. He balances between the torment of not knowing his mission and the joy of carrying it out, between nothingness and meaningfulness. And like Christ, he is in fact victorious by virtue of his defeats.
I was taught to be Biblical: “Forgive them for they know not what they do.
Men have said that the cross of Christ was not a heroic thing, but I want to tell you that the cross of Jesus Christ has put more heroism in the souls of men than any other event in human history.
Exalt the Cross! God has hung the destiny of the race upon it. Other things we may do in the realm of ethics, and on the lines of philanthropic reforms; but our main duty converges into setting that one glorious beacon of salvation, Calvary's Cross, before the gaze of every immortal soul.
In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.
The Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin.
Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.
Easter is always the answer to "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!"
All God's plans have the mark of the cross on them, and all His plans have death to self in them.
In Jesus Christ on the Cross, there is refuge; there is safety; there is shelter; and all the power of sin upon our track cannot reach us when we have taken shelter under the Cross that atones for our sins.
Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.
The meaning of atonement is not to be found in our penitence evoked by the sight of Calvary, but rather in what God did when in Christ on the cross He took our place and bore our sin.
Our great Pattern hath showed us what our deportment ought to be in all suggestions and temptations. When the devil showed Him "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them," to tempt Him withal, He did not stand and look upon them, viewing their glory, and pondering their empire. . . . but instantly, without stay, He cries, "Get thee hence, Satan. " Meet thy temptation in its entrance with thoughts of faith concerning Christ on the cross; this will make it sink before thee. Entertain no parley, no dispute with it, if thou wouldst not enter into it.
