Why the cross? That has long been an issue for Christians. Surely, we ask, there had to be an easier way for God to make forgiveness of sins and human renewal possible? Perhaps God could have continued to use the sacrificial system of the Temple (God tried this but people never seemed to change). Maybe God could have started over and the world would have learned its lesson (tried that with Noah and Noah started all over by making wine and getting drunk). Maybe God could have simply forgiven humanity (not sure how many times God forgave and we humans went right back to our same old ways of living). So again, why the cross? I believe the answer can be found in D. M. Baillie's book God Was in Christ. By following Baillie's argument I hope it will become clearer why God chose the horror of the cross as the instrument of God's reconciling and renewing work in the world.
The first part of Baillie's argument is that sin is real, cannot be ignored and must be dealt with. This is so first because sin is not simply people doing somewhat bad things but that sin is instead the orientation of human hearts that leads them to death dealing ways thus destroying the good that God has created. Sin robs persons of their opportunity to be fully human, and enjoy the blessings that God offers in this world. Sin must also be dealt with because sin's destruction of humanity and creation causes great pain to God who loves the whole world. God's love for the world is so great that God desires nothing more than for human beings to live in right relationship with Gods self, one another and with creation. Thus in order to save humanity from death and into life something has to be done about sin.
The second part of the argument concerns what must be done. For Baillie this is a costly self-offering of God's own self. Why is this? This is so because there is a great deal of difference between a "good natured indulgence and a costly reconciliation." Baillie puts it this way, "Is there no difference between a good-natured indulgence and a costly reconciliation? There is an immense moral and spiritual difference between the two. And which of them are we to attribute to the love of God? Does the whole process of reconciliation cost Him nothing? Is His forgiveness facile and cheap? And if it were, or if we accepted it as such, would it have the liberating power, to set us free for a new and better life?"
(p. 172) To grasp concept this we must consider the difference between indifference and forgiveness. If someone takes something from me about which I do not care I can say, "I forgive you," and it will cost me nothing because I am really indifferent. In addition my indifference will have little if any impact on the one who has taken from me because they can tell I do not care. However, if someone takes something from me that is dear to me, for me to forgive them is costly to me because it hurts to forgive. I pay a price. That kind of costly forgiveness also contains within it the possibility of real change in the life of the one who has taken from me because they can see the pain they have caused.
The final part of Baillie's argument then is that in order for God to save humanity from sin, and transform us into loving human beings, God must pay a price…God must go to the cross. "What Jesus offered to God was Himself...But if, on the deepest interpretation, this was not only an offering made by a man to God, but also a sacrifice made by God Himself, then it is part of the sacrifice that God is continually making, because He is infinite Love confronted with human sin. And it is an expiatory sacrifice, because sin is a dreadfully real thing which love cannot tolerate or lightly pass over, and it is only out of the suffering of such inexorable love that true forgiveness, as distinct from an indulgent amnesty, could ever come. That is the objective process of atonement that goes on in the very life of God." (pp. 197-198) Thus the cross becomes a necessary evil/good through which humanity can be and is being changed into the very likeness of the image of God. Forgiveness now makes an actual difference in our lives so that we can become new people. The challenge for us then is to allow that transforming power to work within us that we too might be continually brought from death to life.
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