Back to Basics: What Really Happened at the Cross?

The cross isn't about God punishing Jesus to satisfy divine anger, but rather God entering human suffering to transform it with love. Jesus consistently demonstrated God's heart of forgiveness throughout his ministry, not just at the cross. Luke's Gospel shows Jesus forgiving his executioners, welcoming a criminal into paradise, and the temple curtain tearing to remove all separation between God and humanity. Paul uses figurative, legal language to describe the cross as liberation from shame and spiritual oppression. This understanding calls Christians to live cruciform lives, absorbing hurt and returning love, choosing forgiveness over retaliation in daily life.

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Transcript

So there was a summer early on in my youth ministry days when I was responsible for writing curriculum for a summer camp that our church was participating in. And it wasn't just like writing devotionals, it was. I had to prepare curriculum for the whole camp. And that, for me as a young person, was a pretty big deal. Our design team had gotten together and we had come up with a theme, but I was the leader of the curriculum group that turned the whole theme into what a week of camp would look like.

So each person on my particular curriculum team, we had one session we were responsible for. There was a morning session and an evening session every day throughout the week. And I was supposed to put all of that together and deliver to the camp a finalized form of curriculum. I was supposed to work on the transitions between the sessions that made everything flow smoothly. I was supposed to set up all the small group guides, create a list of supplies for all of the events that were going to take place within the small group activity sessions.

And then I was supposed to report back to the worship team what the daily scriptures were so that the worship team could focus. Worship in the evening and a camp speaker were all supposed to be coordinated. It was supposed to look great and kind of, kind of flow together. And for me, as a young youth minister, I was excited. There was a lot of responsibility here.

But I also knew as a young person that this was going to take a lot of dedication for me to get it done right. And as I tend to do, I decided I would wait just the right amount of time in order to get it done. That right amount of time was the very last possible second. Right.

I knew that life gets busy when you do youth ministry. There's all kinds of things that happen. You've got hospital visits, you got to make, youth soccer games, you got to show up for band competitions, to go cheer at last minute meetings, and teenagers who make everything a fire in their lives, right? And then before I knew it, the deadline was here and the curriculum wasn't here. I remember being at my desk with that feeling that you get when you know you've forgotten something.

So the camp director called the pastor of my church and he was waiting for the materials. And I could hear the conversation because the pastor was on a cell phone walking towards my office. And I heard my name a couple of times. And so I braced myself. I knew what was coming.

I knew the question they were asking, where's the curriculum? Why isn't it here? Why isn't it done yet? Why don't we have it and then I heard my senior pastor say, that's on me. I actually asked Matt to hold off on a few things because he's been helping me work on a new project for the church.

I'll have him get it to you soon.

And I just. I sat there in my office because you know what? It really wasn't on him at all. He hadn't asked me to hold off on anything at all. He was actually covering for me.

And he did it without any hesitation either. He bought me time I didn't deserve. And in that moment, he absorbed the frustration that should have landed on my shoulders. He protected my reputation when I hadn't even protected my own deadlines. And at the time, I didn't really fully understand what had happened.

In that moment, I thought maybe it was just him trying to smooth things over. Maybe he didn't want to give our church a bad reputation. But later, when I had space to breathe, the curriculum was done. That moment hit me. He wasn't just being kind to me, he was shielding me.

He was giving me room to grow. He was absorbing the consequences on himself that weren't his. So that in that moment, I wasn't crushed by those consequences. And I didn't recognize the sacrifice. In the moment, I misunderstood it.

For me, it was something simple. He had lied for me in that moment.

I didn't see the cost until much later, but in that moment, it looked to me a whole lot like grace. Someone stepping into the line of fire for me, someone taking responsibility for something they didn't do and then giving me time that I hadn't earned and offering a simple thank you. In moments like that, it just. It doesn't feel like enough. Right.

I say all this because today, this moment of self sacrifice by an incredible pastor reminds me a lot of what I've been taught about the cross. This moment of my failure of life, being covered by a pastor who cared for me reminded me that grace shouldn't just be an abstract thing that we talk about in church on Sunday mornings. Grace sometimes looks like someone absorbing what was meant for someone else. Not to punish, but to protect and to restore. And my whole life, I've been taught that this is what was so important about what the cross does for us.

If there's one symbol that defines Christianity for us, it's the cross, right? We wear crosses around our necks, put them in our ears, we plaster them on our cars, have stickers on our Bibles or our laptops. We hang them on our walls at home. But for many Christians, I think Today, the cross has been reduced to nothing more than a simple symbol, the focus that, if we're not careful, can pull our attention from the work of Jesus ministry. If we're too focused on the beams of the cross.

Often we see the cross as a moment of transaction, kind of this legal exchange, a cosmic bookkeeping moment where God vents anger on Jesus so that we don't have to experience that vented anger. This is a theological model that I think many of us in this place have inherited. And in this model, the cross becomes a courtroom instead of a revelation of who God is. Instead of revealing to us who God is and God's heart, it becomes for us a moment of transactional justice. So this particular model, I think that you should all recognize, is a model that theologians called, get ready.

The penal substitutionary atonement theory. Got it. Okay. It's the idea that God, guys, is angry. And the only thing that will take away God's anger is sacrifice.

But I believe that this understanding of the cross is too small. This understanding is too shallow. It's too transactional. Because the cross is not where God punishes Jesus for the sins of the world. It becomes the place where God reveals his deep commitment to the people that he calls his own.

This penal substitutionary atonement theory is not what Jesus teaches, and it's not what the early church proclaimed. When we look deeply at the life of Jesus and his death on the cross, I don't believe that this theory is what the cross reveals.

I think that many of us in this place have come to expect the cross as this place of divine retribution that Jesus ends up taking on himself. But this morning, I'm going to present to you the idea that the cross instead is a divine revelation of who God really is as expressed through the person of Jesus Christ. And if we misunderstand the cross and what it means for our hope, then we may miss what God is really doing. So here's the heart of my sermon today, and I want you to hear this. The cross is not about God punishing Jesus instead of us.

The cross is God absorbing the world's violence and transforming it with love. So let's talk about this version of the cross that we've all kind of inherited and why it's too small and too unlike Jesus. So many of us inherited this version of atonement, this making us right with God. That goes something like this. Humanity sinned.

God got really upset, and the only thing that could calm God down was a sacrifice big enough to absorb God's anger. So Jesus steps in, he takes that punishment for us, and now finally God can love us again. This understanding of what happened on the cross is what many of us, I think, were taught was the right way to understand it. Right? But this understanding of this sacrificial atonement raises a question for me.

If Jesus is the full revelation of God, which I think we as Christians are called to believe, if Jesus shows us exactly who God is through his very life, then why would God need the cross at all? Because when we look at Jesus revelatory life, we don't see a God who needs to be convinced to love us. We see God who already loves us, right? Think about what Jesus did through his whole ministry. Jesus forgave sinners, he heals the broken, he welcomes the outcast.

He refuses to condemn people that society said should be condemned. Jesus himself embodies mercy. And then Jesus ends up murdered on a tree.

The early church didn't teach that the cross was God punishing Jesus in our place. The early church theologians taught that the cross was God entering into human suffering to heal it from the inside out. Our church fathers taught that God stepped into the worst of what humanity can do and work to transform it. And nowhere is that clearer than in Luke's telling of the crucifixion. Because Luke doesn't just show up with Jesus dying, right?

We don't just hear about Jesus dying. Luke shows us what God is doing as Jesus dies. In those moments, he's forgiving, he's welcoming, he's fully revealing who God is. Jesus, when he dies on the cross, tears down every barrier between God and humanity. So I want us to read the story of the crucifixion again.

If you have your Bibles, you can open to the book of Luke, chapter 23. And we're going to start in verses 26 and go through 49. So Luke 23, 26, 49. You can follow along on the screen if you don't have your Bibles. Here's the word of the Lord for us this morning, as the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon of Cyrene, who was on his way from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it.

Behind Jesus. A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when all will say, blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never before, or sorry, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.

Then they will say to the mountains fall on us, and to the hills cover us. For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry? Two other men, both criminals, were also led out to him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there along with the criminals, one to his right and the other on his left. Jesus said, father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.

And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, he saved others. Let him save himself if he is God's Messiah, the chosen one. The soldiers also came up and mocked him.

They offered him wine vinegar and said, if you are the King of the Jews, save yourself. There was written the notice above him, which read, this is the King of the Jews. One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him. Aren't you the Messiah? Save yourself and us.

But the other criminal rebuked him. Don't you fear God? He said, since you were under the same sentence. We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.

Then he said, jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus answered him, truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. It was about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, father, into your hands I commit my spirit. When he had said this, he breathed his last.

The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, surely this was a righteous man. When all the people who had gathered to witness the sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went on away. But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

Friends, when we slow down and sit with Luke's telling of the crucifixion, something can happen in us if we really look at what's going on. The cross stops looking like a place where God vents his anger, and it starts looking like a place where God reveals God's own heart for us. Luke refuses to let the story of the cross become a story of punishment and transaction. Instead, he shows us, moment by moment, what God is doing in Jesus Christ. So let's walk through this together.

Did you catch the first words that Jesus said when he was hung on the cross? He says, father, forgive Them for they know not what they're doing. He doesn't say, Father. Punish them, Father. Get them back, Father.

This is what they deserve, not me. This is not what Jesus is doing. Forgiveness is not the result of the cross. Jesus death isn't what brings us forgiveness. Forgiveness is the entire posture of Jesus, not just in his death, but throughout his entire life and ministry on earth.

Church. The cross is not where God's forgiveness begins. It's where God's forgiveness refuses to end. Jesus forgives in that moment the very people who are murdering him. If we want to know what God is doing through the cross, we need to start there in that moment.

The next major move I want to talk about is what happens when the criminals who are crucified along with Jesus start to speak. One criminal mocks Jesus and demands that Jesus proves himself by saving all three of them from their crosses. Hey, is this who really who you think you are? Then don't just save yourself. Take us too.

We'll all go. The other criminal on the other side of Jesus says, remember me. And what is Jesus response? He says, today you will be with me in paradise. In that moment, Jesus doesn't ask him to recite the Lord's Prayer.

He doesn't care whether this man is baptized or not. He doesn't have him prove that he knows the Apostles Creed by heart. Instead, in that moment, he promises salvation. And I bet if this was preached in some churches, there'd be some religious people's heads spinning because some Christians would take absolute offense that Jesus would allow this criminal to enter heaven to be with them. I have worked really hard.

I have sat in this pew for so many weeks. I have listened to Matt go over time every single week for months on end. And they're gonna let this guy on the cross enter too? He's a sinner. How can he be with us?

Church, I want you to hear this. Let this be just a little reminder that Jesus was hung on a cross, right? We have to remember that justice in the hands of empire is whatever protects the powerful. I think we're seeing that in our own world today, right? And if Jesus can be declared guilty under that system, then none of us are safe.

But here in this moment, even in agony, Jesus is still welcoming. Jesus is still including. Jesus is still drawing people in, broadening the understanding of who can be included, who's in welcoming, even those who might make us as church folk a little uncomfortable.

The next thing that happens because of the cross takes place inside the temple. If you read the scripture, it's one little verse. And in that moment, we catch a powerful vision of what Jesus is doing. And if we don't know the history, we're going to miss it. Luke gives us this powerful image where scripture says that the curtain in the temple was torn.

Some of you might know it as the veil in the temple. It was torn in two. So that veil, this curtain in the temple, symbolized distance, separation, and fear. The idea that God is kind of locked away behind layers of holiness and ritual sacrifice. In the Jewish temple, this curtain served as a barrier for what was called the holy of holies.

It was a place where God was said to show up. It housed the ark of the covenant. And there was only one person who could go into that place. And only once a year at that the high priest could enter this area, but only one time during the year in order to offer a sacrifice for the atonement of sin for all of Israel. And at the moment when Jesus dies, that barrier is torn from top to bottom.

And it's a throwaway verse if you're not paying attention to it. But for us, it should really be a major moment because that one simple scripture has so much depth. The temple veil was not a small curtain like you might have in your house. It didn't just block out the sun when things get a little too bright. The veil in the temple was 60ft long, 30ft wide, and was 4 inches deep thick.

Can you imagine a woven piece of fabric that's 4 inches thick? The veil was so massive and heavy that it took 300 priests to manipulate it. An important point here is that no one can simply just tear the veil themselves. It would take more than human strength to tear it. The analogy is that it took the mighty hand of God himself to tear it in a supernatural way.

And this tearing, which represents the removal of the separation between God and humanity, could not be done by humans. It had to be done by God only. And that's the point of this moment. The tearing of the temple curtain didn't signify God getting angry and storming out of the temple, never to return. This is a moment that God breaks in.

It's God saying, no more distance, no more separation, no more fear.

Friends, the cross doesn't separate us from God. It removes every single thing that ever did. So what is God doing on the cross? He's forgiving, he's welcoming. He's tearing down barriers.

He's absorbing violence without returning it. Christ is loving deeply. The cross is not a moment where God's mind changes about us. The cross is the moment where God reveals God's own heart toward us. And Luke wants to see, wants us to see clearly that this is who God has always been.

I need you to hear this this morning. The cross is not God turning against Jesus or heaping all the guilt of every individual sin upon Christ. The cross is God through Christ entering into the worst part of human suffering. Jesus is not saving us from God. Jesus is revealing who God really is.

The cross doesn't convince God to love us any more than God already did. It should convince us that God has always loved us. At the cross, we get to see God's solidarity with the suffering, God's refusal to retaliate, God's forgiveness in the face of violence. We get to see that God's love is stronger than death, God's mercy is stronger than sin, and God's compassion is stronger than human cruelty toward one another.

I think many of us have been taught incorrectly about what the cross reveals.

Jesus expresses for us. God's divine love and how it's being willing to go to whatever lengths necessary to prove that love for each one of us. It's a love that instead of returning violence and anger, it absorbs it. The cross is Jesus stepping in to prove that the cycle of human violence does nothing but continue violence. And here we are in 2026, and we still can't seem to get away from that same hate and violence.

If we think about this kind of love and if we think that it's only ancient or only symbolic, I want to tell you where I've seen a little bit of love this week. So this afternoon after church, a number of our students and some of our youth leaders are going to be going to a mosque here in the Tulsa area. The Islamic Society of Tulsa is hosting an open house, not because everything for them is easy in this moment, but because things have been very hard. Do you realize that we made national news recently for the city of Broken Arrow? And let me be clear.

I think there are people who stand on both sides of the zoning issues in Broken Arrow, in this place, and that's fine. What's not okay is how we treat other people.

Thousands of people showed up at a council meeting to oppose the building of a new Islamic center in Broken Arrow. And much of the opposition to that building project was rooted in fear, suspicion, and the kind of stereotypes that get repeated so often that they begin to sound like truth for us, our Muslim neighbors. They felt that directed at them. They heard the comments. And if you were like me, you saw some of the comments online, so did they.

They watched people stand up at a public meeting and speak about them as if they were dangerous strangers instead of fellow Oklahomans. They absorbed all of that. They could have responded with anger, divisiveness. They could have been defensive. But they chose something different.

So today they're opening their doors and they're inviting the community to come in to ask questions. They said, come and see who we are. Come and meet us. Come and learn about us. They chose hospitality instead of hostility and relationship instead of retaliation.

They absorbed the hurt that they felt in those moments.

And those comments that they saw online afterward I can't imagine were easy to take. But instead of returning the kind of vitriol they received, they're choosing to return kindness instead. They're offering free snacks. So.

And when I look at their response to how they were treated, I cannot help but think of the shape of the cross in Luke's gospel. Because in Luke, Jesus absorbs violence and he returns forgiveness. He absorbs the cruelty and instead returns compassion.

Listen, I don't think any religious group is perfect. Our Muslim brothers aren't, and we certainly aren't. But in this moment, they're showing us something truly holy. They're showing us what it looks like when a community refuses to mirror the fear directed at them and instead invites people into a deeper understanding rather than living in fear. And I believe that that's exactly what Jesus does for us on the cross.

The Gospel of Luke shows us that the shape of love of Jesus in that moment happens in real time. And then later on, the Apostle Paul goes on to tell us what that love on the cross accomplishes. So I want us to read a little bit in the Apostle Paul. In the book of Colossians, chapter 2, verses 9 through 15, it says this. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.

And in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority in him. You were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self, ruled by the flesh, was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ.

He forgave us all our sins. And having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us. He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them by the cross. Church When Paul says he forgave us all our sins, canceling the charge of our legal indebtedness, nailing it to the cross, he's not saying that God punished Jesus instead of us.

He's saying that God raised, removed everything that stood between us and the life that God wants us to live. Paul is using courtroom metaphorically. The language here is metaphorical, not literal. Paul's not describing a transaction between God and Jesus. He's describing liberation from everything that enslaves us.

This legal indebtedness is not divine anger. It's a human captivity problem. It's the weight of shame, accusation, fear and spiritual oppression that keeps people trapped. And in that moment, God cancels it. He removes it.

God nails it to the cross so it cannot be accusatory of us anymore. Jesus lived his whole ministry showing us what Paul means by disarming the powers of his day. Jesus entire ministry was about correcting false teachings, healing those that the religious people wouldn't give time of day to. Jesus ate with sinners, brought joy at weddings. When the wine ran out, he gave life back to those who had died.

To prove that God's power cannot be overcome even by death, he changed the hearts of the wicked and the corrupt. And even with his first words on the cross, he forgave each of us for rejecting the love that he came here to show. Church Love, not wrath, is the engine of our salvation. Every single one of Jesus actions were meant to disarm the powers of the world.

Jesus isn't just absorbing God's wrath on the cross. Jesus is absorbing the world's wrath and he's transforming it into love.

So if the cross reveals God's heart, it also reveals our calling. If this is what God wants for us on the cross, then this is what God invites us to do in the world. To follow Jesus is to live cruciform lives, lives that are shaped by Jesus life giving, love. It means for us, church, that we've got to stop looking more like the world and start looking more like Jesus. It means we have to forgive even when it's costly, we have to love when it's inconvenient, we have to serve when it's uncomfortable.

We have to have compassion and choose that over retaliation every single time. We have to choose mercy over judgment. We have to choose peace over retaliation. The cross is not just something that Jesus did. It's something that Jesus invites us to.

Our task as followers of Jesus isn't to convert those who don't believe like us. If you remember Jesus, words are that we will have to take up our crosses daily to be followers.

So here's a question for us today. If the cross reveals God's heart, then what does it reveal about ours? Where do we need to absorb hurt instead of returning it? Where do we need to show forgiveness? Where do we need to choose compassion?

Where do we need to lay down our own weapons, both literal and figurative?

Where do we need to let love triumph in our lives? Because the cross is not just something to believe in, it's something to live out.

The cross is not only the shape of God's love for us, it should also be the shape of our love for the world. Because the world doesn't need more people who believe the right things about the cross. The world needs people who live out the love the cross reveals. So, Church, I invite you this week to find at least one practice to be intentional that helps us to live out the cross in our own lives. That might be forgiving someone.

That might be apologizing first even when you don't want to.

That might be serving someone without seeking recognition or choosing peace in moments that can be tense. But Church, whatever we choose to do, we have to let our lives reflect the shape of Jesus on the cross. Let's pray.