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On Wednesday nights, I open our Bible study meeting with about 5-10 minutes reading a book. We’ve read through some great books in the 3.5 years we’ve been doing this. Currently, we’re reading Sinclair Ferguson’s Grow in Grace (Banner, 1989). We’re in chapter 5 where Sinclair has landed upon the cross. Or, from the reading, it seems better to say the cross has landed upon him! He is meditating on three things the cross means.  He asks the all-important questions: “How do we find the grace of God in the cross?  How has it become God’s instrument of salvation to those who have faith?”  Then he gives three Pauline reasons in answer.  I’ll print quotes from each section in the next couple of posts.

The Cross of Christ demonstrates the love of God

When the famous text John 3:16 tells us taht God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that men might not perish, it means that God gave his Son over to the death of the cross.  The cross is the measure of the love of God. That is why James Denney, a Scottish theologian of a former generation, used to say that the only time he ever envied a Roman priest his crucifix was when he wanted to brandish one before his hearers and say: ‘God loves you like that!’  Although he used no such visual aid the apostle Paul saw this as the burden of his own preaching.  We preach Christ-having-been-crucified, he said.

When we think of Christ dying on the cross we are shown the lengths to which God’s love goes in order to win us back to himself.  We would almost think that God loved us more than he loves his Son!  We cannot measure such love by any other standard.  He is saying to us: I love you this much.

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