A Crushed God

Augustus Toplady wrote the words to the “Rock of Ages” hymn around 1775. Today I am struck by the power of this second verse:

Not the labors of my hands
can fulfill thy law's demands;
could my zeal no respite know,
could my tears forever flow,
all for sin could not atone;
thou must save, and thou alone.

Each year when we come to the passion of Christ, I find myself confronted with the question, “Why did Jesus have to die?” I have to ask myself if the severity of sin really warranted such extreme measures to atone. Yet it doesn’t take long to look at the brokenness in my own life and the severity of evil in the world around me to recognize that something is deeply wrong, and it looks about as bad as Christ on a cross.

Sin and darkness prefer to stake out in the shadows. Nothing makes Satan happier than going by unnoticed, so, unsurprisingly, we might initially think the cross of Christ is overblown. The fact that we might see Christ’s suffering as extreme is a testament to how hidden sin can be in the world.

Despite sin's inclination to obscurity, there are no shadows on the darkest day in history. The depths of death and the power of God’s love are equally on display. So much so that the centurion who executed Jesus looked up and saw the truth of who Jesus was—the son of God.

In many ways, the cross of Christ was the grave’s victory, but it was equally the grave’s embarrassment and the stripping of death’s power. That’s why Paul writes in Colossians 2:15 that on the cross, Christ “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.” Their shame was in the stunning depiction of the spotless lamb of God beaten and torn beyond recognition, hanging on a splintery beam for all to see. No longer could the extent of sin’s consequences be hidden.

While thinking about how helpless we are to save ourselves, as “Rock of Ages” so eloquently reminds us, I’m also struck by how different God’s ways of dealing with sin are from ours. Consider what the prophet says in Isaiah 53:10. “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.”

How could it be the will of God to crush Jesus? How could a good God be so cruel?

Perhaps holy crushing is not what we think it is.

To be sure, Christ suffered immensely. His body and soul were broken and poured out for you. Jesus did not activate some superpower that made him immune to the pain of either the physical or spiritual torment he endured. There will never be a Good Friday service that can capture Christ’s suffering. Perhaps those early apostles and the martyrs throughout history have a picture of what Christ endured, but we will never fully know.

All I know is that Christ was broken, and that was the will of the Lord.

It’s hard for us to understand this kind of crushing. Most of us resist even the slightest pain of the Father’s pruning. As counter-intuitive as it seems, we push back against surrendering our sins. If the crushing Christ endured was the crushing we deserved, or rather, the crushing we needed to be purged of the grip of sin and death, how would we bear such a cost?

Yet Christ did not need to be crushed to atone for himself! He was without sin; therefore, in becoming sin, he paid the price for redemption. So clearly, the crushing of Christ was not an attempt at obtaining self-righteousness as it would be for us.

For a moment, I am perplexed. In my spirit, something is stirring that says the crushing of Christ was not a cruel punishment but a grace-filled crescendo to glory. Still, I do not understand this, so I’m left to hold this truth and turn my eyes to the cross of Christ.

When I look at the cross, my first impression is to look away. I know in my soul that I’m drawing terrifyingly near to the eternal image that best describes what I deserve. I’d rather stay in numb ignorance of how guilty, vile, and helpless I am.

My second impression is amazement. If, for some moment, I can grasp that this image of suffering has implications for my freedom, I am in wonder. Still, I can’t help but feel skeptical that Christ would do that for me. Less still, am I convinced that God the Father would have wanted this to befall his perfect Son.

Yet today, I have a third impression of the cross. I simply see God. I see him revealing himself to me in the image of Christ on the cross. Not just as a symbol of how truly evil evil is. Not only a conduit of grace. I see the majesty of Christ.

He’s there on the cross in suffering pain yet swelling with purpose under the broken-hearted love of Yahweh. He’s there weeping over Jerusalem and, in practically the next breath, coughing up blood and water as he gasps for oxygen. He’s there crying out prophetically for all of humanity, “Not my will, but yours be done!” In renouncing his will, he declares that this crushing he is enduring is the Father’s will and that it is better.

God’s will was to crush him, but it wasn’t a crushing that we know. It was a crushing of love unto glory. It was a crushing of God, so the prophecy of Psalm 22:31 might echo through eternity: "They shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.”