We all know Jesus died for our sins. He atoned for them, becoming an offering for sin and bearing them in His own body on the cross, so we wouldn’t have to be punished for them. (1 Pet. 2:24; 2 Cor. 5:21) But do you realize there were other very powerful and significant things His death on the cross brought about? Let’s look at some of what we know Jesus accomplished when He died on that cross at Calvary.
First, I don’t want to minimize how Jesus’ death atoned for our sins and made forgiveness and reconciliation with God possible. We know that Adam and Eve’s disobedience brought a curse on mankind. Their sin opened a Pandora’s Box that man has never been able to close since. Spiritual and physical death came upon us, with all that attends them. Separated from God, we human beings have spiraled out of control into more and more sin and darkness. By becoming a human being, Jesus was able to be our Substitute and Representative, and bear the punishment we deserve. His death made it possible for God to forgive us and adopt us into His family, and begin a work of sanctification and restoration that won’t be completed until we’re glorified in His presence someday. Romans 4:25 says “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. We’re now in an on-going process of being transformed from glory to glory!
Jesus also bore the curse of the law for us. He was cursed, so we might be blessed. (Gal. 3:13, 14) He actually fulfilled all the law of God and was its end, its goal or purpose in God’s sight. (Ro. 10:4) He was the total fulfillment of it, He bore all the consequences of human disobedience to it while actually obeying it perfectly Himself. He now comes to live it out in us who believe and accept His sacrifice in our place.
Jesus’ death on the cross also gave us the greatest example of what life is to be that could ever have been given. First, He showed the great love of God for fallen sinners by being willing to lay down His own life for them. There is no better example of love. That’s why John says, “Greater love has no man than this, that he might lay his life down for his friends.” (Jn. 15:13)
We’re so blessed by this love He demonstrated for us. But He also showed the greatest example of love for His Father in that He was willing to go through all of that on the cross in obedience to Him. Whatever the Father commanded, desired, or willed, Jesus was willing to carry out. Jesus truly loved God with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength, and He also loved His neighbors (all of us) as He loves Himself. (Matt. 22:37) His life and death reveal the indescribable beauty of God’s character of love. He truly is the greatest and most beautiful example of love anyone could ever contemplate!
His death on the cross was also the greatest example of worship in the history of the world. When Abraham went to sacrifice his son, he said to his servants, the boy and I will go yonder and worship, then come back to you. (Gen. 22:5) It was a tremendous example of true worship, because worship comes from a root word meaning to honor, esteem, or value. When Abraham was willing to sacrifice his beloved son, he showed how much he honored God. He honored Him above every human affection and above his own desire and love, even for his beloved son. He loved and honored God supremely.
Yet Jesus’ death on the cross was an even greater and fuller expression of what was originally pictured for us through Abraham. That is, what Abraham and Isaac only typified, Jesus fully carried out. He was the beloved Son Himself, the One who “carried the wood” up the hill, in order to die on it Himself. God the Father was pictured in Abraham, willing to sacrifice His only Son, His beloved Son. Jesus was the divine Isaac, willing to submit to death on a cross in honor of His Father. And they weren’t just willing to do this; they actually carried it out to the bitterest possible end!
Therefore Jesus’ blood is the most costly and worthwhile sacrifice ever given to honor and worship God. His death on the cross is worth more than all the worship of all believers since the dawn of time. It’s worth more than all the singing of all the choirs of angels since creation began, because of what it cost. It cost agony, pain, sorrow, excruciating suffering, and death. It cost humiliation, mockery, blasphemy. It cost Jesus so much; therefore it is worth so very much. It pleased God absolutely. So Jesus died as an example of God’s love to us, but He was also an example of how much we should love and worship God.
Jesus did so much for us as human beings. But He also did what He did for the glory, the honor, the worship and esteem of God. He did it to show God’s glory and worth. Thus we see a human dimension and a Godward dimension to what Jesus accomplished. But there is yet a third dimension to consider, one we may not have thought as much about.
That dimension concerns the rebel forces of darkness which currently rule this planet. Jesus’ death on the cross accomplished something powerful in that dimension as well. We might say His death on that cross was the ultimate act of cosmic warfare. What He did there was meant to break the power of the rebellious “gods” who had invaded this world and usurped God’s place here. He died on that cross to defeat His enemies and take back what they had stolen from God and the Kingdom of God.
First Cor. 2:8 says if the rulers of this world or this age had understood what was going on when Jesus died on that cross, they would never have crucified Him. Some scholars say the rulers referred to were Pilate, Herod, the Romans, the Jewish Sanhedrin, etc. But if you think about it, the verse doesn’t really make sense if it’s speaking of human rulers. Why? Because let’s face it, if they’d understood what Christ’s death would mean for them, they would’ve gone ahead with it, even if they thought it unpleasant. After all, they would’ve been forgiven and saved too. On the other hand, the spiritual or demonic rulers of this age certainly wouldn’t have gone through with it if they’d known what Jesus was doing it for, because Jesus’ death on the cross spelled their eternal downfall!
Hebrews 2:14, 15 says Jesus’ death on the cross destroyed him who had the power of death, that is, the devil. How or why is this? Because Satan gained that power of death through Adam and Eve’s disobedience. They fell under the curse of death because they disobeyed and deserved it. By dying for their sins, Jesus took Satan’s power out of the way, because his only right to authority over us was our sin, and Jesus paid for that and removed it as a reason for Satan’s authority over us.
First John 3:8 says the reason Jesus appeared on earth was to destroy the devil’s works. The devil is the rebel leader of the fallen hosts of angels and demons. They all rebelled against God before mankind was even created. They all said they would be like God and would rule in His place (Is. 14; Ez. 28). When Satan told Eve she would be like God (or the gods) if she ate of the tree, he was telling her the same lie he himself believed! Satan wanted to be God. By getting Adam and Eve to sin, he became the god of this epoch, this age, this world. (2 Cor. 4:4; 1 Jn. 5:19). Man’s sin is what keeps him in bondage and under Satan’s authority. It keeps him in the rebel camp, separated from the Kingdom of God, alienated from God’s friendship and power.
When Jesus came to this world and was born in Bethlehem, Satan was there to try and destroy Him. This is pictured for us in Rev. 12, where a dragon waits for the birth of a special Child. It was carried out physically when Herod had the babies in Bethlehem murdered. But God got Jesus out of there, just in time! Satan knew from what God had told Eve in the Garden (Gen. 3:15) that one day Someone would come who would crush his head. All the signs around His birth tipped the devil off that this must be the One, so he did his best to take Jesus out. But Satan is a loser with a capital L!
Jesus said no one could plunder a strong man’s house unless he first bound the strong man (Matt. 12:29). When He came to this world, He came to bind that strong man, Satan, and plunder his house. When Jesus confronted the devil in the desert at the beginning of His ministry (Matt. 4), He began the process of binding him. He defeated Satan and overcame everything the devil tried on Him. Then He came into Galilee in the power of the Holy Spirit and began really “plundering” his “house,” the world and the people captive in it. Jesus went about doing good, healing people and freeing them from the devil’s oppression (Acts 10:38) He was, in the words of evangelist Reinhart Bonnke, “plundering hell to populate heaven.”
All of this began in Jesus’ earthly ministry, and continues through the work of the Church today. As Christians, we are warriors in God’s army, and our lives are meant to be lived in warfare against the enemy. But the greatest act of cosmic warfare was the cross, not just the healings or exorcisms Jesus performed or we carry out today. Why? Because the ultimate reason for Satan’s authority was man’s sin and alienation from God. Only Jesus’ atoning death made it possible for mankind to be redeemed, and not mankind only, but also the entire cosmos! By coming to this embattled earth, Jesus invaded the devil’s territory, the place he had invaded and usurped, to take it back for its rightful owner, the Triune God. Satan’s rebellion will not be allowed to stand. Jesus is God’s way of rectifying and resolving the cosmic conflict and rebellion.
But rather than just obliterating the devil and his angels with overwhelming force, God chose to make a cosmic demonstration out of them and defeat them by methods supremely His own. He did not choose to use His infinite power and just dominate the universe. Instead, He humbled Himself and became a servant in order to demonstrate God’s character and superior ways. God works through humility and love, not coercion and brute force. He defeated Goliath through a simple shepherd with a sling. He defeated the devil through the Man, Christ Jesus. Satan wanted to be like God. Adam and Eve wanted to be like God. Jesus was God, but humbled Himself to become a man. He emptied Himself, and submitted totally to His Father. Satan hates God and has raised up a kingdom of hatred and chaos. Jesus loved God and man, and came in quietness and submission to show us the better way. Everything He does is supremely wise, but also supremely beautiful!
The evil ones didn’t understand what was happening on that cross. They thought they’d finally won and gotten the Son of God into a place of defeat. But in the most awesome demonstration of wisdom, love, and humility, Jesus submitted Himself to all the evil of Satan and fallen mankind, revealing the superiority of God’s Kingdom. He let the “serpent,” Satan, bruise His heel, absorbing the pain, bearing the cost, because He knew it was God’s way to crush that serpent’s head forever.
These things are very hard for us to understand, and in fact, the Bible says even angels look into this with curiosity and amazement, struggling to comprehend the majesty of God’s ways (1 Pet. 1:12). No wonder it was so impossible for the devil and his minions to understand what was happening. What Jesus did was completely foreign to their arrogance, selfishness, and cruelty. They could never fathom the depths of God’s wisdom! The cross was the supreme revelation of the beautiful character and nature of God! That’s why Paul said God has shined in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6).
In the Book of Revelation, chapters 5 & 6 and following, we get another view of this. John sees God seated on His throne in heaven, with a scroll in His hand. Many scholars take this scroll to symbolize a sort of “title deed” to the earth. There are various passages that speak of how the ancients would have two such title deeds drawn up when they’d buy or sell a property. This scroll is sealed with seven seals. It seems to represent the redemption of the earth, the fallen and rebellious part of God’s universe. Who can open that scroll? Who can take back authority over the earth and redeem it from the hands of those who now control it with evil schemes?
An inquiry is made in heaven and earth, a search for someone who could redeem the rebellious part of the universe and get it back under God’s control and back into order. No one is found in heaven or earth or all of time! No human being, no angel, nobody is worthy or capable of doing this work. John the apostle weeps and weeps, because he instinctively knows the significance of this scroll. He knows it represents the authority over earth and the redemption of the fallen cosmos. It represents order, peace, love, the restoration of all that mankind lost in the Fall. And nobody can do what needs to be done. It seems all is lost and the world is doomed!
But then John is told not to weep anymore, because the Lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed to open the seals of the scroll and bring things back to what God originally intended them to be. John turns to see this Lion, but instead, he sees a Lamb, and a Lamb looking like it had been slain! How can this be? Of course, John knew this Lion/Lamb. He’d been by His side for over three years when He walked this earth during His time of humiliation. Now John sees Him in glory! Praise erupts at that moment, a chorus of praise the likes of which has never been heard or seen, and thousands and thousands of angels and all beings of heaven and earth burst forth in praise for this Person, the Lion who became a Lamb, and was slain so mysteriously, and in that way that seems so opposite to what anyone would’ve imagined, defeated the powers of darkness and redeemed mankind, and all of the fallen universe. The rest of the book of Revelation shows how He will begin to systematically strip the enemy of his power and his strongholds, one by one, until, in the final culmination, “the kingdom of this world becomes the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Messiah, and He will reign forever and ever.” (Rev. 11:15)
Yes, Jesus died on that cross for our sins, but He also died for many other things, and this scene in Revelation is a picture of the greatest victory ever won, a victory won in the most unusual, most contrary way to all human and demonic thinking, but a way which demonstrated God’s love, His wisdom, His humility, His worth, and His glory! The cross reveals this as nothing else ever could! I conclude with the words of the apostle Paul:
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?”
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen. Ro. 11:33-36 NIV
If you want to hear a wonderful song that expresses some of these things, go to https://sovereigngracemusic.bandcamp.com/track/only-in-the-cross
Gal 6:14
May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. NRSV