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Overview
The cross is an historical event that can bring us to heaven…
And a current event bringing heaven to bear on us
In The Power of the Cross, Tony Evans applies Christ’s work to life today.
In three parts, he systematically and pastorally explains three aspects of the cross:
- Its Person: What makes Christ unique, and how He is the center of salvation history
- Its Purpose: What was accomplished on it, and how it is to be the centerpiece of our lives
- Its Power: The stability and deliverance it provides in our everyday living
We wear crosses around our necks, but do we apply it to our lives? Jesus’ work holds incredible power for us. It’s time we embrace it, for God’s glory and our joy. Read The Power of the Cross to find out how.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802489432 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Moody Publishers |
| Publication date: | 01/19/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Sales rank: | 54,316 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
For more information, visit: www.TonyEvans.org.
Read an Excerpt
The Power of the cross
Putting it to Work in Your Life
By Anthony T. Evans, Jim Vincent
Moody Publishers
Copyright © 2016 Anthony T. EvansAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8024-1118-1
CHAPTER 1
THE UNIQUENESS
JESUS CHRIST IS the one-of-a-kind person in all of history. Jesus of Nazareth, the unique One, has undoubtedly been the subject of more books, more songs, and more devotion than anyone who has ever lived. His appearance on earth was so monumental that history divided around His life, before Christ (BC) and in the year of our Lord (anno Domini, or AD). Time has meaning to us as it is defined by the presence of Jesus Christ in history.
On one occasion Jesus' disciples voiced the question that people have continued to ask about Him for almost two thousand years. Having witnessed His miraculous calming of the sea, the Twelve looked at each other and asked, "What kind of a man is this?" (Matthew 8:27). In other words, who is this Jesus? The Gospels and the rest of the New Testament were written to answer that question and explain its implications for our lives.
In part 1 we will explore this greatest of all subjects, considering the uniqueness and authority of Jesus and then looking more deeply at His death and resurrection.
His Unique Identity
Jesus is unique because He is the only person who existed before He was born (see John 1:1, 14) and who is today what He has always been (Hebrews 13:8). That makes him Deity. But He is more than Deity. He is the only person whose earthly conception had no relationship to His origin. By virtue of His birth as a man, Jesus Christ is now both Son of God and Son of Man. He is Deity and He is humanity. He is the Godman — Deity incarnated, given flesh.
+His nature is "very God of very God," to use a phrase theologians coined to try to declare Christ's divine nature. A lot of people respect Jesus Christ as a great person, an inspiring teacher, and a great leader, but reject His deity.
This is heresy. You cannot hold Jesus in high regard while denying He is the eternal God, a point Jesus Himself made clear to the religious rulers, the crowds, and His closest disciples (for example, John 8:23-24, 28-29; 10:30-37).
Jesus Christ clearly and directly claimed to be God when He said, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). This statement is significant because the word "one" is neuter in form, meaning that He and the Father are one, perfect in nature and unified in essence. This was a personal claim of total equality with the Father. Those who heard this statement clearly understood it to be a claim to deity, for they immediately tried to stone Him for blasphemy because He made Himself equal to God (v. 33).
Four Proofs of His Deity
We could use a number of lines of argument to demonstrate Jesus' deity but I want to consider four of them, beginning with His preexistence. We have already said that Christ existed before His birth. The prophet Micah stated Christ's preexistence this way: "As for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity" (5:2).
This is a significant verse for several reasons, beginning with Micah's accuracy in prophesying Jesus' birthplace. I have visited Bethlehem, and even today it s a small town. Yet it was even smaller and more insignificant in Jesus' day, so for Micah to predict Bethlehem as Messiahs birthplace was more surprising, like telling readers where to find a needle in a haystack. But notice what the prophet said about this One who would be born in Bethlehem. He had no beginning; His existence reaches back into eternity past.
Likewise, the prophet Isaiah gave Jesus Christ the title "Eternal Father" (9:6), or "Father of eternity," in his prophecy of Jesus' first and second comings. Since Jesus is the Father of eternity, He is also the Father or initiator of time. But the only way Jesus could be the initiator of time is if He existed before time. This verse speaks of His preexistence and tells us that Christ is of a different nature than anyone who has ever lived.
The prophets were not the only ones who taught Jesus' preexistence. Jesus declared it Himself in an exchange that stunned and infuriated His Jewish detractors. They had accused Jesus of having a demon (John 8.52) because He claimed that anyone who believed in Him would not see death. They reviled Him and asked this question: "Whom do You make Yourself out to be?" (v. 53). That's a great question, but they didn't like Jesus' answer, especially when He said, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day" (v. 56).
The Jewish leaders replied, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?" (v. 57). They were getting upset because Jesus was making claims no man had ever made before. Then Jesus made this crucial statement: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am" (v. 58).
Don't miss the importance of the verb tenses Jesus used here. He was making a crucial claim. He did not say, "Before Abraham was born, I was" but "I am." This is significant because "I AM" is the name God gave Himself when He sent Moses to redeem Israel from Egypt.
"God said to Moses ... 'Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, "I AM has sent me to you"'" (Exodus 3:14). This is the term we transliterate as "Yahweh," the self-existing God. This name describes God's personal, self-sufficient, and eternal nature. The eternal God has no past, so He cannot say "I was." He has no future, so He cannot say "I will be." God exists in an eternal now.
Time is only meaningful to us because we are not independently self-sufficient and eternal. When Jesus told the Jews that He predated Abraham, He was claiming not only preexistence but Deity.
The second proof of Jesus' deity was He made Himself equal to God. By taking to Himself the most personal and hallowed name of God, "I am" in John 8:58, Jesus claimed equality with God. His hearers understood this perfectly, for on this occasion as well they picked up stones intending to stone Jesus for blasphemy (v. 59).
Jesus' claim is even stronger in John 5:17-18. '"My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.' For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God." Those around Him understood Jesus to mean that He was placing Himself on equal standing with God because He was claiming to be of the same essence as God.
The Bible elsewhere equates Jesus with God. Genesis 1:1 says that God created the world. But Colossians 1:16 says that by Jesus Christ, "all things were created." Either we have two Creators, or the God of Genesis 1 is the God of Colossians 1.
The apostle John made the identical claim for Jesus when he began his gospel by declaring, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). So the Word is distinct from God, yet the Word is equal with God.
John doesn't leave us in doubt about the identity of the Word. "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). Then he added, "No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him" (v. 18).
When you put these three verses together, you get quite a picture of Jesus Christ. He is distinct from God, yet equal with God. He took on human flesh for the purpose of making the invisible God visible to human beings. The writer of Hebrews said that Jesus "is the radiance of [God's] glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power" (Hebrews 1:3).
So don't let anyone tell you that Jesus is just a great man or merely a son of God. He is God, the Son. There is even stronger language in Hebrews 1:8, because here God Himself is the speaker. "Of the Son He says, 'Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.'" God the Father is calling His Son God. Nothing could be clearer or more direct than that. No wonder Paul wrote that in Jesus, "All the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9).
This cannot be said about anyone else. Jesus claimed equality with God, and the writers of Scripture consistently support that claim.
A third proof for Jesus deity is that Jesus readily accepted the worship of His disciples and others. For a mere human being to do that would be blasphemy. But Jesus' disciples came to recognize Him as God, and after Jesus resurrection and ascension, they had no hesitation in making that known.
One example of this worship is that great scene in John 20 when Jesus appeared to the disciples after His resurrection. Thomas had been absent during an earlier visit, and he said he would not believe unless he saw with his own eyes (v. 25). So Jesus came to the disciples and invited Thomas to touch His hands and side and to believe (v. 27). Thomas responded, "My Lord and my God!" (v. 28).
Not only did Jesus accept Thomas's declaration of worship, but He said that all those who believe in Him are "blessed" (v. 29). Notice that when Thomas said, My Lord and my God," Jesus said in effect, "Yes, I am He." He accepted the worship that is due to Deity alone. We can see worship being offered to Jesus throughout the Gospels. Earlier in Jesus ministry, the disciples worshiped Him after He calmed a storm (Matthew 14:33). Even demons acknowledged His deity, although Jesus silenced them (Mark 1:23 — 25). But Jesus Himself offered the strongest proof of His deity. He answered Satan's temptation with the statement, "Go, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only'" (Matthew 4:10).
Jesus said worship belongs to God alone, yet He received that worship. Only God could say what Jesus said.
A fourth proof of Jesus' deity is His membership in the Trinity. Titus 2:13 tells us that Jesus Christ is "our great God and Savior." The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and yet He is fully God. It also teaches that God the Father is God. The question the early church grappled with was how Jesus could be God yet also be distinct from the Father as the Son.
A child at our church once asked me, "Pastor, if Jesus is God, then who was He talking to on the cross when He said, 'My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?' Was He talking to Himself?" That's a very perceptive question. Jesus was not talking to Himself on the cross but to the Father. We can say this with confidence because the Bible teaches that the Godhead is composed of three distinct, yet coequal persons who share the same divine substance: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The term "trinity" is used for this foundational truth.
So when we talk about God, we could be talking about either the Godhead corporately or about any one of the three persons who make up the Godhead. God's Word teaches Jesus' deity because it presents Him as a member of the Godhead, the divine Trinity. Jesus identified Himself as distinct from the Father when Jesus called Himself "the Son of God" (John 10:36). Yet, just a few minutes before He said that, He also said, "I and the Father are one" (v. 30).
The unity of the Trinity and yet the distinction of its three members is evident in Jesus' commission to His disciples. He told us to baptize people "in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19). Normally we would expect to read the plural form "names" here, because Jesus mentioned three names. But He used the singular "name." So we must conclude either that Jesus was mistaken, or that He used the singular on purpose because the three members of the Godhead make up one entity.
There's no question which of these conclusions is correct. The name of God is singular because the triune God is one God. This is the consistent teaching of Scripture. Paul closed one of his letters with this benediction: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all" (2 Corinthians 13:14). Paul integrated the three persons of the Godhead because they are one.
The Trinity is not an easy concept to grasp because there is nothing like it in the universe. Without the Bible we would have no knowledge of this kind of existence. It is outside our realm of understanding to think of one God existing in three equal persons who are distinct personalities while sharing the same essence. There have been a number of illustrations suggested for the Trinity, but they all fall short of the mark because the Trinity is unique.
For example, someone has suggested the illustration of water, ice, and steam. All are made up of the same essence, yet they are distinct forms of that essence. The problem with this is that if we apply it to the Godhead, it makes it appear that God appears sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son, and sometimes as Spirit. But that is a heresy because the fullness of the Godhead is always present in each member of the Trinity.
Another common illustration of the Trinity is the egg. An egg has three parts — the shell, the yolk, and the white (albumen). The problem with this illustration is that none of these three parts by itself can be defined as an egg. They are just part of the egg. But the fullness of Deity resides in each individual member of the Godhead. Jesus Christ isn't part God; He is fully God. The same can be said of the Father and the Holy Spirit.
The best illustration I have come up with for the Trinity is a pretzel. A typical pretzel has three circles or holes formed by the dough. These holes are distinct from one another, and each hole is complete within itself. Yet the three holes are interconnected because they belong to the same piece of dough. They have the same character. There is only one pretzel, not three. This is not a perfect illustration, but I think it gets closer to the point. The biblical doctrine of the Trinity establishes the full deity of Jesus Christ. He is God.
The Human God
Yet Jesus is also man. He partakes of the nature of Deity because He is the Son of God. He also partakes of the nature of humanity because He is the "Son of Man." In fact, this was Jesus' favorite title for Himself.
Jesus left heaven to take on human flesh, which is what we mean by the term "incarnation." Jesus became flesh and blood, an event that was prophesied in Scripture hundreds of years before Jesus was born. Two prophecies from the book of Isaiah and their fulfillment in the New Testament give us a picture of Jesus' human nature. He was fully human yet unique in several important ways.
The most important distinctive of Jesus' human nature is that He was born of a virgin. In Isaiah 7:14 the prophet wrote, "The Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel." Two chapters later comes a second prophecy: "A child will be born to us, a son will be given to us" (9:6).
Notice how careful the Holy Spirit is with the language here. The Son is "given," not born. Why? Because as the Son of God, Jesus already existed. But the child is "born," a reference to Jesus' birth in Bethlehem. God the Father gave the Son to us through a supernaturally wrought conception in human flesh through the process of a human birth. Paul brought these prophecies from Isaiah together when he wrote, "When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law" (Galatians 4:4).
God "sent forth" the Son because the Son is given (Isaiah 9:6). Jesus was "born of a woman" because a child was to be born. This is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. The story of Jesus' birth confirms His distinctiveness as God in the flesh. Matthew says that the events of Jesus' birth happened "to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet [that is, Isaiah] (Matthew 1:22). Matthew preceded this statement with the specific reason for Christ's birth, "You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).
Essentially, Jesus was a baby who was born to die. Mary knew this. Joseph knew this. Even the wise men who came to worship the child in the cradle who had created them knew this. That's why the gifts they gave Him were gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The myrrh, in particular, is an expensive resin used as a perfume yet also used in burying the dead (John 19:39). The wise men gave Jesus this burial fragrance for the same reason Mary wrapped her newborn in swaddling clothes. Swaddling clothes kept a newborn's arms straight during his or her early days. The strips of cloth were not unlike the bandages used to wrap the dead. The meaning of both the swaddling clothes and the myrrh was not lost on Matthew, who had let us know that this baby had come to take away the sins of the world.
Significantly, the gospel writer earlier gave another testimony to the distinctiveness of Jesus' human nature. Matthew concluded the Lord's genealogy, writing, "Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah" (Matthew 1:16). The phrase "by whom" is critical here, because it is a feminine singular relative pronoun. That is very important because the Bible is saying that Jesus was conceived through Mary, but not by Joseph.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Power of the cross by Anthony T. Evans, Jim Vincent. Copyright © 2016 Anthony T. Evans. Excerpted by permission of Moody Publishers.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: The Centerpiece 9
Part 1 The Person of the Cross
1 The Uniqueness 25
2 The Foretelling 41
3 The Death 57
4 The Resurrection and the Ascension 69
Part 2 The Purpose of the Cross
5 The Accomplishments 83
6 The Identification 97
7 The Authority 109
8 The Release 121
Part 3 The Power of the Cross
9 The Stability 135
10 The Deliverance 149
11 The Remembrance 163
12 The Blessings 175
Conclusion: The Final Victory 187
Epilogue: Unity at the Foot of the Cross 197
The Urban Alternative 203
