Who Carries Our Cross?

John 19:17

So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of the skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.

This is a great and dreadful moment.  As we’ve already discussed, this is the sole event in human history – a horrific tragedy – where the victim is truly innocent.  This is, after all, the sinless Son of God bearing up our cross.  He trudges on, even after beatings and scourging that would have rendered him nearly broken, utterly weakened and in ghastly, unspeakable pain.  This, be sure, is the event that could have immediately followed Adam’s sin in the garden and it could have been the swift sentence to follow any of the numerous sins of our own.  God could have brought this rottenness to our feet, had us beaten by righteous angels, and then marched us out to Golgotha to face our just and logical execution.  

But God (isn’t this the most precious line in all the holy Scriptures?) has such incomprehensible mercy that he not only withheld such righteous fury, he clothed Adam in the garden, thus covering his shame, and even set events into motion so that the serpent was to be crushed by the offspring of Eve.  Many grumble and complain against our many meditations upon sin and judgment.  They say it’s all some very, very negative business and that they’ll have none of these things.  But sin and judgment are rendered life and peace for those that repent of their sin and let Christ carry the cross for them.  Here is the fullness of the Father’s plan of redemption and here is the heel about to crush the head of Satan.  This is love:  Christ carrying our cross and bearing our punishment and taking away our shame on his way to death.  This is exactly why talk of sin and judgment is not the manner of business that unbelievers think it is.  For the unrepentant it’s the reminder of the very thing their conscience declares to them: that this is their fate should they continue to spit in the face of God and call Him, in all His eternal majesty and divine power, a liar, and neglect so great a salvation.  For us, it’s the great and sweet reminder that there is now no condemnation of us.  

Look here how our Lord carries our burden!  Do you struggle with the deep things of theology?  Herein lies the secrets of all of man’s intellectual, moral, and spiritual conundrums.  This is the gospel and it is the power of God unto salvation.  Man’s primary problem is sin, which is to say, it’s his moral rebellion against a holy God.  And this is the answer – the only answer – to that problem.  If Christ doesn’t carry that burden, that cross, that sin-debt, for us, then we will have to  and, alas, our backs are not strong enough to withstand the crushing weight.