by Steven Gledhill for FREEdom from MEdom Project
We honor the death and sacrifice of Jesus on Friday, and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus on Sunday, referred to as Easter. Jesus crucified in the morning, and died in the afternoon on Friday, and arose from the dead on the following Sunday morning. What about the 40 hours between his last breath on Friday and his next breath on Sunday?
“The Empty Cross” is meant to unveil misunderstood truth to better appreciate the sacrifice of Jesus Christ experienced fully in the flesh for you and for me. To redeem the sinner, in Christ sin was condemned (Romans 8:3). To speak of sin crucified and condemned in the person of Jesus fully man is not easily accepted or tolerated. Some will be critical of this presumption even though I believe it is accurately supported by Scripture in proper context. Please read on…
“The death of Jesus was qualitatively different from any other death. The physical pain was nothing compared to the spiritual experiences of cosmic abandonment… On the cross he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power excels ours. In his death, God suffers in love, identifying with the abandoned and godforsaken.” —Timothy Keller, The Reason for God
The cross of Jesus Christ has always been one of the most misunderstood symbols of new life in the Christian faith, regardless of denomination, Catholic or Protestant. I have cherished the cross of Jesus as the place where my sin was bore to be crucified with Christ. But I’ve had to rethink that. What if Jesus had been stoned or beaten to death? What then would I cherish?
Keep this question in mind, while you read through this provocative article: What if what is three days on this side of eternity cannot be quantified with the relativity of time on the other side of eternity? What if three days on this side is an eternity on the other side until there is resurrection into new life… finally then, to be exalted to the rightful place as King of kings and Lord of lords?
It can be said that the cross of Jesus Christ was a gift given freely to us. It should also be said that there was nothing free about it; that the cross cost Jesus… God… everything! There is a hymn that reads, “I will cherish the old rugged cross, and exchange it someday for a crown.” Scripture tells us that we have all fallen short of the glory of God and that the consequence of our sin is death, but that the gift of God is eternal life. The gift of God is NOT the cross. The cross represents horrific sacrifice; the payment for sin; a bloody, painful (on a level that is incomprehensible) death. The gift of God is life, given in the person of Jesus Christ! To give us life, Jesus humbled himself to come to us to take the cross from us. He didn’t give us the cross, He took it from us. Death (eternal dying) was our fate until the Savior altered our destiny. It’s already been exchanged. Praise God!
A few Sundays ago, I had an opportunity to say a few words before the congregation on what we were calling “Lay it Down” Sunday. The Spirit of God had put it on my heart to go forward to share something with the congregation. I went to the front and picked up the wooden podium next to the pastor. I shared that God wants to bless me with new life and all that comes with it—peace, joy, hope, love, provision, mercy, and so on—but my hands are full with this podium and I am not able to receive every gift that is from my generous Lord and Savior. I have this piece of wood in my hands that I cannot seem to lay down regardless of how good it is the gift He has for me. My life had become an obstacle in the way of the blessing God wanted to activate through new life in me.
I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me while I was sharing to the congregation what God’s Spirit proceeded to share with me when I sat down. He communicated this to my mind: “That piece of wood in your hands represents your old selfish sinful life. You cannot part with it. So here is what I will do. I will take the wood from you that is your sinful life and I will nail myself to it and die becoming sin for you. I will through my death in your sinful life free your hands to receive the new life experience that I have for you.” Jesus came for me, died on the wood I could not part with, taking the wood representing my sin, and condemning my sin to hell while liberating me to live forever in sweet fellowship with Him today, and all the saints, His children, someday in glory.
In worship today, as the congregation sang one of the modern worship songs, “Happy Day” by Tim Hughes, the words to the first verse and chorus struck a chord with me as I looked upon a large cross upright on the platform in front of me. The words I found so compelling as I gazed upon the cross are in bold below:
The greatest day in history, Death is beaten
You have rescued me
Sing it out Jesus is alive
The empty cross, The empty grave
Life eternal You have won the day
Oh happy day, happy day
You washed my sin away
Oh happy day, happy day
I’ll never be the same
Forever I am changed
Once again, we have a song that celebrates the cross of Jesus Christ. For a long, long time, it was hymns like “The Old Rugged Cross” (George Bennard, 1913). The cross in the sanctuary where I attend worship stood alone toward the back of the stage, and appeared to be made of wood. It caught my eye as I sang the words, “The empty cross, the empty grave…” during worship. Of course, you know that the person of Jesus is not on the cross; not his body, not his soul. Neither is He in the grave. We celebrate the cross as the symbol of the sacrifice of Jesus that rescued us from our sin. We see beauty and wonder in the attraction of the cross. But to Jesus the cross was something that in the flesh he did not want, praying three times that, Lord willing, he would be spared from drinking from that cup (though as God He knew the cross to be an essential part of the plan). In the flesh Jesus was not attracted to what he would experience on the cross. The anticipation of all that was in store for him scared him nearly to death.
And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.” He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” Again, a second time, He went away and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.” So He left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. Matthew 27:37-39, 42, 44 (NKJV)
On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suffering and shame;
Oh, that old rugged cross, so despised by the world,
Has a wondrous attraction for me;
In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
A wondrous beauty I see,
For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,
To pardon and sanctify me.
So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
and exchange it some day for a crown.
The composer of this classic hymn got it right as he referred to the cross as “the emblem of suffering and shame”. There is beauty in the compassion and love that motivated the plan of God; that They would choose that the Son would humble Himself to the extent that He would be made “in the likeness of sinful flesh”, begotten of the Father, to experience all temptation while by choice remaining obediently faithful to a sinless life, to suffer in the shame of my sin and yours at the cross.
The cross and crucifixion was a torturous execution. The ‘good’ in Good Friday is the good that Christ’s suffering did and does for you and for me. We are reconciled back into relationship with God since Jesus paid the ransom—the debt—for sin. For Jesus, that day, and the better part of the next two days was a wretched time of immeasurable torture and suffering on every level beyond anything anyone can imagine.
I wish to explain why it is not accurate to cling to the old rugged cross, though it could be stated that what we cling to is the promise of mercy and grace associated with the cross as an event in history. It is an empty cross. The cross was a vehicle to eradicate humankind from the penalty punishment of sin. Apostle Paul writes that Jesus condemned our sin to hell through the vehicle of the cross.
“Consider how our Lord regards His own Sonship, surrendering His will wholly to the paternal will and not even allowing Himself to be called ‘good’ because Good is the name of the Father. Love between father and son, in this symbol, means essentially authoritative love on the one side, and obedient love on the other. The father uses his authority to make the son into the sort of human being he, rightly, and in his superior wisdom, wants him to be.” —CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain
I think Apostle Paul agreed that it is important to have proper context when he wrote about wanting to know Jesus “in the fellowship of His sufferings” and being “crucified with Christ”. Did Paul want to share in the suffering of his Savior? Of course not! That would require minimizing the three days of Christ’s torment. Are we literally crucified with Christ as He was crucified? Of course not. He so wanted, though, to appreciate the human suffering of his Lord. Paul understood that his sin went with Jesus – into Jesus – from the cross, to be condemned in the flesh of Jesus (Romans 8:3) through His death experience. It had to be that way to satisfy the law of the flesh that the consequence of sin (payment for sin) is death. Jesus paid that price for us; the consequence for sin.
For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:3-4 (NIV)
When you listen to Jesus talk in anticipation of his death, he doesn’t talk about healing in the shadow of the cross. He speaks of his death as a time of prolonged suffering in the heart of the earth. What do we know about the heart, the depths, the “belly” of the earth? We know that at its core the earth is extremely hot with metals so hot and powerful that they fuel the earth’s gravitational pull against the sun to keep this planet from getting sucked into it. It is at the heart of the earth that the person of Jesus, who has absorbed into him the sin of all people for all time, is absorbed into condemnation for my sin and yours.
“For as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.” Matthew 12:40 (NLT)
For anyone who thinks that the story of Jonah and the great fish was some kind of allegory or Old Testament mythology, Jesus believed in the story of Jonah as a matter of history, prophetic to what was coming his way sooner than later. Jesus likened his death and grave experience to that of Jonah who felt he’d been swallowed up by the earth. Jonah actually gives an account of his experience in the following passage from the book of Jonah.
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish. He said,
“I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me.
I called to you from the land of the dead, and Lord, you heard me!
You threw me into the ocean depths, and I sank down to the heart of the sea.
The mighty waters engulfed me; I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves.
Then I said, ‘O Lord, you have driven me from your presence.
Yet I will look once more toward your holy Temple.’
I sank beneath the waves, and the waters closed over me.
Seaweed wrapped itself around my head. I sank down to the very roots of the mountains. I was imprisoned in the earth, whose gates lock shut forever.
But you, O Lord my God, snatched me from the jaws of death!” Jonah 2:1-6 (NLT)
Where the similarity ends is that Jonah sensed the support of the Spirit of the Lord, a presence in the midst of his hell that Jesus did not know or experience still attached to your sin and mine. Imprisoned within the depths of the earth, Jesus became subject to the severest of catastrophic torture and desperate loneliness in the depths of condemnation.
For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh. Romans 8:3 (NIV)
We celebrate the cross and the empty tomb, but why do we not celebrate the grave, the tomb where the body of Jesus lay for three days and nights? Why do we not celebrate the condemnation Jesus suffered in a hell of indescribable torment as a forsaken sinner who had become a curse, the stain for all humanity for three days and nights? Like the three friends of Daniel in a kind of hell but Jesus would not know the protection of grace like Daniel’s friends did as he suffered beyond comprehension for three days and nights. Jesus was forsaken, abandoned under the weight of sin, and would be left alone to endure immeasurable suffering. We don’t celebrate that. We hardly even talk about it; not really considering what occurred between Good Friday and (even better) Resurrection Sunday.
What makes it easier for us is to erect a religious institution centered on the cross. It makes it easier for us to make the cross prettier, adorning it with spectacle; maybe even artfully putting the body of Jesus back on it all cleaned up, looking like he’s in the middle of a sweet dream. Who could argue that the crucifixion for Jesus was a nightmare beyond anyone’s wildest dreams?
…The Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. Revelation 13:8
Amazingly, there is actually precedent for allowing suffering and death as directed by the Father with His Son in agreement. We find it in the prophetic story of Jesus allowing his special friend to die of illness. We may not know it as fact, but Lazarus may have suffered greatly, perhaps in the final days of cancer, which at the time wouldn’t be diagnosed like today. He would get sick, suffer in his illness and die.
So the two sisters sent a message to Jesus telling him, “Lord, your dear friend is very sick.” But when Jesus heard about it he said, “Lazarus’s sickness will not end in death. No, it happened for the glory of God so that the Son of God will receive glory from this.” So although Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, he stayed where he was for the next two days… Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!” But some said, “This man healed a blind man. Couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?” “Roll the stone aside,” Jesus told them. But Martha, the dead man’s sister, protested, “Lord, he has been dead for four days. The smell will be terrible.” John 11:3-6, 36-39 (NLT)
Lazarus did die and was dead for four days, but what Jesus said is that it would not end there. Lazarus would be resurrected from death by a superhero. Watching His begotten Son die so brutally with so much suffering, it would be obvious had we seen the Father looking on throughout, how much He loved Jesus. My guess is that God the Father wept for him. Then finally, Jesus also was resurrected and renewed into new life, capturing – snatching – every single one of us from the train to be rescued from it and resurrected with Him into new life.
Why the train imagery? Why take something so precious and make it so brutally savage, ugly, and disgusting? Because if we cannot imagine the body of Jesus under a rolling train, how much more can we not comprehend Jesus enduring a condemning hell after being nailed to the cross? It was in fact so brutal, savage, and disgusting! The sacrifice that Jesus made on my behalf and yours is precious, heroic… even romantic. But the price He paid that we can have new life to the full was horrendous at best. As brutal and heart-breaking as the movie “The Passion of the Christ” is, and while there is a glimpse of resurrection at the end of it, it tells only a partial story. The rest, that which is in between crucifixion and resurrection, cannot be accurately portrayed on film. We cannot even begin to imagine the dreadful terror experienced by our Lord. My “getting run over by a train” metaphor… even trying to generate an image for you above, pales greatly compared to the actual experience of Jesus between Friday afternoon and Sunday. But thank God—thank Jesus—He drank from the cup and substituted His life for mine.
(Author’s note: Some readers may find the photos above regarding this train image, especially disturbing when imagining the bloody torn-apart body of Jesus, the sacrificial lamb of God, pinned helplessly underneath the steel wheels of the train. It pales in comparison to what our Savior experienced at the cross and for three days in the belly of the earth. Yet many of the same readers will cherish the old rugged cross so long as it is shiny jewelry around their neck or adorned with fine linens in the sanctuary of the church building, not to be made messy. The cross was a bloody torture chamber for our Lord Jesus even before he experienced the full blunt impact of taking into him our sin. We ought never forget that.)
Christ redeemed us from that self-defeating, cursed life by absorbing it completely into himself. Do you remember the Scripture that says, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”? That is what happened when Jesus was nailed to the cross: He became a curse, and at the same time dissolved the curse. Galatians 3:13 (The Message)
To dissolve the curse of sin staining my life, Jesus had to be cursed. The cross, representing the stain of my sin was stained by the blood of the Lamb, my Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus. He took the curse into himself and in doing so broke fellowship with God. Jesus, in the flesh anticipating this reality of supreme sacrifice, prayed three times pleading with the Father for an alternative to such reality, and three times he was denied. When Apostle Paul begged Jesus three times to remove the thorn in his reality, he too was denied while all the while comforted and strengthened by sufficient grace from the throne of his Savior. Jesus did not get grace. Jesus was condemned in his flesh that became sin on the cross; the tracks of our sin. Instead of receiving grace, he became grace for us. Jesus was pronounced unworthy for a moment in history so that through him you and I would be redeemed as worthy, received into grace. He was in the moment and for three days excluded from grace so that we would be included into grace through his sacrifice.
“A Christian’s worth and value are not created by excluding anyone, but through the Lord who was excluded for me… The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved that Jesus was glad to die for me.” —Timothy Keller, The Reason for God
Revision: Since I originally wrote “The Empty Cross”, a good friend of mine wrote to me, “This (“The Empty Cross”) is filled with so many errors it would be hard to untangle the heresy taught or implied throughout the article. These are recycled errors that have been around for centuries. I suggest you look at other sources on the Gospel when researching your next project.” He directed me to a sermon by Paul Washer, Founder and Director of Heart Cry Missionary Society. Pastor Washer said that “we in our sin are the “covenant breakers” while Jesus, while innocent in the flesh, was the “covenant keeper”. When Jesus was crucified on the cross and cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!”, it was at that moment that he drank from the cup that was the wrath of God against the covenant breaker, having taken the place of sinners lost in their sin. It was at that moment that God withdrew and allowed for the damnation of all sin in the flesh of His Son… “Be damned” was the word of the Father to Jesus, who then responded, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!” It was in that moment that the curses against the sinner were imputed upon the person of God’s begotten Son, Jesus Christ. To teach it any other way would be heresy.” Again, this is from a Paul Washer sermon.
I suppose the only discrepancy between what I have written in the Sympathetic Savior Series and Pastor Washers’ teaching is that he, like most, agrees that Jesus while human was fully man and fully God, while I contend that Jesus was fully man while somehow making Himself less than God while in the flesh. I don’t comprehend how the Son becoming less than God is possible any more than I could comprehend that somehow God can be tempted to sin and that somehow God can die if the Son while fully human is also fully God. Both precepts seem just as ridiculous to my human finite mind but I guess something’s got to give here.
God cannot die. God cannot forsake God. God cannot curse God. So Jesus, fully God, in humility, emptied Himself and became fully man in the likeness of sinful flesh. Even though Jesus in the flesh was innocent of sin having depended fully upon the Father, his body was flawed by sin. He got tired, hungry, thirsty, lonely, etc. That would mean his brain was flawed by the impact of sin, emotionally affected by the impact of sin, and his human spirit affected by sin’s impact. Is it possible that, while it was righteous anger in the honest interest of defending the integrity of the temple as a house of worship, Jesus acted in the flesh when he went through the merchants in the temple with a whip?
God cannot sin and therefore cannot be tempted to sin (James 1:13). Yet Jesus, while human, was indeed tempted to sin. What does that convey about Jesus the man that he could be tempted to sin? It suggests that Jesus may not have been fully God in function while human (suggested by Paul in Philippians 2:6-8, and by Jesus in John 5:19 & 30); considering the position as God to be of no advantage; already the ultimate sacrifice to that point. Why do I find it so necessary to communicate this unpopular point concerning the humanity of Jesus while here in the flesh? Because if Jesus was fully human and not fully God (by His choice) while on the cross and while imprisoned in the belly of the earth – condemned to hell having been cursed by my sin – then all of his excruciating pain and torturous suffering was experienced as a human being like it would be experienced by you or me if he hadn’t drunk from that cup and left it for us to drink.
Author’s Note: In attempting to describe the humanity of Jesus, John uses the term “begotten” from the word ‘beget’ in John 3:16. The word beget means to produce or create. It is true ‘begotten’ is translated in the original Greek to be uniquely God’s son fully divine. But that would mean that Jesus would have complete divine authority, which Jesus disputed in John 5:30. It would mean that the obedience of Jesus is merely symbolic if Jesus is fully divine in the flesh. It would bring into question the legitimacy of his being tempted since God cannot be tempted. Then there is the matter of his death since God cannot die. Why can it not be possible that Jesus, fully God, humbled Himself to the point that His humanity was produced or created to be flesh in its full scope, beginning as a seed in his mother’s womb; then exalted once again into full authority ascending to His rightful place as God on the throne?
Here lies the tragic reality of the cross. It was an abomination to all that is right and good, and Jesus would become that, embodying the evil of all mankind. We can romanticize and celebrate the “wondrous beauty” and “wondrous attraction” of the cross of Christ today like we do, but without its proper context we minimize its consequence to Jesus and the triune relationship that is God, as well as the significance and vitality for you and me. The reality for us today is that Jesus cannot and will not be found on the cross any more than He can be found in the tomb. The cross is as emblematic of death as is the tomb. The cross represents the death of our sinful existence and the grave the condemnation of our sin. For three days and nights the lifeless, soulless body of Jesus lay on a slab guarded by angels while our redeemer paid the ultimate price. The cross is empty today just as the tomb is empty.
So, do I cherish the old rugged cross or do I cherish and treasure the wondrous beauty of the sacrifice of God the Son and all that He did and experienced that today is so beautiful that it is beyond attraction for me?
The gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! Romans 5:15-17 (NIV)
Here lies another tragic reality. In the person of Jesus fully in the flesh, in order to redeem us from the consequence of our sin, God condemned our sin; the sin of all mankind. Jesus has resurrected mankind into the gracious gift of new life. However, as I shared to begin this article, some will not accept the new life awarded them in the incredible price paid by the Savior as long as they refuse to let go and lay down the old life to free themselves to receive the gift of new life… eternal life in fellowship with God. To hold on to the old life is to hold on to the sin that leads to eternal dying. The old life of sin that was condemned with Jesus is in fact condemned. For those who align themselves with their sin choose to experience condemnation with their sin… forever. The sacrifice of Jesus at the cross will not be in vain. To choose to remain with one’s sin is to experience the condemnation that Jesus freely experienced for you already. Praise God, we have received the gift of new life who have freely received it as it was freely given, having repented (turned away) from their sin laying down (or dying to) the old life.
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.” —C.S. Lewis
(Please watch this amazing video to “Revelation Song”. It’s worth the six minutes.)
Then the Lord ordered the fish to spit Jonah out onto the beach. Jonah 2:10 (NLT)
Then the greatest miracle in all of history took place. Like the great fish could no longer stomach Jonah, the earth’s belly could not digest the soul of our Lord Jesus. Just as God ordered the fish to spit out Jonah, so did God order the resurrection of His Son, our Sympathetic Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. The Superhero to the rescue! Not only did the Father rescue His Son, but today Jesus, sovereign God fully alive and in charge, redeems all who are aboard that train who call out to Him to be saved from everlasting devastation.
Where is He, today?
So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. Hebrews 4:14-16 (NLT)
Well, He’s not on the cross. He’s not in the grave. Jesus Christ today is seated on the throne of grace, fully God, as He was from the beginning, and is for eternity. While the period of thirty-three years as a humble servant was trying for the three persons of God, the three days and nights from the crucifixion to the resurrection I suggest caused a crisis of monumental proportion due to the forsaken condition of the relationship between the Father and the Son. We need to appreciate that. The love within the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit I suspect was wanting and unfulfilled in broken fellowship for a few days, breaking the heart of God. I suppose we cannot begin to imagine what this could possibly mean since to this point we cannot begin to comprehend such love in the first place (perhaps we will know this pure intimate love in glory).
For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Hebrews 12:3 (NASV)
Sin is abusive and disgustingly ugly. Sin is dreadful and the single most human tragedy in all of history. And sin, having consumed my life and yours, is represented by the cross – a burden bore in love by Jesus. While we honor the cross, we need not look for Jesus there. He’s not there. As we remember the event that killed our Lord, we should be aware that the cross is empty. We need not return to the cross to confess and repent of sin, nailing it to the cross again and again. Our sin was already crucified with Christ. It’s gone and done with. The sin committed and yet to be committed has already been justified by the sacrifice of Jesus as if it never happened (Romans 5-6, Hebrews 10). It isn’t at the empty cross that we seek and find grace. It is at the throne where we find Jesus and experience the freeing power of grace. It is at the throne of our gracious God that we are set free from all that holds us captive. And in relationship with Christ His throne of grace resides in our hearts.
When all is said and done, all of what was endured by our Sympathetic Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, is so that the entire family can be together again, living in freedom without pain and suffering, nor guilt or sorrow. We will be a family of absolute joy in the fullness of all that is life. My guess is that even in glory, the healed scars of Christ’s sacrifice will be evident to us as they were to John the Revelator when he recognized Jesus in all His glory in Revelation 1. I think that will be the reminder of His sacrifice. Whatever heaven is will be glorious and filled with love. And we will have access to the throne of grace where Jesus dwells. I believe that there too will He dwell in the temple (the body) of the saints on the throne of our hearts.
The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. Revelation 21:23-27, 22:1-5 (NIV)
There may be some who read this who will not receive the deeper meaning intended here and will suggest that I have demeaned and denigrated the most holy symbol of Christian faith and the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. To that I humbly disagree. The point of “The Empty Cross” is not to understate the emphasis, meaning, significance, and vitality of the sacrifice of Jesus crucified on the cross. The point of “The Empty Cross” is that Jesus left the cross empty of my old life that was destroying me and would be death for me. Jesus emptied me of everything that would have continued to separate me from relationship with Him. Jesus died with my old life so that I would be freed up for the new life that He now lives out inside of me and through me. Oh, do I praise Him today for His new life in me and the new life experience that is in my recovery having been rescued, redeemed, and restored into everything that is His best for me and is available to you. He paid the ultimate price to give you EVERYTHING. Lay down the old life that you may be holding on to. Be free to receive all that God has and wants for you.
The empty cross, The empty grave
Life eternal You have won the day.
Oh happy day, happy day
You washed my sin away.
Oh happy day, happy day
I’ll never be the same
Forever I am changed!
