Quote

I want to tell people about the meaning of the cross.

At the cross, God was punishing Jesus for the sins of the world. God's justice required a penalty from sinners, and in his unspeakable love, he paid the penalty himself in the person of his crucified Son.

To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.

God proved His love on the Cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, 'I love you.'

But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.

The Father willed that his blessed and glorious Son, whom he gave to us and who was born for us, should through his own blood offer himself as a sacrificial victim on the altar of the cross. This was to be done not for himself through whom all things were made, but for our sins.

The Gospel of John makes explicit what all the Gospels assume - that is, the cross is not a defeat, but the victory of our God.

Without a doubt, at the center of the New Testament there stands the Cross, which receives its interpretation from the Resurrection.

The cross is the centre of all this in every respect.