Pathways Press.com

Written by Matt Mazzalongo, a contemporary pastor.

The cross has the power to create in a person the love and desire for what is good, right, true, and pure. Even though a person cannot achieve perfection on this earth, the cross of Christ gives him a thirst for it. No law can produce this in one’s heart. No threats of punishments can make me want what is right and good (I’ll do it out of fear, but you can’t force me to want to obey.) No amount of self-discipline or willpower can make a person love righteousness. However, the cross of Christ has attraction because it has the power to create this desire in the human heart. How? When I contemplate Jesus’ sacrifice for me, I see for the first time the essence of God’s deepest goodness and purest justice. I see, by the cross, that I worship a God who took upon Himself a human nature and entered into human history in order to suffer the punishment for the sins that I committed and for which I truly deserved punishment. In other words, God transferred my sins onto Himself! This knowledge awakens in me the desire to have and do what He did. In the same way that I craved after evil and the pleasures of sin, after the cross I hunger and thirst after righteousness, now that I’ve seen what perfect righteousness does. Because of the Law, the sin in me was aroused. Because of the Cross, the spirit in me is aroused. Moreover, the cross makes me want to abandon forever my weak attempts at goodness and self-justification through works, and desire to be good and righteous as He is good and righteous; a goodness and righteousness that totally eclipses my own! There are many things in the world that will change a person’s appearance, even his state of mind, but only the cross of Christ has the power to change a person’s heart. Before the cross I desired only what served me, after seeing the cross all I desire is what will serve God.

For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. [Romans 7:5-6]