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| Victory on the Cross Oil on Canvas 9" x 12" 11/09/15 1 hour |
This is my first oil painting,
and is one of my favourite paintings to date. I chose to paint this image of Christ’s
death (with His spirit leaving Him) from a picture that I found online, as it
meant so much to my faith.
Further to passages setting out Christ’s
betrayal, torment and mocking, Matthew 27:45-55 (NIV) sets out the account of
Christ’s death as follows:
“The Death of Jesus
From noon until three in the afternoon
darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out
in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?”).
When some of those standing there heard
this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.”
Immediately one of them ran and got a
sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to
Jesus to drink. The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes
to save him.”
And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud
voice, he gave up his spirit.
At that moment the curtain of the temple was
torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs
broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.
They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy
city and appeared to many people.
When the centurion and those with him who
were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were
terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”
Many women were there, watching from a
distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among
them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother
of Zebedee’s sons.”
Christ’s death (and His subsequent
resurrection, marking victory over death) is the hallmark of the Christian
faith. Since the fall of Man through Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden
of Eden, the whole of Mankind have been cursed with sin. In order to be
reunited with our just and righteous God, Man had to be restored to
righteousness. In the old testament times, animal sacrifices were used as an
illustration of what was needed to bridge this gap; after Christ came as the
perfect sacrifice, our relationship with God is restored through our love for,
belief in and obedience to Christ.
I used to struggle with this
concept deeply as a non-believer. I used to wonder, why would God make an
imperfect creature such as Man, doomed for damnation, to be salvaged through
such a cruel method involving a completely innocent human sacrifice? However, now,
after being blessed with God’s grace and having been enlightened, it means so
much to be able to share my new insights on the meaning of this picture to me:
1.
Free
will. The story of our salvation with Christ begins with free will. God
graciously granted free will to Man, which he created as a relational being in
His image. What was valuable to God was for
Man to choose to exercise our will freely to conform to His word, to be a
family with Him in the kingdom of His righteousness. However, Man fell
away from God and continuously exercised free will for ungodly purposes. Even
those who loved God deeply would often fall from grace. After the fall, nobody, on their own strength,
was able to exercise free will in a manner fully pleasing to God.
2.
God is
righteous and just. There are consequences for the ways we choose to
exercise our free will. There is so much open sharing about God’s love, but an
equally important aspect of God’s character that is less shared about is His
just and righteous nature (and the anger and wrath that often follows from
this). As Psalms 9:8 (NIV) states: “He
rules the world in righteousness and judges the peoples with
equity.” To be judged before such a righteous God is truly a scary thought.
When I was a non-believer, I used to have long debates on God’s “righteousness”.
I didn’t question the existence of sin (which is rampant), but questioned why
the Christian God was such a bloodthirsty God, demanding the sacrifice and
blood of perfect innocent animals (and subsequently Jesus) as penalty for sin. While
I recognized that it would otherwise be our blood which needs to be the price,
since He makes the laws, I felt that a practical way was for exceptions to be
made, without blood having to be shed. For what did the poor animals (and
Jesus) do to deserve punishment for our transgressions? But as I matured in my
faith I realized that these systems were in place because God cannot compromise on His perfect standards and wanted us to
recognize the severity of sin. God demanded animal sacrifices as an
illustration on the severity of sin and the holiness of God, and Christ, the
ultimate sacrifice, was a gift of God taking our place Himself to bear the
rightful punishment of our sins.
3.
God loves
us. God is a deeply relational being, and wants nothing more than to relate
to each of us personally. But that is not all. Spending time together is just
one aspect of love. Love also requires an aspect of vulnerability, of
sacrifice. To love is to be open and to allow ourselves to be hurt. “For God so loved the world, that he gave
his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
eternal life.” John 3:16 (ESV). Jesus was God, but He came down to the world as a Man, fully
vulnerable, to reach out to us and love us. He could have stayed in heaven, but
He did not. He came down to be with us. He opened Himself to us. He was stung
by rejection. He was humiliated and hung up on the cross. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we
ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” 1 John 3:16 (ESV). God loved
us THIS much, to come down as a Man, to be mocked and humiliated and rejected
and betrayed subsequently, all for our sake.
4.
Christ is
the intersection of God’s love and His justice. Christ came to take our
sins away, and is the perfect intersection between God’s love and justice. It
may be difficult for us to acknowledge this, but we are horrible sinners, each
and every one of us, and we all deserve God’s wrath. “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8 (ESV). Christ was God. He did nothing
wrong. “But he was wounded for our
transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the
chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:5 (ESV) “For our sake he made
him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV). “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to
sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”
1 Peter 2:24 (ESV).
5.
Christ’s
Sacrifice is Necessary. John 3:14-15 (NIV) states that “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the
wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who
believes may have eternal life in him.” Jesus had reached out to Nicodemus
using a passage in the Old Testament (Numbers 21:5-9), where the Lord sent
venomous snakes to punish the Israelites for their incessant complaints in the
desert. When Moses interceded on their behalf, God instructed Moses to make a
bronze replica of a snake and raise it above the camp on the pole. Those who
were bitten would be healed if they looked at it and acknowledged their guilt
and expressed faith in God’s forgiveness and power. Likewise, Jesus had to be crucified (i.e. lifted
up), and His death would form a necessary
part of God’s salvation plan. Such salvation is independent on any
works or righteousness on our part, and is based on full dependence on God’s
free gift to us. That of course does not mean that we are not to do good works
– rather, we are saved by Christ for
good works, and not saved by ourselves by good works. God was
victorious through Christ’s death. The battle against Satan was won through
Christ’s death on the cross, and our victory over sin has been secured through
Christ.
6.
Christ
was obedient onto death; we are to ‘take up the cross’ and follow Him. “Even though Jesus was God's Son, he learned
obedience from the things he suffered. In this way, God qualified him as
a perfect High Priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all
those who obey him. And God designated him to be a High Priest in the order
of Melchizedek.” Hebrews 5:8-10 (NLT). Christ was afraid, but He was obedient
and endured. Ultimately, He saved us from the penalty of our sins, and was
exalted beyond measure. As believers, we should follow suit in Christ’s example
as God only has the best plans for us. As stated in Matthew 16:24-27(NIV): “Then Jesus said to his disciples,
"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their
cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but
whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for
someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone
give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his
Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person
according to what they have done.” As seen in the foregoing passages, a
true disciple of Christ is one that does
not deny Him, but instead denies
themselves (i.e. their sinful human nature) to follow Him. This means
that as Christians, we should walk in His path, led by His spirit, fully
obedient to God’s directions as Christ himself was. There are eternal
consequences to our decisions, and we are wise if we choose to follow the
footsteps of our saviour who has redeemed our souls with His own blood. There
are times where it will be difficult, where life may seem unfair (i.e. Jesus’
death was through no fault of His own). But if we choose to be obedient to God,
we can become great tools which He uses to accomplish His glory for His kingdom
and people!
7. Eternal Consequences
and Rewards. Christ is victorious over death and over sin; even if our
passage on earth is daunting and challenging (as earth is a sin-filled place
full of imperfections), we can expect eternal rewards for our obedience to him.
Revelations 21:9-26 sets out the following vision of John:
“One of the
seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and
said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he
carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the
Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the
glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a
jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with
twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve
tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three
on the south and three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve
foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
The angel who
talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and
its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He
measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and
as wide and high as it is long. The angel measured the wall using human measurement,
and it was 144 cubits thick. The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure
gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with
every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second
sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth ruby,
the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth turquoise,
the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve
pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of
gold, as pure as transparent glass.
I did not see a temple in the city,
because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 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.”
The above account illustrates the eternal glory that
awaits those who are obedient to God’s words; in contrast, on the day of
judgment, for those who do not follow Christ, it is written that “Anyone whose name was not found written
in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.” Revelations
20:15 (NIV). There, “…[t]hey will be tormented
day and night for ever and ever.” Revelations 20:10 (NIV).
For God had created the heavens and earth, and had
loved us so much that He had reached out to Mankind repeatedly and had called
us to repentance to His truth. He had even come down to earth to die for our
sake, to bridge the gap between His righteousness and His love, so that we may
be able to stand with Him in His presence. But those who choose to remain
willfully blind and/or deaf to His love, call, justice and truth will not be able
to join Him in eternal glory after the first death, but will be forever
separated from Him for eternity. To be in a world without the presence of God
eternally is indeed a terrifying thought.
Which choice will you make?
8.
Prayerfully
Seeking God. When I was a non-believer, I found it difficult to believe or
“buy into” the truth of God’s word because this was only one of the many
“possible truths” out there in view of the multiple religions worldwide. I
always believed that there was one ultimate truth (that we would be stupid not
to follow/acknowledge), but had a difficulty discerning what the ultimate truth
was. However, as I was sharing my struggles, one of my Christian friends told
me to simply pray about it if I was sincerely seeking the truth. For Jeremiah
23:13 (NIV) promises us that “You will
seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” So
I did. God did not answer my prayer immediately – there was no instant
enlightenment. Rather, He brought me through a really painful process that stretched
over more than a year, which made me realize that He is real and which spoke to
me in a way nothing else could. If anyone is struggling with difficulties in
accepting the Christian message but believes that it could be the ultimate
truth, I urge you to pray sincerely with all of your heart. Because these prayers
can work wonders!
