The Time of the Tomb

188:5.1The cross of Je­sus por­trays the full mea­sure of the su­preme de­vo­tion of the true shep­herd for even the un­wor­thy mem­bers of his flock. It for­ever places all re­la­tions be­tween God and man upon the fam­ily ba­sis. God is the Fa­ther; man is his son. Love, the love of a fa­ther for his son, be­comes the cen­tral truth in the uni­verse re­la­tions of Cre­ator and crea­ture—not the jus­tice of a king which seeks sat­is­fac­tion in the suf­fer­ings and pun­ish­ment of the evil-do­ing sub­ject.

188:5.2The cross for­ever shows that the at­ti­tude of Je­sus to­ward sin­ners was nei­ther con­dem­na­tion nor con­do­na­tion, but rather eter­nal and lov­ing sal­va­tion. Je­sus is truly a sav­ior in the sense that his life and death do win men over to good­ness and righ­teous sur­vival. Je­sus loves men so much that his love awak­ens the re­sponse of love in the hu­man heart. Love is truly con­ta­gious and eter­nally cre­ative. Je­sus’ death on the cross ex­em­pli­fies a love which is suf­fi­ciently strong and di­vine to for­give sin and swal­low up all evil-do­ing. Je­sus dis­closed to this world a higher qual­ity of righ­teous­ness than jus­tice—mere tech­ni­cal right and wrong. Di­vine love does not merely for­give wrongs; it ab­sorbs and ac­tu­ally de­stroys them. The for­give­ness of love ut­terly tran­scends the for­give­ness of mercy. Mercy sets the guilt of evil-do­ing to one side; but love de­stroys for­ever the sin and all weak­ness re­sult­ing there­from. Je­sus brought a new method of liv­ing to Uran­tia. He taught us not to re­sist evil but to find through him a good­ness which ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroys evil. The for­give­ness of Je­sus is not con­do­na­tion; it is sal­va­tion from con­dem­na­tion. Sal­va­tion does not slight wrongs; it makes them right. True love does not com­pro­mise nor con­done hate; it de­stroys it. The love of Je­sus is never sat­is­fied with mere for­give­ness. The Mas­ter’s love im­plies re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, eter­nal sur­vival. It is al­to­gether proper to speak of sal­va­tion as re­demp­tion if you mean this eter­nal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

188:5.3Je­sus, by the power of his per­sonal love for men, could break the hold of sin and evil. He thereby set men free to choose bet­ter ways of liv­ing. Je­sus por­trayed a de­liv­er­ance from the past which in it­self prom­ised a tri­umph for the fu­ture. For­give­ness thus pro­vided sal­va­tion. The beauty of di­vine love, once fully ad­mit­ted to the hu­man heart, for­ever de­stroys the charm of sin and the power of evil.

188:5.4The suf­fer­ings of Je­sus were not con­fined to the cru­ci­fix­ion. In re­al­ity, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth spent up­ward of twenty-five years on the cross of a real and in­tense mor­tal ex­is­tence. The real value of the cross con­sists in the fact that it was the su­preme and fi­nal ex­pres­sion of his love, the com­pleted rev­e­la­tion of his mercy.

188:5.5On mil­lions of in­hab­ited worlds, tens of tril­lions of evolv­ing crea­tures who may have been tempted to give up the moral strug­gle and aban­don the good fight of faith, have taken one more look at Je­sus on the cross and then have forged on ahead, in­spired by the sight of God’s lay­ing down his in­car­nate life in de­vo­tion to the un­selfish ser­vice of man.

188:5.6The tri­umph of the death on the cross is all summed up in the spirit of Je­sus’ at­ti­tude to­ward those who as­sailed him. He made the cross an eter­nal sym­bol of the tri­umph of love over hate and the vic­tory of truth over evil when he prayed, “Fa­ther, for­give them, for they know not what they do.” That de­vo­tion of love was con­ta­gious through­out a vast uni­verse; the dis­ci­ples caught it from their Mas­ter. The very first teacher of his gospel who was called upon to lay down his life in this ser­vice, said, as they stoned him to death, “Lay not this sin to their charge.”

188:5.7The cross makes a su­preme ap­peal to the best in man be­cause it dis­closes one who was will­ing to lay down his life in the ser­vice of his fel­low men. Greater love no man can have than this: that he would be will­ing to lay down his life for his friends—and Je­sus had such a love that he was will­ing to lay down his life for his en­e­mies, a love greater than any which had hith­erto been known on earth.

188:5.8On other worlds, as well as on Uran­tia, this sub­lime spec­ta­cle of the death of the hu­man Je­sus on the cross of Gol­go­tha has stirred the emo­tions of mor­tals, while it has aroused the high­est de­vo­tion of the an­gels.

188:5.9The cross is that high sym­bol of sa­cred ser­vice, the de­vo­tion of one’s life to the wel­fare and sal­va­tion of one’s fel­lows. The cross is not the sym­bol of the sac­ri­fice of the in­no­cent Son of God in the place of guilty sin­ners and in or­der to ap­pease the wrath of an of­fended God, but it does stand for­ever, on earth and through­out a vast uni­verse, as a sa­cred sym­bol of the good be­stow­ing them­selves upon the evil and thereby sav­ing them by this very de­vo­tion of love. The cross does stand as the to­ken of the high­est form of un­selfish ser­vice, the su­preme de­vo­tion of the full be­stowal of a righ­teous life in the ser­vice of whole­hearted min­istry, even in death, the death of the cross. And the very sight of this great sym­bol of the be­stowal life of Je­sus truly in­spires all of us to want to go and do like­wise.

188:5.10When think­ing men and women look upon Je­sus as he of­fers up his life on the cross, they will hardly again per­mit them­selves to com­plain at even the sever­est hard­ships of life, much less at petty ha­rass­ments and their many purely fic­ti­tious grievances. His life was so glo­ri­ous and his death so tri­umphant that we are all en­ticed to a will­ing­ness to share both. There is true draw­ing power in the whole be­stowal of Mi­chael, from the days of his youth to this over­whelm­ing spec­ta­cle of his death on the cross.

188:5.11Make sure, then, that when you view the cross as a rev­e­la­tion of God, you do not look with the eyes of the prim­i­tive man nor with the view­point of the later bar­bar­ian, both of whom re­garded God as a re­lent­less Sov­er­eign of stern jus­tice and rigid law-en­force­ment. Rather, make sure that you see in the cross the fi­nal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the love and de­vo­tion of Je­sus to his life mis­sion of be­stowal upon the mor­tal races of his vast uni­verse. See in the death of the Son of Man the cli­max of the un­fold­ing of the Fa­ther’s di­vine love for his sons of the mor­tal spheres. The cross thus por­trays the de­vo­tion of will­ing af­fec­tion and the be­stowal of vol­un­tary sal­va­tion upon those who are will­ing to re­ceive such gifts and de­vo­tion. There was noth­ing in the cross which the Fa­ther re­quired—only that which Je­sus so will­ingly gave, and which he re­fused to avoid.

188:5.12If man can­not oth­er­wise ap­pre­ci­ate Je­sus and un­der­stand the mean­ing of his be­stowal on earth, he can at least com­pre­hend the fel­low­ship of his mor­tal suf­fer­ings. No man can ever fear that the Cre­ator does not know the na­ture or ex­tent of his tem­po­ral af­flic­tions.

188:5.13We know that the death on the cross was not to ef­fect man’s rec­on­cil­i­a­tion to God but to stim­u­late man’s re­al­iza­tion of the Fa­ther’s eter­nal love and his Son’s un­end­ing mercy, and to broad­cast these uni­ver­sal truths to a whole uni­verse.