08. The Cross Marks the Purpose of Christ’s Coming

The Cross Marks the Purpose of Christ’s Coming

First, the cross marks the purpose of the coming of Christ (1 Timothy 1:15), “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” I would state that first fact of our indebtedness to the cross simply to remind you that it is an echo of the Savior’s declaration when He was on earth, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28;Mark 10:45); but that is a fact that requires today to be constantly repeated and emphasized in the hearing of men and women, that the Lord Jesus Christ came to die—not to live, not to teach, not to work miracles—he came to die. It was the purpose of His birth and the purpose of His life to die, because He came to deal with sin.

I do think that those of us who are preachers and teachers should in these days, when the cross is being slighted and minimized and hidden from the people, take every opportunity that God gives us of thrusting the cross into the vision of the people, as Paul thrust it into the vision of the Roman and the Jew and the Greek whenever he stood before them. The purpose of the coming of Christ was Calvary.