Aug 18 2008
It Was So Important We’ll Sing About It Forever!
1. How important is the death of Jesus Christ?
Henry Thiessen writes:
The death of Christ has a prominent place in the New Testament. The last three days of our Lord’s earthly life occupy about one-fifth of the narratives in the four Gospels. If all the three and a half years of his public ministry had been written out as fully as the last three days, we would have a Life of Christ of some 8,400 pages! Torrey claims that the death of Christ is mentioned directly in the New Testament more than 175 times. Since there are 7,959 verses in the New Testament, this would mean that one out of every 53 verses refers to this theme.
The death of Christ is the essential thing in Christianity. Other religions base their claim to recognition on the teaching of their founders; Christianity is distinguished from all of them by the importance it assigns to the death of its Founder. Take away the death of Christ as interpreted by the Scriptures, and you reduce Christianity to the level of the ethic religions. Though we would still have a higher system of ethics, were we to take away the cross of Christ, we would have no more salvation than these other religions. Napoleon said, when banished to St. Helena, that Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and he had founded mighty kingdoms on force, but that Jesus Christ had founded his on love. This is true, if we mean love expressed in his substitutionary death.
It is of Supreme Interest in Heaven. The death of Christ is the subject of supreme interest in heaven. We may expect those who have gone to heaven to have a fuller and truer conception of life’s values than those who are still limited in their vision by their existence in the body. We are told that when Moses and Elijah appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration, they conversed with Christ about the decease which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke 9:30-31). We also find that the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders sang the song of redemption through the death of Christ (Rev. 5:8-10). Even the multitude of angels around the throne, though not in need of redemption themselves, joined in the song of the Lamb that was slain (Rev. 5:11-12). Since those who have the veil of human limitations completely removed from their eyes—those who have entered into the fuller fruits of redemption through the blood of Christ—extol Christ’s death above everything else, we mortals ought to study into the true meaning of that death.
(Systematic Theology, pp. 313-314)
Consider the importance of Jesus’ death as viewed from another perspective.
A. There is a total of 89 chapters in the four-fold accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
B. Of these 89 chapters, only 4 are given over in recording the first thirty years (Luke 3:23) of Jesus’ earthly life (Matt. 1, 2; Luke 1, 2).
C. Of these 89 chapters, no less than 13 describe (in detail) those events surrounding His death (Matt. 26, 27; Mark 14, 15; Luke 22, 23; John 13-19).
D. We may thus correctly conclude that, according to the space afforded it in the divine record, the death of Jesus Christ was considered more than three times as important than the first thirty years of His life!
E. Unlike any other person in history, Jesus’ greatest gift to humanity was not His life, but rather His death! Thus, He was born in Bethlehem that He might die at Calvary. The manger would become the door leading to the cross!
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