Eastertide 29:

God demonstrates his love for us

in that while we were yet sinners

Christ died for us.

(Romans 5:8)

Calvary is an act of God. We didn’t come up with it. It’s not our idea. It’s is totally God’s idea and God’s doing. It comes forth from God out of “his love for us.” As we sing; or, at one time sang, in the third and fifth stanza of Isaac Watts’ 1706 hymn, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross: “See from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down! Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown? … Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”

Nothing is said of the Cross appeasing God’s wrath. Much is said about the Cross demonstrating the love of God. It is this demonstration of God’s love on Calvary’s Cross that “demands my soul, my life, my all.”