If you want to see what judgment looks like, go to the cross. If you want to see what love looks like, go to the cross.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the dual nature of the cross, representing both judgment and profound love.
In this quote, D. A. Carson suggests that the cross serves as a powerful symbol reflecting two contrasting themes: judgment and love. The imagery of the cross evokes the harsh reality of judgment for sin, representing the weight of consequence, while simultaneously illustrating the ultimate expression of love through sacrifice. It invites reflection on the depths of compassion intertwined with the severity of justice, urging us to appreciate both aspects in the context of faith and redemption.
In practice
In a sermon about redemption, this quote could help illustrate the profound meaning of sacrifice.
Both God's love and God's wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the old covenant to the new, from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax - in the cross.
It is a cheap zeal that reserves its passions to combat only the sins and temptations of others.
Many of us in our praying are like nasty little boys who ring front door bells and run away before anyone answers.
There is a certain kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering.
The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.
Failure to believe stems from moral failure to recognize the truth, not from want of evidence, but from willful neglect or distortion of the evidence.
Now everyone dreams of a love faithful and true, But you and I know what this world can do. So let's make our steps clear so the other may see. And I'll wait for you...should I fall behind wait for me.
I still believe that love is all you need. I don't know a better message than that.
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.
Donβt despair if your heart has been through a lot of trauma. Sometimes thatβs how beautiful hearts are remade: they are shattered first.
Close, close all night the lovers keep. They turn together in their sleep, Close as two pages in a book that read each other in the dark. Each knows all the other knows, learned by heart from head to toes.
With the most infinite tenderness I have ever known in my life, he put his arms around me, gently, gently, and I embraced him around the neck, and we touched.
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