In the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ I see God’s plan to make good His ends, and to give effect to His counsels and purpose, in contrast with man’s schemes.

As to man: it was two pieces of wood nailed together, and a few nails, with a hole in the ground. This was an ingenious but malicious mode of death for a hated object. This was man’s scheme, though Satan took care to put in his power through the world, as Jew and Gentile, and to show forth what man’s flesh was capable of as acting against God.

But in the Lord Jesus Christ there was God manifested in flesh giving Himself; meeting Satan so that He might, through death, destroy him that had the power of death, and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their life-time subject to bondage; that He might test and show out the character of the world and the essential contrast between the state of Himself—holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners—and sinful man.

And here first burst forth the light of God’s character in truth, holiness, and grace. If what He Himself was, and what man was, in contrast to Himself, had been concealed, He could not have been revealed in truth. He told it all out in and by the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The character of His estimate of what was fitting for Him to do in dealing with sin, and what the sinner deserved at His hand, was seen there also: in holiness it was fully told out.