Summarising chapter 4:

In a detective novel, the meaning of an event depends on where it is in the story and how it relates to what comes before and after it.

It is just so with the Bible: although many read it as they would a cookbook, where the order of recipes is not particularly important, it does in fact tell a story, and the position of a given event within that story may be very significant.

Like some movies, the Bible story has a surprise ending that makes all the difference to everything that has gone before.  That surprise ending is the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The OT seemed to be pointing toward a mighty warrier Messiah who would smite Israel’s enemies and restore God’s people to peace and prosperity (and obedience to the Mosaic law).

There are, indeed, hints within the OT that God was planning something very different.  But these would only make sense after the event.

Jesus didn’t fit the expectations,  He didn’t rise up to smite the Romans: he let himself be crucified by them.  Nor did he call the people back to their nationalistic, law-based covenant: he repudiated aspects of the law, associated with sinners, opposed the legalistic religious leaders, and forged a new, transnational, covenant that was based on God’s grace.

It was for this very reason that Jesus was rejected by his own people, who called for his execution.  But Jesus rose from the grave, vindicating his Messiahship, and confirming the direction that God had always intended the story to go.

If we look back from this vantage point we shall see how even those OT portraits of a violent, vengeful God bear witness to his non-violent, self-sacrificing love on the cross.

In what ways is the cross the key?

(a) The cross is the supreme revelation of God for us.  To the human eye, the cross is surpassingly ugly.  But, to the eye of faith, there is something else going on: in truth, it is supremely beautiful.  It reveals both the revolting nature of our sin and the beauty of a God who is willing to take on this ugliness.

(b) The cross reveals what God has always been like.  Therefore, when we read accounts in the OT (such as Jer 13:14) that seem to represent God as other than he is revealed in the cross, then we must attribute these to the writer’s own fallen, distorted, culturally conditioned, conception of God.  God in his cruciform goodness is willing to bear a sinful conception of himself.

(c) The cross reveals a God who both acts and is acted upon.  God acts to save us.  But he is acted up by sinful human beings under the influence of the powers of evil.  It is both good and bad, beautiful and ugly.  So it is that, throughout Scripture, we find this mixture of good and evil, or truth and falsehood.  This is so whether we consider ‘the Bible’s unscientific cosmology, or its irreconcilable contradictions, or its conflict with historical evidence, or its less-than-edifying depictions of God.’  To affirm this is not to deny the Bible’s infallibility: but it is to reconceive what the Bible infallibly accomplishes.  In the cross, God accomplishes his purposes through what the world considers foolish, weak lowly and despised (1 Cor 1:27f), and it is just so with the Bible.  If, in the incarnation, God takes on the limitations of human nature, then we should expect the Bible to reflect this.

(d) The cross reveals a relational, noncoercive God.  To ask, Why does God allow himself to be acted upon is to ask, Why the cross?  God has created us as free, decision-making persons.  He refuses to control or coerce us.  He gives us choice to follow him or not.  And that is why Scripture often represents God as grieved, frustrated and disappointed when people reject him and go down their own self-destructive paths.  That is why God allows himself to be acted upon by people.  And this is seen supremely in the cross. God works on us by influence, not by coercion.  God’s acting toward his people is a sign of his direct revelation; his allowing people to act upon him is a sign of indirect revelation.  The latter must be interpreted in the light of the former.