The Cross that Abolished

Our Separation from God

Ephesians 2:4-6 (NIV) But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus

Just as we died with Him we were also made alive with Him and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ.

The message of the cross is that we have an effortless union with the happy God:

1. •in his death he died our death,
   

2. •he made himself one with us in our humanity,
   

3. •he united himself with the human race, took it’s sin, took it’s curse, took it’s guilt, took it’s shame, took it’s entire fallenness …
   

4. •the cross abolished our separation from God
   

Romans 8:3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through human frailty, God did by sending His own Son in the human likeness

2 Peter 2:24 (amp) He personally bore our sins in His [own] body on the tree [as on an altar and offered Himself on it], that we might die (cease to exist) to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed.

Ephesians 2:4-6 (NIV) But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus

One Bible scholar tells us that the with Him concept is so strong as to be a union like a co-joined (Siamese) twins. Sharing the same blood, the same vital organs, etc, that’s how we are with Christ.

1. •the cross abolished our separation from God
   

2. •my life is completely wrapped up in him and he in me
   

Religion makes it so complicated, but the gospel is so simple, so sweet and so good. We can experience this union with Christ everyday of our lives – it’s there in the cross and in the open grave and in his triumphant enthronement, where he and I are ONE.

Romans 5:10-11 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.

(This one of the few times we find the word “atonement” in the New Testament)

Atonement (Hebrew – Kaphar) to cover, purge, make an atonement, make reconciliation, to cover over, cover over with pitch

From OT to NT atonement goes from ‘cover’ to ‘exchange’

Atonement (Greek – Katallage)  

1. Exchange (of the business of money changers, exchanging equivalent values)

2. Adjustment of a difference, reconciliation, restoration to favour

When English translators studied these Hebrew and Greek words, they chose atonement – a word denoting unity and union – to convey the meaning.

Atonement (English origin) early 16th cent. (denoting unity or reconciliation, esp. between God and man): from at one + -ment , influenced by medieval Latin adunamentum ‘unity,’ and earlier onement from an obsolete verb one [to unite.]

The Exchange: on the cross he took our separation – my God why have you forsaken me – to give us his union: (John 17:21) that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us

The story of the serpents in the wilderness (Numbers 21). Just like the serpent on the pole, the life and glory of God flows to us every time we look, every time we glance at the wonderful cross. Moses never gave them a process of how to deal with the poison, he just told them to look and live! The poison just evaporated!

As soon as you agree that there’s separation, you have to chart a course to get you from A to B. Churches are good at that – courses, steps, catechisms, processes, classes (can’t do that in massive harvest, people just have to look and live)

Psalm 16:11 You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever. OT!

Christianity is not a path, it’s not a journey, it’s not a process or a course to complete: it’s a PERSON with whom I am united inseparably! Jesus didn’t say that life was a pathway, he said …

I am . . . the life (John 14:6)

Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits at God's right hand in the place of honor and power. Let heaven fill your thoughts. Do not think only about things down here on earth. For you died when Christ died, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your real life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.(Colossians 3:1-4)

So I’m not on a path of life, I have the life of all lives! And in my union with Him is fullness of joy and pleasure forevermore! The cross abolished separation and super-glued me into him and Christ in me!

Everything that is good is Jesus. All that is wonderful is Jesus.

Religion wants to separate Him from our Christian life – so, prayer is something we do to get close to Him, worship is something we do so He will come to us.

1. •BUT, we pray from being in Him and worship from being in Him
   

2. •I worship Him BECAUSE I’m in Him;
   

3. •my petitions have answers BECAUSE I’m in “The Answer”.
   

4. •My healing isn’t ‘out there’, it’s ‘in here’.
   

We’ve got to give our belief system a major overhaul

1. •the problem is often that we don’t feel or sense that inseparability from the divine happy life
   

2. •again, faith is the key because what is true in the realm of the Spirit, through faith becomes manifest in the realm of senses
   

3. •faith can see the cross, the open grave, the heavenly throne where we’re seated
   

4. •faith thinks the truth, meditates on it, confesses it, informs our feelings of it
   

5. •and in such a way faith releases the manifestation of the happy riches we have in Christ.