THE NECESSITY OF THE CROSS
The resurrection is glorious, but it cannot be understood apart from the cross.
We love the empty tomb. We sing about it. We celebrate it. But before there was a garden filled with astonished joy, there was a hill outside the city filled with blood and darkness. The stone was not rolled away until the Lamb was slain.
Jesus did not drift toward death. He walked toward it with steady steps.
In Mark 8:31, He began to teach His disciples that the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, be killed, and after three days rise again. Must. That word stands like a pillar. The cross was not an accident. It was not a tragic miscalculation. It was divine necessity.
Why must He suffer?
Because sin is not small. Because evil is not imaginary. Because rebellion against God carries a weight that cannot simply be brushed aside. Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. Wages are earned. Death is the due payment of a sinful race.
Yet the verse does not end there. The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. A gift cannot be earned. It must be given. But gifts still cost the giver something.
Isaiah foresaw this centuries before Bethlehem. In Isaiah 53:5, the prophet declares that “He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, that the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” The cross was substitution. The Innocent standing where the guilty should stand.
Without the cross, resurrection would be spectacle. With the cross, resurrection becomes salvation.
If Jesus had simply died as a martyr, His rising would amaze us but not redeem us. If He had simply conquered death without addressing sin, we would still stand condemned. But at Calvary, justice and mercy embraced. The debt was paid. The cup was drained. The veil was torn.
The resurrection, then, is the Father’s declaration that the sacrifice was accepted.
As we continue toward Easter, let us not hurry past the suffering. Let us not skip from palm branches to lilies. The empty tomb only shines because the cross stood first.
And this truth presses gently but firmly upon our own lives. If resurrection requires a cross, then so does discipleship. “If anyone desires to come after Him, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow” (Luke 9:23). There is no crown without surrender. No victory without yielding.
But take heart. The cross is not the end of the story. It is the doorway to it.
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Father, keep us from loving the resurrection while ignoring the cross. Teach us the weight of our sin and the wonder of our Savior. As we walk toward Easter, give us grateful hearts for the Lamb who was slain and faith to trust that Sunday is coming. Amen.
BDD
