The Cross — Love That Holds in Abandonment
'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Matthew 27:46) — a cry that David wrote a thousand years earlier in Psalm 22, describing the exact physical experience of crucifixion before crucifixion existed. The God of the universe, dying on a Roman execution device, feeling abandoned by his Father. And yet: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do' (Luke 23:34). Then, at the end: 'It is finished' (John 19:30) — tetelestai, the Greek word stamped on paid-in-full receipts. The debt is settled. The Cross is not a sacrifice extracted reluctantly but the shape of love taken all the way to the end: 'Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends' (John 15:13). 'He was pierced for our transgressions... by his wounds we are healed' (Isaiah 53:5). Galatians 2:20: 'I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live.' The Cross is not only what happened to Jesus. It is the believer's own address.