The Triumph of the Cross

Introduction

We have finally made it. Following Jesus in his last hours has led us to the empty tomb. Those of us here today who have followed Christ are part of the church of the Triumphant. We are here today to celebrate the power of resurrection.

‌‌Jesus Christ was “delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification.” Friends, we must know that a dead Savior cannot save anybody. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is as much a part of the Gospel message as His sacrificial death on the cross. In fact, in the Book of Acts, the church gave witness primarily to the Resurrection.

‌The Resurrection proves that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be, the very Son of God.

He had told His disciples that He would be raised from the dead, but they had not grasped the meaning of this truth. Even the women who came early to the tomb did not expect to see Him alive. They had purchased spices to complete the anointing that Joseph and Nicodemus had so hastily begun.

Everyone in the crowd witnessed something amazing on Calvary’s Hill a few days before. It looked as if evil triumphed over goodness at the cross, but the Bible declares that it was the place were goodness conquered evil. It looked as if Christ was crushed by earthly powers on the cross, but it was the place where the Seed of the Woman finally crushed the serpent’s head. We owe this victory entirely to the victorious Jesus.

Colossians 2:15 states that it is Christ who overcame and triumphed – and that he did so on the cross. Christ disarmed the rebellion in the world, whether it was Satan and his demons, false idols of pagan religion, evil world governments, or even God’s good angels when they became objects of worship. When Jesus died on the cross, he disarmed it all.

THE CONQUERING CHRIST

‌How can a crucified Christ be a conqueror? How can a victim be a victor? How can an executed criminal, who was rejected, betrayed, denied, and deserted by his disciples, be deemed triumphant? The answers lie in God’s plan of salvation to turn defeat into victory and death into life. That plan was accomplished in what we know as the Easter story.

1. ‌Predictions of victory

‌Genesis 3:15 is the first glimpse of the gospel, the first foreshadowing of the cross, and it points specifically to the triumph of our salvation: From now on, you and the woman will be enemies, and your offspring and her offspring will be enemies. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

‌This first prediction of triumph identified the woman’s offspring as the one who would be ultimately victorious. It was later revealed to the prophets that this ‘seed’ would be the Messiah, the Christos or ‘Anointed Man,’ who would establish God’s righteous rule and eradicate evil.

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When we take an overview of the Old Testament and interpret each passage in the light of the cross, we see that God’s righteous rule over Israel and the promise of the future rule of Messiah are further predictions of the Seed’s ultimate triumph over the serpent.

2. ‌Foretastes of victory

‌If Christ’s decisive victory over Satan was achieved in his death on the cross, the early rounds were won in his perfect submission to God throughout his earthly life and in the mighty works, demonstrating his unique anointing and authority.

‌As soon as Jesus was born, Satan recognized him as his future conqueror and started to attempt to defeat him. For example, he attacked Jesus through:‌

· Herod’s slaughter of the Bethlehem children – Matthew 2:1-18

· The wilderness temptations to avoid the cross -Matthew 4:1-11

· The Nazareth congregation’s attempts on his life – Luke 4:28-29

· The crowds desire to make him a political ruler – John 6:15

· Peter’s opposition to the way of the cross – Matthew 16:21-23

· Judas’ betrayal – Luke 22:1-6.

‌But Jesus was determined to fulfill what had been foretold. He announced that God’s kingdom had come to that generation through him and that his mighty works were the visible proof of its coming.

‌Through the Gospels, we see God’s kingdom advancing and Satan’s retreating as demons were cast out, diseases were healed, and nature was calmed.

‌Luke 10:1-24 describes how Jesus sent seventy disciples to announce the kingdom’s arrival by preaching and healing as his representatives. When they returned, Jesus told them that he had seen Satan fall from heaven because of their activities.

‌Jesus said that the strong man must be bound. The devil may have been a powerful man, but a stronger man had come – and he would bind and overpower the strong man and plunder his house. However, this binding and overpowering did not fully occur until the cross.

Hebrews 2:14-15 states that it was by his death that Jesus destroyed the devil and liberated his captives.‌

3. The moment of victory

‌Colossians 2:13-15 is the most straightforward New Testament statement about the triumph of Christ on the cross:

You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins. He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross. In this way, God disarmed the evil rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross of Christ.

‌In this important passage, the apostle Paul draws together two aspects of salvation.

‌First, he compares God’s gracious act of forgiveness on the cross to the cancellation of debts. Paul shows that God has released us from our moral and spiritual bankruptcy by paying our debts on the cross. He also shows us that God has destroyed all the records of our indebtedness.

‌Paul then describes God’s decisive act of conquest on the cross and shows that he had stripped his opponents of their weapons and exhibited them as defeated enemies.

The deep truth beneath Paul’s imagery is that forgiveness and victory occur simultaneously and are always inescapably linked. In fact, we can say that Christ triumphed over evil by repaying our debts, that by delivering us from our sins, he delivered us from sin.

‌ Jesus overcame the devil during his ministry by resisting all his temptations and by his perfect submission and obedience to the Father, so he triumphed over the devil on the cross with his perfect obedience.

‌The Son’s perfect submission was indispensable to salvation. If Jesus had disobeyed for a moment and had deviated one inch from God’s path, the devil would have gained a foothold and frustrated salvation. But Jesus obeyed the Father completely, so the devil was defeated.

‌On the cross, the devil provoked Jesus through torture, injustice, lies, and insults, but Jesus refused to retaliate. He could have summoned an angelic army to help him; he could have stepped down from the cross, but instead of overcoming evil with power, he conquered it with good.

‌Despite everything the devil did at the cross, he could not gain any hold on Jesus, and when Jesus died without sin, the devil had to concede defeat. The devil was truly trying to defeat Jesus through the cross, but he failed, and in turn, Jesus defeated him. This means that his death at the cross decisively accomplished the long-predicted victory of the Seed, which began during Christ’s earthly life and ministry.

4. ‌The confirmation of victory

‌We have been saved by the blood of Jesus, by his death on the cross. The blood from the cross achieved our salvation, revealed God’s nature, and won victory over evil. It was the blood that accomplished our redemption and reconciliation. The blood satisfied the twin demands of God’s justice and love.

‌The New Testament always states that ‘Christ died for our sins’ and never that ‘he rose for our sins.’ Hebrews 2:14 makes this plain. The resurrection did not earn our salvation; instead, it is the ultimate proof of our salvation.

Just as incarnation was the indispensable requirement for salvation, resurrection was the indispensable confirmation of salvation. It was God’s way of publicly endorsing Jesus’ victory on the cross.

‌LIVING IN VICTORY

Because of Jesus’ victory, we can now live in victory. Living in victory means living in the knowledge that Satan still exists but that his power has been fundamentally broken; that the flesh still makes all manner of suggestions to us, but that these are essentially empty threats; that death still rears its ugly head, but that there is nothing to fear anymore.

‌When people continue sinning, it shows they belong to the Devil, who has sinned since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy these works of the Devil.

‌The New Testament refers to many different aspects of Christ’s saving victory, but it particularly emphasizes our triumphant freedom from the law, the flesh, the world, and death itself.

‌The Law condemned our disobedience and brought us under its ‘curse’ or judgment. But Christ’s death released us from the Law’s curse because he became a curse for us. This means that Christ fulfilled or completed the Law, and it no longer enslaves us by its condemnation.

‌Galatians 5:16-25 describes freedom from the flesh by walking in the Spirit. Once again, our ongoing experience of Christ’s victory is demonstrated by our walk in and with the Spirit. Our partnership with the Spirit is our experience of victory.

‌We can say that the ‘flesh’ is the devil’s basic hold inside us and that the ‘world’ is his basic means of pressuring us from the outside. In this context, ‘the world’ means the godless society which is hostile to the Church and which continually attempts to compromise its holy values.

‌When Jesus claimed to have triumphed over the world, he meant that he had rejected its distorted values and maintained his godly perspective on people and material objects. When we believe in Jesus, we share his victory over the world by sharing his eternal values. Living in Christ’s victory over the world means not being conformed to its values and being progressively transformed by our renewed mind’s grasp of God’s will.

‌Nothing reveals God’s nature more clearly than the cross. Through the cross, the world has been crucified to us, and we to the world, so that we are released from its bondage to live in the freedom of God’s will and values.

Conclusion

‌We must remember that it is only by the cross of Christ that we can triumph over Satan—both in our personal lives and in the Church’s mission. We know that we are called to repentant holiness and radical evangelism, to selfless self-sacrifice and patient endurance. Still, these only have meaning and purpose because they are the ultimate completion of the Seed’s crushing victory over the serpent—which he won when he died and arose from the grave!

Alleluia, Christ is Alive!