The post below is adapted from an article by Jon Bloom of Desiring God

Do you want to understand the wrath of God, look at the cross. The cross. What a terror. Two thousand years removed from the reality of Roman crucifixion and having become familiar with the cross as an abstract theological term, it can be hard for us to emotionally connect with what it really was: the terrible means of Rome executing its wrath upon its worst offenders. And Jesus was executed on a cross, counted as among the worst offenders. His death was real, and it was really terrible.

He was an object of wrath of:

1. The Roman and Jewish wrath (John 19:6,11); in fact,
2. His Father’s wrath — the most just, righteous, and terrible wrath there is.

And he became that object willingly, even when His every human impulse longed for escape (Luke 22:42). Yet it was the very reason He came. He explicitly warned His disciples (Luke 9:22) and told as many as would listen that He was here to give His life (John 6:51; John 10:15-18). In so doing, God’s divine wrath was satisfied, for every sin on Him was laid (Isaiah 53:5-6, 10-11). That’s why Jesus came, and that’s what the cross was all about. On the cross, the Father made the sinless Son to be sin for our sake that in Jesus we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus, our Propitiation, absorbed the Father’s wrath against our sin and satisfied it in full, so that “whoever believes in him should not perish” but instead enjoy the Father’s favour forever (John 3:16).
 
Do you want to understand the love of God? Look at The cross. What a terror. The cross of Christ. There the worst brutality meets the mightiest meekness. Unfathomable horror meets unsurpassed beauty. The most righteous condemnation meets the most gracious pardon. The greatest justice meets the greatest mercy. The fiercest wrath meets the most bountiful favour. And such love (1 John 4:9-10).

Who would have ever dreamt a Roman cross, one of the worst, most fearsome devices of torture ever devised, would become a symbol of the greatest love ever expressed? For “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” and saved us “from the wrath of God” (Romans 5:8-9).

This is the way God has made for all who sat or who are still sitting in the darkness of sin and ignorance under the power of the gods of the world (2 Cor. 4:4 (MSG). Why will you reject the extra-ordinary act of mercy from your Creator? The time is here when the door of grace is shut, DON’T ignore it. Receive the mercy of God offered in Jesus Christ and be saved. Shalom.

Pastor Afolabi Oladele