There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain.

And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the cross.' In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. Indeed, for a man to be excluded from heaven on the last day, it will be enough for Jesus to say, 'I never knew you.“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. Those who have acknowledged him before men he will acknowledge before his Father: those who have denied him, he will deny. Others will hear the dreadful words, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.' Not only will Jesus be the judge, but the criterion of judgment will be men’s attitude to him as shown in their treatment of his 'brethren' or their response to his word. Some will be invited to come and inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. He will then separate men from one another as a shepherd separates his sheep from his goats. He will sit on the throne of his glory, and the judgment will be committed to him by the Father. He will himself arouse the dead, and all the nations will be gathered before him. Several of his parables imply that he will come back at the end of the world, and that the final day of reckoning will be postponed until his return.

This is perhaps the most fantastic of all his statements.

“Christ’s fourth indirect claim was to judge the world.

The Cross of Christ by John R.W. Stott