But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:5

I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. 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 and stood respectfully before the statue of 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.

But each time after a while I have had to turn away. 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 God-forsaken darkness.

That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us.

JOHN STOTT

Stricken, smitten, and afflicted,
See Him dying on the tree!
’Tis the Christ by man rejected;
Yes, my soul, ’tis He, ’tis He!
’Tis the long expected prophet,
David’s Son, yet David’s Lord;
Proofs I see sufficient of it:
’Tis a true and faithful Word.

Tell me, ye who hear Him groaning,
Was there ever grief like His?
Friends through fear His cause disowning,
Foes insulting his distress:
Many hands were raised to wound Him,
None would interpose to save;
But the deepest stroke that pierced Him
Was the stroke that Justice gave.

Ye who think of sin but lightly,
Nor suppose the evil great,
Here may view its nature rightly,
Here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the Sacrifice appointed!
See Who bears the awful load!
’Tis the Word, the Lord’s Anointed,
Son of Man, and Son of God.

Here we have a firm foundation,
Here the refuge of the lost.
Christ the Rock of our salvation,
Christ the Name of which we boast.
Lamb of God for sinners wounded!
Sacrifice to cancel guilt!
None shall ever be confounded
Who on Him their hope have built.

THOMAS KELLY

O sacred Head, now wounded
With grief and shame weighed down
Now scornfully surrounded
With thorns Thine only crown
O sacred Head, what glory
What bliss till now was Thine
Yet, though despised and gory
I joy to call Thee mine

P. T. Forsythe, in his book THE HOLY FATHER, expounds on the magnitude of the love of God in reconciliation.

"The miracle of the world is not that God should love his children or even his prodigals.  Do not even the Publicans likewise?  But it is that he should love, forgive and redeem His enemies; that his heart should atone for them to His own holy nature; that He should consecrate a suffering greater even than they devised, all the suffering they might have to endure; and by their central sin and its judgment destroy sin at its center....."

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered
Was all for sinners’ gain
Mine, mine was the transgression
But Thine the deadly pain
Lo, here I fall, my Savior
’Tis I deserve Thy place
Look on me with Thy favor
Vouchsafe to me Thy grace

"Forgiving is not just forgetting. It is not canceling the past.  It is not mere amnesty and restoration. There is something broken in which a soul's sin shatters a world.  Such is a soul's grandeur, and so great is the fall thereof; so seamless is the robe of righteousness, so ubiquitous and indefectible the moral order which makes man man." 

"Account must be had, somewhere and by somebody, of that holiness of God which is the dignity of fatherhood and soul of manhood.  There are debts that cannot simply be written off and left unrecovered. There is a spiritual order whose judgments are teh one guarantee for mankind and its future."

Men mock and taunt and jeer Thee
Thou noble countenance
Though mighty worlds shall fear Thee
And flee before Thy glance
How art thou pale with anguish
With sore abuse and scorn
How doth Thy visage languish
That once was bright as morn
 
"That law of holiness can by no means whatever be either warned off or brought off in its claim. God cannot simply wave it as to the past, nor is it enough if he simply declare it for all time. In His own eternal nature it has an undying claim to which he must give effect in due judgment somewhere, if He is to redeem a world. The enforcement of God's holiness by judgment is as essential to a universal and eternal Fatherhood as is the outflow of His love."

"It was not cursed suffering only that fell on the Savior, it was holy judgment. The Holy Father dealt there with the world's sin on (not in) a worldsoul. God in Christ judged sin as a Holy Father seeking penalty only for holiness' sake. He gathered it in one there, and brought it to issue, focused, thus, with His unity of holy law."

My burden in Thy Passion
Lord Thou hast borne for me
For it was my transgression
Which brought this woe on Thee
I cast me down before Thee
Wrath were my rightful lot
Have mercy, I implore Thee
Redeemer, spurn me not

"The misery of death which the sinner bears blindly, sullenly, resentfully, was there understood with the understanding of Holy God; the guilt was seen as God sees it; the judgment was accepted as God's judgment, born, owned and glorified before the world as holy, fatherly, just, and good." 

"That final witness of holiness to holiness amid sin's last wreck, penalty, and agony - that is expiation as the Father made it in the Son, not changing His feeling, but by crisis, by judgment, eternally changing His relations with the world."

What language shall I borrow
To thank Thee, dearest friend
For this Thy dying sorrow
Thy pity without end
O make me Thine forever
And should I fainting be
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love to Thee