“Let me be clear, there is nothing good about a cross. It was devised as a torture machine to implement the most profound humiliation and abuse. This deviant device is the iconic manifestation of our blind commitment to darkness. It is our ultimate desecration of the goodness and loving intent of God to create, an intent that is focused on the human creation. It is the ultimate fist raised against God.
And how did God respond to this profound brokenness? God submitted to it. God willingly climbed onto our torture device and met us at the deepest and darkest place of our diabolical imprisonment to our own lies, and by submitting once and for all, God destroyed its power.
Jesus is God’s best, given willingly and in opposition to our worst — the cross. While evil is never justified, it is redeemed and rescued from its intent, thus becoming a statement of true justice.
This is Jesus. God submitting to our torture machine and transforming it into an icon and monument of grace, so precious to us that we wear it around our necks. This torture device declares that there is nothing I can bring to the the table that is so evil or broken that God won’t climb into it with me. There is nothing so dead that God is incapable of growing it into something living. The cross, once our greatest attempt at destroying life, has become our most precious symbol of God who is hope for us all.”
[William Paul Young, Lies We Believe about God, pp 149-150]