The Glory of God Revealed at Calvary

Adapted from an address delivered by Apostle Arthur A. Oakman in 1956. The original spoken presentation has been edited and arranged for clarity while preserving its central argument, theological character and distinctive voice.

Devotion to a Person

At its root, the Christian faith is not devotion to an idea, a formula, a theory or even an ideal. It is devotion to a Person. The Restoration began with the divine command to hear the Son of God, and that command remains at the centre of Christian life. We are not merely invited to learn principles associated with Jesus. We are called to know Him, remember Him and follow Him.

To know Jesus is to love Him. Oakman recalled his father once speaking to a gathering of ministers. He was not a man of many words, but he chose those words carefully. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I have known Jesus quite a long time. He has never done anything but good to me, and I commend Him to you.”

There is no pursuit more profitable or significant than the effort to know and remember the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet remembrance requires discipline. The world constantly draws our attention towards whatever is immediate, attractive, profitable or pleasurable. Faithfulness means repeatedly turning the heart back towards Christ.

The meaning of the crucifixion cannot be understood merely by describing the physical events of Calvary. The cross must be seen spiritually. Drama, art and historical reconstruction may help us imagine the scene, but the deepest reality of the crucifixion can only be understood through the witness of the Spirit. It is possible to know the facts of the cross while remaining untouched by its meaning. The question is not merely whether we know that Jesus died. The question is whether we have begun to understand what His death reveals about God, about humanity and about the life to which His disciples are called.

The Human Problem

Human beings are naturally drawn towards the self.We interpret life from the centre of our own desires. We defend our own interests, pursue our own plans and judge circumstances according to how they affect us. Even when we do good, our goodness can become entangled with pride, recognition, control or the desire to establish our own righteousness.

Human nature possesses many remarkable capacities. We can reason, choose, create, organise and act. We possess agency, and that agency must be honoured. Yet agency alone cannot deliver us from the domination of the self.

A person cannot simply lift himself above himself. Our freedom is real, but it is also troubled. The origin of our choices may lie within us, yet the self from which those choices arise has become disordered. We are free to act, but we do not possess within ourselves the power to recreate the centre from which we act.

This is the difference between improvement and redemption.Education may enlarge the mind. Discipline may control behaviour. Law may restrain wrongdoing. Culture may refine manners. Religious observance may regulate conduct. None of these, by themselves, can replace the self-centred heart with the heart of God.

The problem is not simply that human beings sometimes make mistakes. The deeper problem is that we continually place ourselves upon the throne that belongs to God. We form plans for ourselves and then use the gifts of God—intelligence, strength, opportunity, influence and creativity—to secure our own will. We may even speak of serving God while quietly asking Him to bless the kingdom we have constructed for ourselves. This is why the gospel must be more than advice. Humanity does not merely need a better example, more information or a clearer moral system. Humanity needs deliverance from the tyranny of the self.

Creation and Redemption

At creation, God spoke, and the created order answered. The divine word went forth with power. Light appeared. The world took shape. The purpose of God was expressed in the reality He brought into being. Yet when we come to Gethsemane, we encounter something different. The One through whom creation came forth kneels in agony. The transformation of the human heart is not presented as an effortless act of command. It is bound to suffering, submission and sacrifice. There is a profound difference between creating a world and redeeming a will that resists its Creator.

The physical universe does not rebel against the laws by which it is sustained. Humanity does. God can command the stars, the seas and the elements, but He does not force the human heart into loving obedience. Love cannot be produced by compulsion, for compelled love is no longer love.

To reclaim humanity without destroying human freedom, God entered into humanity’s suffering. Redemption therefore cost more than a decree. It involved agony, bloody sweat, rejection, spiritual loneliness and the death of the cross. At Calvary, we do not see a distant God solving a problem from beyond the reach of pain. We see God entering the human condition and bearing within Himself the consequences of our rebellion. The cross reveals the seriousness of sin because it reveals what divine love was willing to endure in order to overcome it.

Who Do You Say That He Is?

Before Jesus began openly preparing His disciples for His death, He brought them to a decisive question: Who do you say that I am? This is not merely a question of religious classification. It is the central question of discipleship. Some regarded Jesus as a prophet. Others understood Him as a teacher, a healer or a man of unusual spiritual authority. Peter confessed Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God. That confession changed the meaning of everything that followed.

If Jesus were only a teacher, His death might be regarded as the tragic silencing of a moral voice. If He were only a reformer, the cross might be understood as the political consequence of challenging established power. If He were only an innocent man, Calvary might stand as another example of injustice. But if Jesus is the Son of God, the cross becomes something far greater.

It becomes the self-giving of God within human history. After Peter’s confession, Jesus began to teach that the Son of Man must suffer. The road towards Jerusalem was not an accident into which He stumbled. He was not unexpectedly overtaken by forces beyond His control. He moved knowingly towards the cross.

This does not remove the guilt of those who betrayed, condemned and crucified Him. It reveals that their wrongdoing could not overturn the purpose of God. Even human rebellion was taken up into the redemptive action of Christ. No one stole His life from Him. He laid it down.

The Road to Calvary

The final days before the crucifixion reveal the difference between the mind of Christ and the ambitions of fallen humanity. The disciples still argued about greatness. They considered position, recognition and status even as the shadow of the cross lengthened around them. Each imagined what the kingdom might mean for his own place within it. Jesus answered their ambition by taking a towel. He knelt before them and performed the work of the lowest household servant. The Lord washed the feet of His disciples.

This was not merely an act of courtesy. It was a revelation of the kingdom of God. The kingdom is not built through the struggle to be greatest. It is revealed when the One who truly is greatest makes Himself the servant of all. Peter resisted. He could not easily accept a Messiah who knelt before him. Like many of us, he was more prepared to honour a glorious Lord than to be humbled by a serving Lord.

Yet Jesus insisted that Peter must receive what He was doing. Before we can follow Christ in service, we must allow Christ to serve, cleanse and redeem us. Pride resists both. It resists kneeling before others, but it also resists admitting that we need grace. The washing of the disciples’ feet therefore points towards the cross. In both, Jesus descends. In both, He accepts the lowest place. In both, He gives Himself to those who do not yet understand Him. The journey continued from the upper room to Gethsemane, from Gethsemane to the courts of religious and political power, and from those courts to Golgotha. At every stage, Jesus remained the willing Son.

He was betrayed, but not defeated. He was judged, but the purpose of God was not placed in the hands of His judges. He was condemned, yet His life was not taken from Him against His will. The authority of Pilate was temporary and limited. The obedience of Christ was eternal.

The Loneliness of the Cross

The suffering of crucifixion was terrible. Yet the meaning of Calvary reaches beyond physical pain. Christ entered the spiritual loneliness of fallen humanity. Throughout His earthly life, His relationship with the Father had been the ground of His identity and obedience. He lived in dependence upon the Father. He spoke what the Father gave Him to speak and did what the Father gave Him to do.

At the cross, He entered the darkness experienced by those who are separated from God. This does not mean that the love between the Father and the Son ceased to exist. It means that Christ entered fully into the consequences of sin and death. He tasted the desolation of the human condition from within. The cry of abandonment from the cross must therefore be heard as the cry of redeeming humanity. He entered our darkness so that no darkness would remain beyond the reach of His presence.

Even there, His concern remained directed towards others. He prayed for those who crucified Him. He entrusted His mother to the care of His beloved disciple. He refused to allow suffering to turn Him inward. This is one of the great wonders of the cross.

Suffering often narrows the human world. Pain makes it difficult to see anything beyond ourselves. Yet in the extremity of His agony, Christ continued to love. Never had humanity lived like this. Never had humanity died like this.

He Saved Others

Those who mocked Jesus unknowingly spoke a terrible truth. They said that He had saved others but could not save Himself. Their words were intended as ridicule, yet they came near to the mystery of the cross. Had Christ chosen to save Himself from sacrifice, He would not have accomplished the salvation of others. Self-preservation and self-giving stood before Him. He chose self-giving. This does not mean that suffering is good in itself or that every form of self-denial is holy. Sacrifice can be distorted, manipulated or demanded unjustly. The cross does not sanctify abuse. It reveals the love that freely gives itself for the redemption of another.

Christ was not trapped by weakness. He acted through love. The inability to save Himself was therefore not an absence of power. It was the refusal to use power against the purpose of redemption. At Calvary, divine power appeared in a form the world could not recognise. The world understands power as the ability to control, conquer, punish or escape. The power of Christ was revealed in His ability to remain faithful, loving and obedient while receiving the full force of human hatred.

He did not answer cruelty with cruelty. He did not defeat His enemies by becoming like them. He bore sin without allowing sin to reproduce itself within Him.

The Death of Christ Is the Gospel

Jesus did not come merely to provide humanity with a better moral example. An example may show us what goodness looks like, but an example cannot give us the power to become good. A perfect life may inspire us, but it may also deepen our awareness of how far we fall short.

Christ certainly is our example, but He is not merely our example. He is our Redeemer. He did not come only to teach the gospel. His death and resurrection are at the heart of the gospel itself. The cross was not an unfortunate ending to an otherwise successful ministry. His teaching, healing, compassion and proclamation all moved towards the giving of His life. Jesus spoke of the grain of wheat that must fall into the earth and die in order to bear fruit. He Himself was that seed.

He entered the soil of human death so that the life of the kingdom might rise within humanity. Without the cross, Christian faith becomes moral admiration. With the cross, it becomes participation in the death and life of Christ. The gospel does not merely tell us that Jesus once surrendered Himself to the Father. It calls us to share in that surrender. His death becomes the death in which our self-centred life may die. His resurrection becomes the life in which a new humanity may begin.

The Surrendered Will

The one experience humanity most needs is the experience natural humanity continually resists: the surrender of its own will to God. God does not sin. He does not rebel against goodness or turn away from His own nature. Yet in Jesus Christ, God entered genuine human life. Christ knew hunger, weariness, sorrow, misunderstanding and temptation. He did not pass through humanity as a disguised visitor untouched by its realities. He lived within the conditions of bodily, social and emotional life. Within those conditions, He continually chose the will of the Father.

The crucifixion was therefore not an isolated act detached from the rest of His life. It was the final expression of a life already shaped by surrender. Day by day, He had refused to make Himself the centre. At Calvary, that obedience reached its fullest expression. This is why love is essential to Christian freedom. Fear can force outward conformity. Authority can restrain behaviour. Reward can encourage obedience. Punishment can discourage rebellion. None of these, by themselves, can produce the free surrender of the heart.

Love alone enables a person to remain fully free while joyfully yielding the will. When we truly love another, we may choose to do what serves them even when it conflicts with our immediate desire. We are not forced. Love changes what freedom seeks. In Jesus Christ, human freedom was brought into complete harmony with the love of God. He did not cease to possess a will. He surrendered it. The Christian life begins at the same point.

It begins when we cease treating our own way as ultimate and accept the way of God. This does not mean the destruction of personality. God does not redeem us by making us less human. He restores us by freeing our humanity from the tyranny of the self. The surrender of the self is not the erasure of the person. It is the return of the person to God.

The Cross and the Glory of God

We often speak of glory as though it were brilliance, triumph, power or majesty. The cross overturns our expectations. The cross is not merely a dark event that must be endured before the glory of resurrection can appear. The cross itself reveals the glory of God. It reveals what God is like. God’s glory is not self-protection. It is self-giving love. God’s power is not the domination of the weak. It is the power to descend, bear, forgive and redeem.

God’s holiness is not distant purity that refuses contact with sinners. It is purity strong enough to enter the world of sin without being corrupted by it. The cross is therefore not a contradiction of God’s character. It is the supreme revelation of that character within history. The Father does not cease to be glorious when the Son is crucified. The glory of divine love is displayed through the willing sacrifice of the Son and the Father’s participation in the cost of redemption. We should be cautious about imagining the Father as an angry deity punishing a reluctant Son. The will of the Father and the will of the Son are united in redeeming love. God was not detached from Calvary. God was in Christ, acting for the reconciliation of the world. The glory of God is revealed in the love that bears the cost of restoring those who have rebelled against Him.

Repentance as Grace

The gospel is often described as the promise of forgiveness to those who repent. That is true, but it is not the whole truth. The gospel also gives humanity the possibility of repentance. Repentance is not simply a payment we offer in order to obtain grace. It is itself the work of grace within us. The self-centred heart does not naturally surrender its claim to rule. We defend ourselves, justify ourselves and explain away our disobedience. Even our remorse can remain centred upon ourselves—our embarrassment, our consequences or our damaged self-image.

True repentance occurs when the life of Christ awakens within us and we begin to see sin through the light of divine love. We do not merely regret that our actions produced pain. We recognise that our insistence upon our own way stands against the order and goodness of God.

Repentance is the laying down of arms.

It is the end of the attempt to negotiate with God while preserving our sovereignty.

The cross makes this repentance possible because it reveals both the seriousness of our rebellion and the greater power of God’s mercy.

At Calvary, we see that our sins matter.

We also see that our sins have not exhausted the love of God.

The Temptation to Replace Love

Human beings often distrust the freedom of love. We prefer methods that appear more reliable: bread, authority and mystery. We imagine that people can be secured through material satisfaction, controlled through power or impressed through spectacle. Religious institutions are not immune from these temptations.

We may seek to build the kingdom through influence rather than sacrifice, fear rather than love, or fascination rather than truth. Dostoevsky explored this temptation in the story of the Grand Inquisitor. In the fable, Christ returns during the Spanish Inquisition. He heals, comforts and restores, but the religious authorities arrest Him. The aged Inquisitor accuses Christ of expecting too much from humanity.

According to the Inquisitor, Christ should have accepted the temptations offered in the wilderness. He should have provided bread, seized authority and displayed irresistible wonders. Humanity, the Inquisitor argues, does not truly want freedom. It wants security, control and mystery.

Christ, however, had refused to compel humanity. People were to follow Him through love and devotion, or not at all. The Church is always tempted to correct what it regards as Christ’s impractical method. Love appears too slow. Freedom appears too uncertain. Sacrifice appears too costly. But whenever the Church abandons the way of Christ in order to secure visible success, it may preserve the machinery of religion while losing the Spirit of its Lord.

The kingdom cannot be built by methods that contradict the King.

The Cross and Zion

Zion cannot be built merely through money, organisation, land, programmes or leadership. These things may serve a purpose, but they cannot create the spiritual character of Zion. Zion requires a people who have learned the meaning of the cross. Whenever a brother or sister falls, the natural self wants to expose the failure, establish superiority or return the injury it has received. The spirit of Christ bears, forgives and continues to seek redemption.

This does not mean ignoring wrongdoing or refusing accountability. Christian love is not moral indifference. Yet accountability must serve restoration rather than revenge. The instrument of love is sacrifice. Zion comes into being when the people of God cease making themselves the centre of the community. It appears when status gives way to service, resentment gives way to forgiveness, possessiveness gives way to generosity and self-defence gives way to truthful humility.

The Church does not become holy by praising itself. It becomes holy by remembering Jesus Christ. When the Church forgets Him, it may still possess doctrine, history, buildings, organisation and activity. Yet without His Spirit, these become empty forms. The promise of His presence is linked with remembrance. To remember Christ is not merely to recall information about Him. It is to allow His life, death and resurrection to interpret our choices.

How Shall We Respond?

The meaning of the crucifixion cannot remain a subject for theological discussion alone. The cross asks something of us. It stands in the centre of history as the divine appeal of love. Christ does not compel our obedience by destroying our freedom. He reveals the love of God and asks us to respond.

How can He possess a righteous person without that person’s consent? He will not redeem us by making us less than persons. He seeks our willing surrender. This is the dignity and the danger of human freedom. We can refuse love. We can admire the cross without taking up our own. We can speak of sacrifice while protecting every personal advantage. We can defend Christian doctrine while resisting the mind of Christ.

We can be moved by the story of Calvary yet return unchanged to resentment, ambition and self-rule. The divine appeal does not ask only whether we believe Christ died. It asks whether we will allow His death to become active within us. Will we permit the self-centred life to be crucified? Will we forgive those who have injured us? Will we serve without demanding recognition? Will we obey God when obedience costs us something?

Will we accept that the glory of God is revealed not in self-exaltation, but in holy love? These are not comfortable questions. Christianity does not claim to be easy. It claims to reveal another order of life—the kingdom of God. The way into that kingdom passes through surrender.

The Figure at the Centre of History

At the centre of Christian faith stands a Figure upon a cross. He is dreadful in His spiritual loneliness. He is marvellous in His submission to those who killed Him. He is glorious in His dependence upon the Father. He is not merely the victim of history. He is the revelation of God within history. There, human rebellion reaches towards God with violence. There, God answers with redeeming love. There, the self-centred order of the world is judged. There, the life of the kingdom is revealed.

If Zion is ever to be built, it will be built according to the glory disclosed at Calvary. We are sinners. Christ died for us. This means that He died not merely for humanity in the abstract, but for each human person. The love of God continues to seek the one who remains far from Him. Celestial glory is not simply splendour beyond death.

It is the glory of divine love. To understand that glory, we must look towards Calvary. There the Son of God gives Himself. There the Father’s redemptive purpose is revealed. There humanity is invited to surrender its rebellion and enter the life of God. May the Church arise in the strength of humility, the glory of sacrifice and the beauty of holiness. May we refuse the empty praise of human achievement and seek instead the quiet evidence of Christ’s life among us.

May we remember the Lord Jesus until His Spirit shapes our desires, our relationships, our worship and our common life. And may the meaning of the crucifixion become more than a doctrine we affirm. May it become the life we live.