The central feature of the cross is what - or who-is not there: Christ is not on the cross. This is important. In fact, he is not in the tomb either. The empty cross is central to our understanding of our Christian faith and the very nature of the King we serve. Here are five reasons why the empty cross is important to Christians.
1. Jesus Is Not Dead
“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”- 1 Corinthians 15:20
First of all, we do not worship a suffering Savior. He did suffer, but he is no longer in anguish. In fact, Jesus has ascended. His Holy Spirit remains as our helper, but Jesus is in heaven with the Father, waiting for the time when he will come back to destroy Satan and to raise those who have died in Christ (and to call the living who serve him into the Kingdom of God).
Billy Graham wrote that “the foot of the empty cross is the ultimate destination in life. Your acceptance of Jesus’ sacrifice, or your rejection of it, determines your future life.” When we call ourselves “Christian”, this should signal a belief that God came down to show us who God is, but is now risen. While many elements of faith life differ, for every Christian, this is a universal declaration and one about which there can be no debate. We can disagree about the rapture or about predestination but there can be no argument about this: Christ is alive.
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2. Christ Is One with God the Father
How can Christ be alive? Jesus is One with God, the second member of the Trinity. The empty cross signals this fact to us. Only God could overcome death, and he did. Jesus is more powerful than death, more powerful than the powers that wanted to see him dead. This is because he IS God.
Christians worship Jesus. One might say, “Well, of course we worship Jesus”, but Jesus also worshiped God. We are called by Jesus to honor God as Lord - how can we worship God and also Jesus if Jesus is not God? That would be worshiping an idol unless Jesus is God, Immanuel.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” - John 1:1
Steve Lambert, discussing Hebrews 1, says, “Jesus is the eternally begotten Son of God who has been granted to have I AM life in himself by his Father. The one being of God is eternally shared from Father to Son without division or multiplication of that being so that both are God without God being divided and without there being two Gods.” You see the glory of God in Jesus, who is God’s radiance and “exact representation” (1:3), meaning he is not just a lesser copy: he IS, just as God IS, uncreated and eternally alive and life-giving.
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3. Christ Left to Intercede for Us
“Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” - Romans 8:34
Christ destroyed the barrier between people and God by taking our sins upon himself so that we could inherit his righteousness and be restored to a relationship with God. If we were still dead in our sins, we could not come close to the Lord. We would need a priest to intervene, but Jesus made a way for us to approach the Lord in reverence and with repentant hearts.
He made a way through himself by not only dying but rising from the dead by taking his place at the Father’s side. He is not on the cross. When we pray “in Jesus’ name”, we are not just tacking on a sterile statement for the sake of a satisfying cadence; we are calling on the name of our Living Savior. We can come to the Lord at any time through his Son. Now, as Paul confidently stated, nothing can “separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:39)
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4. Christ Is Victor Over Sin, Satan, and Death
“He will swallow up death forever.” - Isaiah 25:8
The Israelites wanted the Messiah to come and defeat their external enemies. Instead, Jesus came and defeated their real enemies: sin, Satan, and death. He defeated death by destroying the power of sin, which is what separates us from the love of God. Our personal sin is keeping us from having the right relationship with God, not the external pressures of living under oppressive rulers, not disease, war, or grief. These things lead us into temptation, towards doubt, despair, and anger, but our personal sin - often, our response to the pain we experience - is our greatest enemy.
Christ died, but he rose from the grave to show that there is no death he cannot conquer and, through him, no death we cannot conquer either. In our mortal lives right now, if we are in Christ, we can overcome the power of sin, which leads us away from God, which means death.
Tim Keller observes that “the powers of the age to come were brought into the present when Christ rose and ascended.” We do not wait for death to bring us victory over sin; we live in that reality right now, even though it is an imperfect reality, which we will only fully realize in its perfection when we die and are raised. Billy Graham stated that “God turned what seemed to be life’s greatest tragedy into history’s greatest triumph. The death of Christ, perpetrated by evil men, was thought by them to be the end, but His grave became but a doorway to a larger victory.” The tomb is empty, just as the cross is empty.
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5. We Follow Christ
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” - Matthew 16:24-25
When we see the empty cross, we recognize that Christ’s purpose was perfected there, which means ours will also be perfected through suffering. In fact, the road to salvation is frequently fraught with trouble and even with danger, and it is a salvation-oriented suffering if it comes about as a result of obedience to and love for Christ.
There has to be a promise, a hope, which will support us as we pick up our crosses and follow all the way to Calvary, to the suffering that awaits those who love the Lord. How can we do it otherwise? This suffering can look like the dramatic and terrifying types of torture faced by faithful believers around the world right now. Our suffering in Christ can look more like the grief of being barren, of losing a child to cancer, or of rejection by loved ones. One way or the other, we drag that heavy piece of wood through the sand, feeling crushed by travails that Satan hopes will bury us. Except, we know that Jesus Christ, though buried, destroyed death. He could not be held down. This is our hope.
Like Christ, we do not stay down. We do not die a second time. Because we follow Christ, we rise from the grave. Christ’s resurrection is our resurrection. This is our hope, our promised inheritance. As Tim Keller put it, “Each time we obey God, it is like a 'death.' We die to our own will, and that hurts. But with the help of the Holy Spirit, such little deaths lead us to become more Christlike—a resurrection.”
Without the resurrection, the empty cross, Billy Graham argued he would have given up preaching: what would the point have been? There is no hope if he has not risen. In the words of Tim Keller, “The world—and especially our modern Western culture—has no understanding of how suffering and weakness can bring blessing.” Death is the means by which we receive the blessing of eternal salvation through faith, but it is in the risen Christ alone that we can be sure of resurrection life. If Christ is dead, then so are we, eternally separated from God. And there is no cure for death if Jesus has not risen. An empty cross fills us with very real hope.
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Sources:https://faithgateway.com/blogs/christian-books/where-is-jesus#:~:text=The%20Empty%20Cross%20Is%20Full,cross%20is%20full%20of%20hope.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/keller-hope/
https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-sons-eternal-glory-understanding-jesus-in-hebrews-1/
Originally published Tuesday, 01 April 2025.