What's it for?

There before you is that perfectly harmless button on the remote control or appendage to the zoo enclosure or light on the car dashboard or hole in the kitchen wall or marking on the dog’s underside or buoy bobbing in the river or pocket in the handbag.  It had unobtrusively nestled in your life until a small quizzical mind bent its curiosity toward the thing.  And the truth is that for the first time you realise - you don’t know!

A harrowing (and small) question it may be, but “What’s it for?” is a surprisingly useful question for assessing many things.  I have read that, seen from space, the brightest man-made spot on earth is the city of Las Vegas (partly due to its desert location but mainly due to the intensity of its neon lights).  An approaching alien might therefore think it is the most interesting place on earth!  But not if they ask, “What’s it for?”.  And many shining places and things are rendered a lot less inviting by the application of that little question.

The question that transforms the cross is “What’s it for?”.  The reason for most of the New Testament writings is not to describe the event of the death and resurrection of Jesus, but to proclaim its purpose.   As the writer A. W. Tozer commented, ‘the cross is rough, and it is deadly, but it is effective.’

Isn’t the reason Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness after his baptism so that he might absolutely nail this purpose question before his ministry began?    As we pursue our way through Lent I do think that I must also, therefore, be sure that I do not get to Easter with this question still lurking anywhere concerning it.

O teach me what it meaneth,
That cross uplifted high,
With One, the Man of Sorrows,
Condemned to bleed and die!
O teach me what it cost Thee
To make a sinner whole;
And teach me, Saviour, teach me
The value of a soul!

O teach me what it meaneth,
That sacred crimson tide,
The blood and water flowing
From Thine own wounded side.
Teach me that if none other
Had sinned, but I alone,
Yet still Thy blood, Lord Jesus,
Thine only, must atone.