“The death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross on Calvary was not an accident; it was God’s work. It was God who ‘set Him forth’ there. How often is the whole glory of the Cross missed when men sentimentalize it away and say, ‘Ah, He was too good for the world, He was too pure. His teaching was too wonderful; and cruel men crucified Him!’ The result is that we begin to feel sorry for Him, forgetting that He Himself turned on those ‘daughters of Jerusalem’ that were beginning to feel sorry for Him, and said, ‘Weep not for me but weep for yourselves.’
If our view of the Cross is one that makes us feel sorry for the Lord Jesus Christ, it just means that we have never seen it truly. It is God who ‘set Him forth.’ It was not an accident, but something deliberate… It is a great public act of God. God has done something here in public on the stage of the world history, in order that it might be seen, and looked at, and recorded once and forever– the most public action that has ever taken place.”
–D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross: The Vindication of God (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1976/1999), 4.
